Piers Morgan furiously hits out after Liam Payne coverage sparks major backlash

Piers Morgan has hit out at comic and radio presenter James Barr who slammed the former Britain's Got Talent judge over his intense coverage of Liam Payne's death

Piers Morgan has responded to backlash following his comments over Liam Payne's death.

The former One Direction singer tragically fell to his death aged 31 last week, falling from the balcony of his third floor hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The star died after suffering multiple traumas leading to an "internal and external haemorrhage". During an episode of Piers' YouTube show, Uncensored, he and guests Howie Mandel and Esther Krakue clashed with Liam's friend and former X Factor co-star Katie Waissel, radio star James Barr.

Fans of the late singer furiously took to social media to hit out at Piers and Howie following their comments during the programme which sparked major backlash online. James Barr has also taken to X, formerly known as Twitter to criticise Piers and Howie's remarks. In view of his 26.6k followers, the Hits Radio presenter said: "The lack of accountability, empathy, and self-awareness in this debate is horrific.

"Talent judge @howiemandel defends his SyCo bosses, before jumping into a wax lyrical about 'mental health' that sounds like a Sesame Street chatGPT! He then refuses to listen and smugly announces that he’s off to judge Canada's Got Talent, 'Simon's forcing me to go now'. It's no surprise that Howie and @piersmorgan want to defend the people that pay them - but a boy is dead and this entire debate centred around victim blaming. What do we expect from a show that openly bullies Sam Smith, Dylan Mulvaney and Meghan Markle. I'm sorry Liam."

But Piers has also unleashed a furious tweet aimed at James. Taking to the microblogging platform in view of his 8.8 million followers, the former Good Morning Britain anchor said: "What pathetic virtue-signalling drivel. You, like the rest of us, have no idea what really happened to Liam. And may I remind you that you have regularly accepted payment to appear on our show that you now want to publicly trash, you shameless hypocrite."

However, Piers' comment has been met with further backlash as X users responded in the comment section. "You practically invented the art of virtue-signaling. If anyone's the expert on trashing people for a paycheck, it's you," said one. A second added: "You don’t have any agenda other than blaming people."

Meanwhile, a third typed: "I can't believe his attitude. So rude! Why can't he conduct himself like a civilised human being? It's so unnecessary. Open and honest discussion should be the way forward, not sneering condescension and grandiose self-importance." Piers stated that Liam had substances "including cocaine, crack and benzodiazepine," in his system at the time of his death. Local reports claimed these were included in "pink cocaine" which is made up of drugs such as MDMA, ketamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, benzodiazepine and crack.

Howie added that Liam had spoken openly about his issues with drugs and alcohol before getting clean. Piers commented: "Howie, let me bring in Katie – what I will say there about Liam, who I didn't know very well. I know some members of the band One Direction much better – Niall is a good friend of mine and so on. Clearly Niall and Harry Styles and Louis, they've all built incredibly successful solo careers, I've covered many boybands over the years, some of them end up doing better than others when they go solo."

Katie, who has since started legal training to become a lawyer has spoken openly about the lack of aftercare she and her co-stars received after appearing on The X Factor back in 2010. As Piers questioned what duty of care The X Factor had, Howie interrupted shouting: "Nothing, nothing, nothing." James Barr interrupted saying: "Yet these shows would describe these people as their family."

"Did she need help then?!" exclaimed Howie, shouting over Katie. Esther added: "When these people are becoming famous and they're getting the money that they want. But when you have the dark side of fame, that apparently becomes everyone else's fault."

Follow Mirror Celebs onTikTok,Snapchat,Instagram,Twitter,Facebook,YouTubeandThreads.