Yes, certainly.

I mean, you know, I'm no legal expert, but that seems to be -- what I've been led to believe is that certainly personal information should not be leaked to third parties.

Well, the legality of it is certainly up for discussion. I mean, I believe that the Data Protection Act has certainly been breached. Yes, they have a right to view it. They do not have a right to distribute it.

Yes, it would be fair. I'm certainly, with my own civil proceedings, determined to get an answer as to how this information that seems to have been taken from my work computer ended up in the hands of this person and how -- and timing-wise, how it occurred before my ...

Not directly, no. No. Obviously I know the person who did it. They are not, as far as I know, on the payroll of Northern & Shell. As I said, there are civil proceedings so I don't want to say too much, other than they got this information about ...

It's part of the -- it's not -- it's part of the culture. I mean, you're sort of questioning the very fundamental basis which your job is based on. I mean, it's sort of at that ridiculous -- to raise it, you'd just be looked at like ...

Yes, I think I included that as an example of the speculative nature. You take one fact and you blow that up into a front story. Just because someone appeared -- yes, you could make the inference her marriage is in crisis, but if you're going to stretch that to ...

I'm not trying to put it on the same level as sort of phone hacking or something. It's merely sort of a capillary of what is a slightly cancerous heart of the industry, I suppose. It's not -- if they want to say it's proper use, fine ...

Sorry, Kevin McGee. You know, there was a huge pay-out to Matt Lucas' family and that was a story that I wrote. I was not disciplined in the slightest. It wasn't even mentioned to me sort of in a -- you know, there was no inquiry as to how this ...

It was discussed down the pub. You know, it was -- I can't remember specific conversations in which it was the focus of, but it was just the flippant comments. It was the fact that -- if you look at the Luke McGee story --

Certainly it was raised on a number of occasions that I didn't think -- you know, it's difficult. There is no sort of avenue of which you can make complaints. Who do you speak to? The people are telling you to do the stories. The structure of it is ...

Not directly to Dawn. I had very little dealings with Dawn directly. She wasn't very approachable.

It's news to me. As I said, I welcome any documents which would prove this fact. I mean, many of these questions -- anyone, anyone who speaks out against the tabloid press, be they a celebrity or someone from within the industry, your Sean Hoares or Paul McMullans or myself ...

I can't at all. I think it's a real problem, I think as many journalism lecturers would probably attest. What you get told to do -- the theory of journalism is so radically different from its practice. You know, there is a real culture shock for reporters actually sort ...

Not to my recollection at all, no. As I said, the only time that I remember a copy being passed around was when we'd dropped out of the PCC, which I remember joking with colleagues that it was quite amusing that this had appeared in the office on the ...

No.

The same right that you have not to turn up today, I suppose, as a human being of free will.

No. £118. Oh sorry, yes, I have seen these questions. No, I know the questions you're referring to, yes.

No, I don't believe so. Fire away.

Sure.

Yes. No, I mean, this was an occasion when I'd complained about the news value of a PR story that I was being asked to write. I just didn't see any value in it whatsoever. It was a fairly offhand comment, I think, that I think I made ...

I think "prolifically" would be a bit of a stretch. Bits and pieces. You know, there's certainly a -- I don't think I've done my -- I've got a limited range of papers who I can write for, much more limited than perhaps before, but yes. My bank ...

Not a fan, I suppose, would be the quick summary of that piece.

Not a fan, really, the brief summary.

Okay.

No. The person is linked to the tabloid world, long-established.

The police did get involved, yes.

There was things that were referenced such as my CV, things such as a doctor's appointment that I had -- no, sorry, that was referenced actually by before -- in the days after I resigned, one of the news editors emailed me referencing a doctor ...

I resigned -- I resigned on a Monday, and I leaked this to the Guardian and it didn't get published in the Guardian until the Friday. This was a slight sort of annoyance -- not annoyance, but it certainly was sort of a stressful period because I'd kind of -- the ...

It's not an exact science.

Yes, certainly. There would have been stories I'd written which weren't under my name, or stories that I'd helped out with that went under someone else's name. So, you know.

It is.

Well, the only reason I included that was because they certainly tried to play down how -- you know, I was told recently that: "Oh, you've only ever written 200 stories for us", which is -- you know, I felt if they're going to accuse me of sort of overplaying ...

Well, I think if you ask any Muslim in this country what they think of the Daily Star, they will tell you they think that they are very negative towards them. I think if you ask any journalist, you ask any sociologist -- it's simply preposterous. It's literally like ...

I think that that would have been added in by the subs, who probably -- maybe it broke -- because of the way it's laid out, I think that that may have broken late at night, once I'd gone home and was just a paragraph that was thrown in because ...

Mm-hm. But obviously I've represented to him as if this is a definitive threat, something we need your opinion on. You know, I've misrepresented what we have here. I haven't said to him: "Well, I'm trying to stand up this rather spurious story. Can you give ...

Yes.

The narrative was there. I just find the information to stick in it.

It may have been reported elsewhere and equally I've thrown it in. I would imagine that -- I don't think I'd have made that up. I think that must have been reported elsewhere and it just seemed -- well, that will pad it out. I'll throw in some ...

Yes. I can't remember -- I'm sure it was. That's just a statement of fact which I could -- I may have spoken to someone at the -- spoken to someone who said, "We have just raised it", or it was already printed in the papers that day so I ...

Yeah.

Then you sort of pluck -- you need a to pad it out, so to speak, so you sort of reference maybe a few bomb plots that have been --

Yes.

This is the classic example of the creation of a tabloid story. It was -- the headline is "Airports facing turban warfare", and it was a line in the Sunday Telegraph that said that Muslims may be planning to disguise themselves as Sikhs and plant bombs in their head dress. It ...

No, not at all. I mean, I think at last count there were something like 15, 16 stories that I use now when I do talks and lectures, you know, that I wrote involving -- you know, Muslim-bashing stories is what I would call them -- which I analyse with students. I ...

No, not at all, and I welcome them to provide any evidence whatsoever that that is the case. As with the last thing, if they can provide evidence of me applying for a job or being offered to apply for a job or me showing interest in a job, I ...

No. Certainly not. For the reasons I've just explained to you, the editor was fully aware that this story was cock and bull, and -- I mean, look at the story itself. There's not a single named source in it. You know, any sort of -- you know, this is ...

Certainly anyone who knows me, at that time I was very, very down. I was very much looking -- my eyes were firmly on the door. I was very unhappy in my job. The idea that I would have wanted a staff job there is very preposterous to anyone who knows ...

No. Would you like me to explain why that's not right?

No. Well, other than the "almost two years". If you check my first byline and my last byline, it strings out well over two years, but anyway, I'll let them off. They're not great with accuracy.

The legal sense of truth is sort of: what can we get away with saying? That's sort of the legal sense. The moral sense would be more: what would be a fair way to represent this? What would be an accurate way to represent this?

Now, tabloid newspapers have ...