The transcripts of the official inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press. More…
Yes. This all came about due to the phone hacking of Milly Dowler's phone. I don't think anyone gives two hoots about the celebrities, a lot of whom are being paid by the same companies who paid me. You know, 20th Century Fox and News International. But last ...
Yeah. I have shifted for a number of different newspapers and I've -- we all move around. You know, I was offered a job at the People about ten years ago. I did a few shifts at the Sunday Mirror. And, you know, the news editor of Sunday Mirror one ...
No. Some of my former colleagues have given me the thumbs up. I remember doing a live with Sky or BBC outside News International and a few of them drove past me and it was like: "Yeah, well done", because fundamentally the little men, the reporters, were all screwed big ...
No, it has. People have stepped back a bit. The glory days of the 1990s when it was so much fun, before Diana died, have gone. People do take notice of the PCC and people are reined in because editors don't want to be ticked off. There comes a ...
Well, I have direct knowledge of it, in the sense that the police made three requests for me to come into Scotland Yard to give evidence under caution, which means I would have been arrested first before giving evidence, and I refused three times and they wrote me a letter ...
Yeah. I mean, I spent a while in the Cotswolds going around all the pubs and restaurants where they used to meet each other, hanging around outside their houses. You don't need to regulate the press. The press will eat itself. We will regulate ourselves. Not only did -- you ...
Well, you'd have to say that the way the whole -- the way it developed, from the first time that Margaret Thatcher wanted to get elected in the 70s and tapped up Murdoch and said, "Will you back me?" and he did, and then the next time when Tony Blair ...
Well, yeah. You could be slightly creative. But also, if they didn't like it, that was one way they'd get rid of you, as well. For example, I remember trying to get back from Kosovo. We just couldn't get out of there, so the only way out ...
In some regards, we weren't that well paid. My leaving salary as the deputy features editor was only 60,000 a year, and as a way to bump up salaries, we were given a certain amount of leeway. So I'd claim, I don't know, another 15, 20 ...
No. It was to make sure we didn't get sued. The editor would want every story that was possible to go in the paper and it was Tom Crone's job to make sure that any attempt to sue us would be headed off at the pass by being ...
Well, I said already, absolutely everything you read in my cuttings book is on tape, but you would not be allowed to get -- it was a sacking offence not to do an interview that wasn't recorded, and if there was any, you know, point of problem with it, if ...
Yeah, I think people who buy class A drugs are responsible for a lot of misery around the world, so yes.
He was a gladiator in a big show, Gladiators, and he had in his contract that if he ever had any problems with drugs, as it was a children's show and he was a role model, he'd be instantly fired.
The Sunday Mirror had set up a sting ...
Oh, yeah.
No, because the News of the World readership didn't decline after that. It didn't put anyone off buying it. But this particular -- the judge and jury of our readership were okay with that. And I just don't think, if you want to live in a free society ...
She wasn't doing the second bit, but yes: although I -- yeah, anyway. No, I mean it's one of a couple of stories that I regret. I remember interviewing, also, Lena Zavaroni after she was caught stealing a 50p bag of sweets and then I interviewed her again and ...
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah. In 21 years of invading people's privacy I've never actually come across anyone who's been doing any good. The only people I think need privacy are people who do bad things. Privacy is the space bad people need to do bad things in. Privacy is particularly ...
You don't need to do that. All you have to do is jump off the stage for five minutes and people lose interest in you very, very quickly. It doesn't take long. But if you jump back on the stage -- and it happens all the time. It happens ...
Oh no, absolutely, it's nothing -- it's just nonsense. I mean Hugh Grant, what's he do? He puts on a bit of make up, prances about in front of a camera and then complains about it. Stephen Coogan says, "Oh, I'm a serious actor, you know, and ...
No, I must admit after I -- my closest near-death experience at the hand of a group of asylum seekers, I just backed away. I thought: I'm not getting paid enough to do this, you know, to get killed for people who don't really care.
The most dispiriting phone ...
Yes. Well, I mean, obviously it was.
No, yeah, I just showed you a picture of my burned-out surveillance van. I was trying to break a cocaine smuggling ring and I remember I got to know the cocaine smugglers quite well. I remember sitting amongst them. In the old days, you didn't have these tiny little ...
I think most journalists, me included, would find the contents of people's bins incredibly interesting. I can only -- I mean, it gives you such a great starting point, much better, actually, than hacking a phone because that almost tips them off that you're looking. But is it illegal ...
Yeah. Probably ought to ask advice on whether or not this was legal at any point.
No. I think it was just great fun from both sides.
Quite often the celebrities would absolutely love it. I give an example of Brad Pitt, who I've been doing more recently. I mean, he's got a big chopper, big motorbike. I mean, his wife gave him a Ducati for his birthday present. He would come out -- invariably outside ...
There was a change. I mean, all News of the World photographers had to go to work wearing a suit and we were quite clear in distancing ourselves from the paparazzi. But no, I would be told by the features department, "Take a fast car, see what you can get."
No change there then, really, but yeah.
Yeah. We had -- at the News of the World, we had a set of pool cars, about 12, that we could switch and swap around, because, I mean, you can park outside Paul McCartney's house on the Wednesday but if the same car is there on the Thursday, it ...
Yes. Yes.
Yeah, I can see that being one step away from it. I mean, yeah. I came across that, but equally I think there was a -- that was a mistake that some of my colleagues have made, and that is why there is a paper trail that links them directly. I ...
Oh yeah.
You're going to have to be more specific.
One of the hardest things is when you're working to a deadline and you need to get an interview, you just want to know where that person is, so you can drive to the house and knock on the door, and it's quite hard. In the old days ...
We used a private investigator who was totally legitimate and, I think, was married to a police officer and knew exactly where the boundaries were and never stepped over them, and didn't commit any illegal act.
Well, they sort of came and went. I remember one of my colleagues did a mailshot to nearly every private investigative firm in Britain. I spent an afternoon at a private investigators' conference just saying, "Listen, sometimes some of your clients are going to have stories that the wife might ...
Well, he was so bad at it, he was being paid by us for doing a lot of unnecessary things that were a waste of money and no good could come of it. Much as I tried to rein it in and put a bit of a break on it ...
It was too extensive. I spent five years as a features reporter and then, as soon as I got made deputy features editor, I was suddenly confronted with the budget that Rebekah Brooks had had before me, and I really couldn't believe it. I mean, some weeks we actually ...
That was more the kind of tricks that news got up to. The people we employed were more into blagging to try and trick people out of their PIN codes and that kind of thing, rather than actually paying someone who worked at Vodafone or whatever. I mean, that's ...
The ordinary people who buy the product are -- set themselves up for, in a sense, being the victim also. There really is no massive difference between an ordinary man or woman, a celebrity or a -- you know, someone who rules over us, because it all sells the product. It is ...
Well --
Yes, this is the whole point about circulation and the public getting what the public wants. They want that because the circulation stays high, therefore it is what the public want to read, and I think the public are clever enough to be the judge and jury of what goes ...
Yeah --
Yeah. Actually, I'm fairly sure that at the start, there were PIs who were able to track people's credit histories or where they'd been with credit cards. Again, a vague recollection, not something I've thought about particularly. But again, you know, I see nothing wrong with ...
Again, I -- my feeling is that, you know, I'm a journalist. I am there to, you know, catch people out who lie to us and who rule over us, and any means is fine by me. I would have no problem at all, if the target was worth it ...
