Reporter who mocked Bush
on Segway suffers own spill

Call it irony or call it karma.

The ex-newspaper editor from Britain who mocked President Bush in 2003 for falling off a Segway scooter has now suffered his own spill from the personal transportation device – and the plunge was caught on camera.

British journalist Piers Morgan shown falling off a Segway scooter in Santa Monica, Calif. (image courtesy Breitbart.tv)

As displayed on Breitbart.tv, Piers Morgan, formerly of the Daily Mirror and now a columnist for the Mail on Sunday's Live magazine, is shown riding and falling off one of the two-wheeled, motorized, gyroscopically balanced scooters that its makers promise will never fall over.

The Daily Mirror ran the headline four years ago: "You'd have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn't you Mr. President."

It added: "If anyone can make a pig's ear of riding a sophisticated, self-balancing machine like this, Dubya can."

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According to the UK's Daily Mail, Morgan broke three ribs after falling off the Segway at 12 mph in Southern California, just three days before he was slated to appear as a judge on the grand finale of the reality show, "America's Got Talent."

Piers Morgan

The paper says: "He can be seen cruising comfortably along the promenade at Santa Monica beach. Inexplicably, his delicate sense of balance fails him. The Segway swerves to the right, mounting the [curb]. Morgan's 'toned muscular, tanned, superfit torso' (as he describes it) continues straight along the road but sadly his feet remain planted to the rogue Segway. Inevitably he falls victim to gravity and crunches on to the baking concrete, where he lies, agonized, until a companion can come to his rescue."

Writing in Live magazine this week, Morgan reflected on his comments about Bush's Segway spill.

"Since only he and I appear to have ever fallen off one," he said, "I think the makers of the Segway can probably still justifiably claim the machines are 'idiot-proof.'"

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