Piers Morgan has accused "stand-in weather guy" Alex Beresford of launching a "pre-meditated attack" on him on Good Morning Britain last month.
In what turned out to be Morgan's final episode of the breakfast programme, Beresford berated him for his fierce reaction to Meghan Markle's interview with Oprah Winfrey.
In response to the criticism, Morgan temporarily stormed off set live on air - and just hours later, he confirmed that he had quit GMB for good.
The clip of their heated exchange was shown on TV channels around the world, and now Morgan has suggested that Beresford went into that morning's show gunning for him.
"He is the stand-in weather guy, he's not a journalist, he's someone I've helped in his career like he has asked me to," Morgan said in an exclusive interview with Fox News veteran Tucker Carlson.
"He sent me a private message in which he expressed some concern about what he felt I wasn't really understanding about where Meghan Markle was coming from as a bi-racial woman.
"He is himself a bi-racial man so he wanted to explain so I said 'come on air, let's have the conversation'.
"But the moment he came on air, he came with a pretty pre-meditated attack on me on a pretty personal level and frankly I just wasn't going to have it.
"I walked off... I was quite angry in the moment, he claimed that I have a personal vendetta against Meghan Markle, which I don't."
Morgan's comments about Markle GMB became the most complained-about moment in UK TV history, with more than 57,000 viewers registering their concerns with TV regulator Ofcom.
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