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Piers Morgan tells Olly Murs to “stop tweeting” during Oxford Street panic

By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 27 November 2017

Piers Morgan and Olly Murs found themselves locking horns on Twitter on Friday evening, after the former accused the latter of irresponsibly spreading fear. This came after Murs live tweeted being caught up in what turned out to be a non-incident on London’s Oxford Street.

There were reports of gunshots being fired at Oxford Circus tube station on Friday evening, although this later turned out not to be the case. Murs, who had been doing a spot of shopping in Selfridges when this happened, began a series of tweets to his 7.8 million followers by shouting: “Fuck, everyone get out of Selfridges now. Gun shots! I’m inside”.

He went on to say that he wasn’t sure what happened but “people [are] screaming and running towards exits”. Then, after being evacuated, he announced that he was “being told no shots in Selfridges! Have no idea the whole store went crazy!”

Eventually, Morgan chipped in: “Stop tweeting mate. Nothing happened”.

A bit of friendly advice to which Murs did not take kindly. Using Twitter’s new increased character limit to full effect, he replied: “Listen Piers! I was shopping and then all of sudden the whole place went mad – I mean crazy – people running and screaming towards exits. We found a small office to hide to with loads of staff and people were saying there was shots fired. If you was there you’d have understood mate”.

“No”, shot back Morgan. “You listen, Olly. When you have millions of followers be very careful what you tweet. There were no shots, in fact nothing happened at all. So you stirred extra needless panic by tweeting false information”.

This is the same Piers Morgan who once lost his job for publishing false information (well, pictures), so you’d think Murs might want to listen to the wise old man. He did not.

“No you listen Piers”, replied Murs, developing a theme. “Your comments are unfair mate. It’s easy to say now it was nothing but in a state of shock and panic. I was trying to make people aware of what was happening. I was led to believe by staff and customers that someone was shooting”.

Morgan noted that Murs should “leave it to the police next time”, telling him: “It’s not your place to tell people to evacuate or say (wrongly) that shots were fired. You could have put people in more danger”.

It’s not clear how many of Murs’s followers were actually in Selfridges while he was tweeting, and how many of them would turn to his Twitter account for information on what was happening if they had been. I’ve not been following his career very closely lately, maybe he has become some sort of public information service.

Whatever, I think Morgan’s advice to “stop tweeting” is something everyone should take on board. Especially Morgan himself.