Piers Morgan REFUSES to accept Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie are not gay

Sesame Street double act Bert and Ernie are not gay – but Piers Morgan is refusing to accept the news.

Sesame Workshop shut down claims the puppet pair are in a relationship, confirming they are simply “best friends” after writer Mark Saltzman said the characters reflected experiences he had during his relationship with film editor Arnold Glassman.

In a statement a spokesman said: “Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets and do not have a sexual orientation.”

Morgan launched a furious tirade on Good Morning Britain as he discussed the breaking news with co-host Susanna Reid, saying he refuses to believe the puppets are friends.

“What are you doing Sesame Street? I’m not having it,” he said. “They’re clearly gay.”

Reid replied: “I just don’t think we should sexualise Sesame Street.”

Morgan branded the talk a “farce” before taking aim at Kermit and Miss Piggy, saying: “Miss Piggy and Kermit we know had sex. They got married. Is there now going to be a statement about Miss Piggy and Kermit? Was Kermit gender fluid after all? Was the marriage ever consummated? If not, was it a real marriage?

“We need to know these things. We can’t just view them as innocent puppets. We must now go into all these ridiculous areas of these puppets.”

Bert and Ernie have appeared on Sesame Street since it first aired in the US in 1969.

They live in a flat together on the fictional street and sleep in separate beds.

Saltzman, who also wrote more than 50 songs for the show, said he wrote Bert and Ernie as a loving couple.

“I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked ‘are Bert & Ernie lovers?’ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun,” he told lifestyle publication Queerty.

“And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualise them.”

But a spokesperson for Sesame Workshop said the characters were “created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves”.