Andrew Pierce

Andrew Pierce
Born	Patrick J Connolly 1961 Bristol, England
Residence	Belsize Park, London
Education	St Joseph's Catholic School, Swindon
Occupation	Journalist, editor, broadcaster
Employer	Daily Mail
Known for	Consultant Editor, Daily Mail (Dec. 2009 – ) Fmr. Assistant Editor, The Daily Telegraph (Nov. 2006 – Dec. 2009) Fmr. Assistant Editor, The Times Fmr. Political Editor, The Times journalist, features writer, author and broadcaster

Andrew Pierce (born 1961) is an English journalist, editor, author and broadcaster.

Pierce was born Patrick J Connolly in Bristol to a devout Roman Catholic Irishwoman and an unknown father. He spent the first two years of his life in Nazareth House, a Catholic orphanage in the spa town of Cheltenham, and was adopted by a family from Swindon and brought up on a council estate there. His adoptive father worked on the assembly line at British Leyland, a former state-owned car factory.

Pierce was educated at St Joseph's Roman Catholic School, now known as St Joseph's Catholic College, a state comprehensive school in Swindon. He did not go to university.

Pierce first became interested in politics as a first-time voter in 1979. He is a columnist and Consultant Editor for the Daily Mail newspaper, and was previously Assistant Editor of The Daily Telegraph newspaper and Assistant Editor of The Times newspaper, and also the paper's Political Editor. He recently celebrated 30 years in newspapers.

Pierce presented a Sunday morning political radio show on commercial radio station LBC 97.3 from 2008 until he left in 2012. That radio programme was in the latter years presented as a double-headed show with Kevin Maguire from the Daily Mirror. Pierce and Maguire continue their highly popular double act reviewing, previewing and dissecting the media and politics on the BBC, ITV and Sky News. He started presenting a Saturday Breakfast show on LBC Radio from 22 March 2014.

In 2014 the Daily Mail had to pay damages to Kirsten Farage after Pierce in a column wrongly claimed she had been UKIP leader Nigel Farage's mistress while he was still married to his first wife.

Pierce was raised, and remains, a Roman Catholic. He is openly gay, strongly supports civil partnerships, and lives in a long-term civil partnership, legalised by the Labour Government's Civil Partnership Act 2004. However, he was, and remains, opposed to same-sex marriage, legalised by the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. He explained his opposition to its introduction as the lack of public support for it, the creation of a possible schism between Church and State, and that there were no new rights accorded to it that did not already exist under Labour's 2004 civil partnership law. He also cited the views of several prominent gay people opposed to it, such as Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, and those unsure about it, such as historian Dr. David Starkey, and its absence from the election manifestos of the political parties that introduced it. He said it was therefore pointless to introduce it, and criticised Prime Minister David Cameron for treating it as a priority.

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