Celebrities

Piers Morgan says Mo Farah 'lied to my face' about his past but that he is also proud of his 'friend'

Piers Morgan says Mo Farah 'lied to my face' about his past but that he is also proud of his 'friend'
Sir Mo Farah reveals he was illegally trafficked to UK as a ...
The Real Mo Farah/BBC/Red Bull Studios

Piers Morgan has said Sir Mo Farah "lied through his back teeth" seven years ago when he appeared on his Life Stories show back in 2015.

But the broadcaster added he's "never been prouder of my friend" after the sports star recently revealed the truth about his childhood where he was given the name Mohamed Farah by traffickers who sent him to the UK as a child and was forced to work as a domestic servant.

The British long-distance runner detailed in a new documentary by the BBC and Red Bull Studios that he was given the name Mohamed Farah by those who flew him over from Djibouti when he was nine years old.

Farah - whose real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin - also shared that he was four years old when his father was killed in the civil war and his parents never lived in the UK. It was only when Farah told his PE teacher about his ordeal that social services got involved and enabled him to get fostered by a Somalian family.

The news came as a shock to Morgan after he had the four-time Olympic gold medallist as a guest on his programme Piers Morgan's Life Stories where Farah told a different story about his childhood.

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In his column for The Sun, Morgan said Farah "looked me straight in the eye in front of millions of people – and lied through his back teeth," seven years ago.

During his appearance on the show, the 39-year-old told Morgan his father was already working as an IT consultant in London when he and his mother moved to the UK to flee war-torn Somalia.

"To say I was gob-smacked by his bombshell confession is the understatement of the Millennium," Morgan wrote as he revealed that he "spend days immersing myself into the deepest recesses of the subject’s life" in the preparation for the sit-down talks such as looking at previous media interview and reading Farah's 2013 autobiography Twin Ambitions.

However, Morgan then said he understood why Farah kept this secret to himself for the past three decades.

"Who could blame him for not wanting us to know how he really came here?" he wrote.

"Imagine the sickening nagging worry he must have had for 30 years, as his success and fame rocketed, that the truth might one day come out about his unlawful immigrant status and he could lose both his British citizenship and with it, the knighthood that means so much to him?"

Since Farah has revealed the truth about his childhood, the Home Office has said "no action" will be taken against him - something which Morgan agreed with.

"If anyone has earned the right to stay here then it is surely Sir Mo Farah, a man who overcame so much personal tragedy and hardship to light up world athletics and be rewarded for his astonishing success with a sword-tap on the shoulder from his grateful Queen."

"This Life Stories show might need a retrospective edit!" Morgan joked on Twitter with an image of the pair from the interview.

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