Leveson Inquiry: Hugh Grant accuses Mail on Sunday of hacking

Live coverage from the Leveson Inquiry

Hugh Grant has told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics that the Mail on Sunday may have hacked his phone.

The actor said he could not think of any other way it could have got its story in 2007 about his conversations with a "plummy voiced" woman.
Earlier, the mother of murdered girl Milly Dowler said she did not sleep for three days after discovering that her daughter's phone was hacked.
Sally Dowler said the hacking had given the couple false hope.
'Left-field story' Mr Grant's suggestion that the Mail on Sunday may have hacked his phone is the first time he has linked a newspaper not owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to the practice.
The article, which Mr Grant sued and won damages over, claimed his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks because of his late night calls with a "plummy voiced" studio executive from Warner Brothers.

You could hear it in her voice, you could see it in her face. Nine years on, Sally Dowler re-lived the euphoric moment when she told her husband Bob that she thought their missing daughter, Milly, might not be dead. "She's picked up her voicemails Bob. She's alive".
Eight devastating words to haunt News International. Their paper, the News of the World, had been hacking Milly's phone, deleting messages and giving her distraught parents false hope.
The Dowlers also spoke about the "double-edged sword" nature of their relationship with the media. They needed the publicity to help find their abducted daughter. They had to put up with reporters intruding so much that they dreaded opening their front door.
This is going to be a tough week for the popular press.

"It was a bizarre story and completely untrue," he told the inquiry.

"Thinking about how they could possibly come up with such a bizarre, left-field story... I realised there was a great friend of mine in Los Angeles whose assistant is a charming, married middle-aged lady, who is the person who rings you instead of the executive.
"I cannot for the life of me think of any conceivable source for this story in the Mail on Sunday other than the voicemails that were on my mobile telephone."
Counsel to the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, said Mr Grant's claims were "pure speculation".
The actor also said one paper in 1995 described the inside of his London flat - shortly after it had been broken into.
"The front door had been shoved off its hinges. Nothing had been stolen, which was weird," he said.
"Shortly after that, a detailed account of what the interior of my flat looked like appeared in one of the papers. I remember thinking who told them that? Was that the burglar, or was that the police?"
The incident happened around the time of his arrest in Los Angeles with a prostitute, and the "press storm" that followed it.
He also said:

• The Sun and Daily Express invaded his privacy by publishing details of his medical record he claimed they had "appropriated... for commercial profit"
• He had brought between six and 10 libel actions over the past 17 years
• He accepted undisclosed libel damages in April 2007 over claims his relationship with Ms Khan was destroyed by a flirtation with a film executive and his behaviour around Liz Hurley's wedding
• He and girlfriends have been "chased at speed" by paparazzi
• He experienced press intrusion over his relationship with Chinese actress Tinglan Hong, the mother of his baby daughter, when pictures were taken with a telephoto lens

Earlier, Mrs Dowler and her husband Bob were the first witnesses to give evidence.
She said they had called the 13-year-old's phone repeatedly in the weeks after she went missing, but the voicemail had become full.

Hugh Grant says he believes the source of one Mail on Sunday story was from hacked phone messages

Mrs Dowler said when she could access it again after the detective working for the News of the World (NoW) had hacked the phone number and deleted some messages, "I told my friends, 'she's picked up her voicemail, she's picked up her voicemail'."
She added: "When we heard about the hacking that was the first thing I thought."
It was nine years later during the trial of their daughter's killer that they were told by police her phone had been hacked.
Mrs Dowler said: "As soon as I was told it was about phone hacking, literally I didn't sleep for about three nights because you replay everything in your mind and just think, 'oh, that makes sense now, that makes sense'."
The couple also described how they were secretly photographed as they privately reconstructed Milly's last walk, seven weeks after she disappeared.
'Private grief' Mrs Dowler said: "We put out missing leaflets and a telephone number. That number had changed and I was checking to see if the right poster was up and I was touching the posters to see if they were the right ones.
"That Sunday, that photo appeared in the News of the World. I remember seeing it and I was really cross. They had obviously taken the photo with some sort of telephoto lens. How on earth did they know we were doing the walk on that day?
"It felt like such an intrusion into a really, really private grief moment."
Mr Dowler was asked what he would say to NoW publisher News International.

Sally Dowler describes how she thought Milly was alive when her voicemail clicked in.

He told the inquiry: "We would sincerely hope that News International and other media organisations would look very carefully how they procure, how they obtain information about stories.
"Obviously, the ramifications are far greater than what appears in the press."
The inquiry also heard from Graham Shear, a lawyer who represents celebrities and who is an alleged victim of the practice himself.
He said he was shocked to discover that reporters had turned up outside his home moments before he was due to meet clients there.
He also said papers that published "kiss and tell" stories consciously assessed whether the potential costs in damages outweighed the revenues that could be gained through extra sales.
Writer and campaigner Joan Smith told the inquiry she believed her phone was hacked while she was in a relationship with the MP Denis MacShane.
She said: "The tabloid press seems to live in a 1950s world where everyone is supposed to get married and stay married and anything that happens outside that is a story.
"I think we have a tabloid press which is almost infantile in its attitude towards sex and private life."
Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry before Lord Justice Leveson in July in response to revelations that the NoW hacked Milly's phone.