Former newspaper editor Piers Morgan has revealed that Sharon Osbourne once tried to strangle him.

The incident occurred when Osbourne found out that she would be joined on the America’s Got Talent panel by Morgan, and responded by throwing a fit and launching herself at him.

“Sharon Osbourne went mental when I met her. She started screaming at me in a restaurant in Hollywood, then tried to strangle me,” Morgan told Nuts magazine.

“She called me a talentless, Simon Cowell-wannabe idiot. I knew it was bad when Jerry Springer, who was with us, decided to lead her outside.”

He added: “We get on now. She’s kind of a lion – you have to fight her in order to win her respect.”