Piers Morgan Farewell to the Hef, the King of Sex/Hugh Hefner/2017

Piers Morgan Farewell to the Hef, the King of Sex



I first met Hugh Hefner ten years ago in the lascivious bowels of his legendary Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles.

He’d invited me to his legendary Midsummer Night’s Dream summer party and I took my then fiancée – now wife – Celia.

(A decision my then America’s Got Talent co-judge David Hasselhoff found unfathomable: ‘Man, don’t you know the golden rule? Never take sand to the beach



We were greeted by the most eye-popping spectacle: hundreds of mostly semi-naked and completely naked women with various body parts painted, swarming around inside a giant fabulously decadent marquee.

Handsome young male barmen served vast bottles of vintage champagne and Jack Daniels and beautiful waitresses proffered huge slabs of fresh lobster and crab.

In the centre lay the infamous Grotto, surrounded by a vast artificial lake, where some guests were already frolicking in the cave-infested water.

As I soaked in this extraordinary scene, Paris Hilton arrived wearing nothing but Agent Provocateur lingerie and very high heels.



I followed her into Hefner’s private Bedouin tent to meet our host.

He was 82 at the time, wearing a toga, lying on a large bed with a dozen or so stunning Playmates, and sporting an understandably gigantic smirk.

‘Where did it all go wrong, Hef baby?’ was what I felt like saying as he sprang to his feet to greet us with impressive agility.

Instead, I kept it simple: ‘Great party, Mr Hefner.’

‘Isn’t it, Mr Morgan?’ he cackled, slapping me firmly on the back.

We chatted for a few minutes and I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a man more content with his life.

‘Why do you throw these parties?’ I asked.

‘Because I like having fun, and I like other people to have fun!’

By midnight, Celia was fending off the lustful advances of a movie producer as she swam in the Grotto, while I was being propositioned by two dazzling 6ft blonde buxom Texas twins.

It was time for us to either enter Playboy legend, or make our excuses and leave. We opted, with slight reluctance, for the latter.

Many others were making no such excuses and running off into the bushes and caves for what I’m pretty sure wasn’t a shared love of late-night ornithology.

It was the nearest thing to a Caligula-style Roman orgy I have ever experienced.

But it has to be said that everyone was a consenting adult and they all looked like they were having a wonderful time.

I thought of that night when I heard the news that Hefner had died.

To understand what lay at the heart of this iconic American figure, you simply had to be at one of his parties.

He liked beautiful people, sexual freedom in all its guises and having fun with like-minded souls. And his friends and guests adored him for it.



As Kim Kardashian West tweeted today: ‘Paris (Hilton) and I are reminiscing about the Playboy parties at the mansion and how much we loved the Hef.’

Of course, Hefner will be forever associated with America’s sexual revolution.

He launched Playboy in 1953 as an antidote to what he saw as the absurdly hypocritical puritanism under which much of the country operated.

‘Sex is the driving force on the planet,’ he explained. ‘We should embrace it, not see it as the enemy. If you don’t encourage healthy sexual expression in public, you get unhealthy sexual expression in private.’

Hefner grew up in a home with no alcohol and no discussion of sex.

‘My folks were Puritan prohibitionists,’ he said. ‘I saw the hurtful and hypocritical side of that from very early on.’

He also had a massive personal vested interest in his new business.

‘Publishing a sophisticated men’s magazine seemed to me to be the best possible way of fulfilling a dream I’d been nurturing ever since I was a teenager: to get laid a lot.’

But Playboy was about so much more than just sex and pictures of naked women. It soon grew a fearsomely good reputation for brilliant journalism, publishing memorable news-making interviews and thought-provoking articles about hot button issues of the day.

It also acted as a high-end lifestyle guide for the sophisticated man, from what car to drive to which clothes to wear and where to travel.

Hefner himself drove the magazine’s brand and influence with bold, courageous, cutting edge leadership.

He was a trailblazer for civil rights when much of America was still deep-rooted in oppressive racism, putting on shows with black artists in the ‘50s when it was almost unprecedented.

In 1961, he repurchased two Playboy Club franchises after learning they had refused to admit African-American key holders.

‘We are outspoken foes of segregation,’ he explained in a memo, ‘we believe in brotherhood as a matter of practice and we are actively involved in the fight to see the end of all racial inequalities in our time.’

Playboy’s first interview was with black jazz star Miles Davis and it later carried important, in-depth interviews with other black icons like Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.