Piers Morgan Blacklists More Celebs from New CNN Show

Madonna isn't the only big name getting the cold shoulder from Piers Morgan.

After announcing last week that he wouldn't invite the pop queen on his new CNN show, his blacklist has expanded to include an array of other stars, including Howie Mandel, Keith Olbermann and Heather Mills, reports Entertainment Weekly.

The reasons for keeping these particular celebrities off his show range from the fairly trival to the intensely personal for the 45-year-old former British newspaper editor and "America's Got Talent" judge.

Of Keith Olbermann, Morgan says he won't have him on air because it "would really annoy him. I think he's a great broadcaster, but I know he gets wound up very easily."

He added that it's not a lifetime ban, just a temporary one that is "designed to confuse and bemuse him, and hopefully engender a violent reaction."

His motives for banning Mills, Paul McCartney's ex-wife, however, are grounded in his sense of loyalty to the former Beatle.

He explained that he introduced the couple in 1999 and that it was all "very happy and hunky-dory and then she takes him to the cleaners, and I realized I'd pushed one of the world's great gold diggers in the direction of one of my heroes. And as Paul puts it to his close friends, 'Thanks, Piers, you cost me $50 million dollars.' So, for those reasons and by way of any tiny reparation I can make to Macca, she has a lifetime ban."

As to Howie Mandel, he simply says that the funny man and his co-judge on "America's Got Talent" is "just too irritating" and that while he's also temporarily banned, a change of behavior could earn an invitation. However, Morgan says he's not holding out hope for a new demeanor.

Morgan's new show premiered January 17 with an extended interview with Oprah Winfrey. In the coming week's he'll play host to George Clooney, Howard Stern, Kid Rock and the Kardashian sisters.

Suggested Reading: Entertainment Weekly, PopEater, Mediate

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