Leveson Inquiry: Coogan says reporters rifled his bins

Steve Coogan says reporters searched his bins

Steve Coogan has told an inquiry into media ethics that reporters have been through his rubbish bins, looking for "lurid" details of his private life.

The comedian also denied a tabloid story from 2007 which claimed he took drugs with the US actor Owen Wilson.
He said some people entered a "Faustian pact" with the press but he had never sought fame and was a private person.
Lord Justice Leveson is hearing from alleged victims of media intrusion at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.
'Closet empty' The star - best known for his character Alan Partridge - said photographers often sat outside his flat with cameras and he had seen reporters go through his rubbish bins looking for a story.

Two days into the evidence at an inquiry into press standards, and already there have been complaints about the way some sections of the press are reporting it.
When Hugh Grant, inside the hearing, accused the Mail on Sunday of hacking his phone, the newspaper, outside the courtroom, accused the actor of "mendacious smears".
His barrister said this was less of a right of reply, more a right of attack. The paper maintained it was responding to a serious allegation of criminal conduct supported by the "flimsiest of material".
The concern, which is shared by Lord Justice Leveson, is that witnesses might be put off raising their head above the parapet and criticising the way reporters behave, if they fear they'll be attacked in print once they leave the witness box.

"I saw them from my bedroom window," he told the court. "They did not look like tramps - not far off."

He told the inquiry that he understood aspects of his personal and professional work did not meet the approval of some tabloid editors.
But he added: "I do not believe that gives them the right to hack my voicemail, intrude into my privacy or the privacy of people who know me, or print damaging lies."
Mr Coogan described how he got a court order forcing the police to disclose the notebook of Glenn Mulcaire - the private investigator employed by the News of the World (NoW) who was jailed for phone hacking in 2007.
The comedian said he was shown a redacted copy which included details of the account number and password for his mobile phone account as well as the amount he paid for a hotel bill.
Earlier, the inquiry heard from other witnesses who gave accounts of media practices they had encountered.
They included:

• Former Blackburn Rovers captain Garry Flitcroft, who said he believed media coverage of his extra-marital affairs contributed to his father's suicide
• Margaret Watson, from Glasgow, whose son killed himself after reading derogatory articles about his dead sister; and
• Mary-Ellen Field, a business adviser to supermodel Elle Macpherson, who says she was fired for leaking secrets which were actually obtained by journalists hacking into the Australian star's phone

Mr Coogan also referred to a 2007 story in the Daily Mail suggesting he had taken drugs with his friend, the actor Owen Wilson.
He said at the time of the alleged episode he had not been in the same continent as the actor for nine months. He also said he had not taken drugs with him.
Asked why he did not contact the Press Complaints Commission about the story, he said: "On this occasion the potential soap opera that would ensue outweighs any benefit I would have from some sort of retraction.
"And also the effort involved in going through legal action - really, it's as effective in some cases to do nothing, because the story just goes away.

Garry Flitcroft said his father stopped watching him play football because of ''taunting'' from the terraces

"The main reason I didn't do anything is because on balance, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts, if you complain you push the story forward and keep it up there in the newspapers."
He also described how a NoW reporter under the editorship of Andy Coulson called him to say he was going to be the subject of a sting operation related to a story about him having an affair.
He said the showbiz reporter, Rav Singh, told him in a separate phone call that he wanted to help him and that, if he confirmed certain aspects of the affair, the more lurid details would be left out.
Mr Coogan told the inquiry: "After that, my manager received a phone call from Andy Coulson saying they had recorded the whole phone call and they were going to print it in the newspaper."
Earlier, he said he never wanted to be famous and liked to keep himself private.
He said he had been the subject of "several" kiss and tell stories and his closet was now "empty of skeletons" due to the press.
"I'm not someone who wants to get involved in waving a banner for the right to privacy, but not many other people similar to me were doing it," he said.
"The reason other - for want of a better word 'celebrities' - don't want to, is that they say they don't have the stomach for it and fear what will happen.
"My closet is empty of skeletons due to the press, so admittedly, I'm immune in some ways."

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.

Phone hacking: Rebekah Brooks is expecting child by surrogate mother

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, and Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer, are expecting a girl by a surrogate mother.

Rebekah Brooks married Charlie Brooks in 2009.   

After an annus horribilis in which she lost her job as the chief executive of News International and was arrested in connection with allegations of phone hacking. Rebekah Brooks has reason to be thankful.

The former News of the World editor and her husband, the racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, are expecting their first child, by a surrogate mother.

“They are delighted to confirm they are to become parents of a baby girl in early 2012,” their spokesman, David Wilson, tells Mandrake.

“They have been trying to start a family since becoming a couple and for more than two years and have been consulting fertility experts. The baby is currently being carried by a surrogate mother and is due in February.”

Rebekah, 43, and Charlie, 48, had been expecting twins, but one baby died during the early stages of the pregnancy. Mandrake agreed not to publish details in September because the future of the surviving child was said to be uncertain.

“Whilst the pregnancy has not been without its difficulties and sadness, Charlie and Rebekah are, obviously, hoping for a very happy ending to almost five years of trying to conceive themselves,” Wilson adds. The surrogate mother does not want her identity to be disclosed.
“Both parents are acutely aware of the infertility problems encountered by many other couples,” he says. “In the longer term, they hope to recognise their good fortune by working in some way to help other couples facing similar challenges.”

Leveson inquiry: Lawyer tells of Dowler family's false hope

David Sherborne told the inquiry how a private moment for Milly Dowler's parents became ''a photo opportunity''

A lawyer has told an inquiry into media ethics of the "euphoria" Milly Dowler's mother felt when she found messages deleted on her daughter's phone.

David Sherborne said interception of the murdered schoolgirl's messages by a tabloid investigator was "despicable".
Mr Sherborne represents 51 alleged victims of press intrusion and has been addressing Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media practices in London.
The inquiry earlier heard from the editor of the Guardian newspaper.
Mr Sherborne said Sally Dowler would tell the inquiry in her own words of the "euphoria" she felt when she logged into her daughter Milly's phone and found messages deleted.
'Self-serving agenda' He described how the News of the World (NoW) tailed the Dowlers when they went to reconstruct their daughter's last journey.
"Mile of grief" was one of several headlines above articles that intruded on the family's anguish and privacy, he said.

It's the details which will linger in the mind. When Max Mosley, the former motorsports boss, was burying his son who'd died of an overdose, a reporter tried to pass himself off as a rambler in order to attend the funeral and take photographs.
This was just one of the examples given by the "victims'" barrister David Sherborne as he sought to portray the tabloids as indulging in a "tawdry journalistic trade". He made it clear he didn't just have the NoW in his sights.
The popular press, a powerful body according to the lawyer, bribed, intruded and hounded people purely because it sells newspapers.
This will be a consistent theme next week when 21 people - not all of whom are household names - give evidence about how they have suffered at the hands of British newspapers.

"What kind of ethics can you teach journalists who hacked into the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl? If the relationship between the public and press is to recover, it must happen now," he added.

Mr Sherborne said the experience of his clients was "primarily and largely" at the tabloid or popular end of the press but "it is the whole of the press that stands in the dock".
The lawyer said the media had tried to influence politicians and persuade them that less regulation would make journalism better.
He said the press had a "self-serving agenda" and accused it of buying, stealing and making up stories.
"The press have a very powerful voice and should not be able to drown out the voice of the victims," he warned.
"A number of individuals have already been vilified for agreeing to share their experiences with this inquiry."
Mr Sherborne said police had pointed to over 2,000 tasks relating to the NoW in notebooks belonging to Glenn Mulcaire - the private investigator jailed in 2007 for illegally accessing the voicemails of royal aides for the tabloid.
He said this suggested that over the four years the notebooks covered, each edition of the tabloid could have had around 10 stories a day based on phone hacking "even leaving aside the other dark arts practiced by the newspaper".
'Tangled web' The inquiry had previously heard that Mulcaire's notebooks suggested at least 28 NoW journalists commissioned the investigator to hack phones.

But Neil Garnham QC, representing Scotland Yard, challenged the claim on Wednesday, saying police could not confirm all 28 named in Mulcaire's notes were employed by the Sunday tabloid.

Mr Sherborne said the newspaper's stories were built on "manifestly unholy and indefensible ground" and the number of stories "must surely raise questions about who knew what and what level".
The "tangled web" that had subsequently been spun, he said, had "revealed at the very least that someone somewhere is not telling the truth".
Hacking victims were not always well-known people, he said, but were sometimes just involved with or friends of those in the public eye.
He alleged the NoW had also targeted other journalists "albeit broadsheet ones". "The press are even prepared to turn on their own."
The lawyer likened self-regulation by the Press Complaints Commission to "handing the police station over to the mafia" and said it was time for "real change".
He also told the hearing:

• Sara Payne, mother of murdered girl Sarah, was told her phone - given to her by the NoW - was probably hacked by Mulcaire, a "sickening postscript, perhaps a new low" for the paper
• The Nazi-themed NoW story about ex-Formula One boss Max Mosley attending an orgy was "a preconceived story for which they needed the facts to fit". NoW reporter Neville Thurlbeck instructed one woman at the party how best to capture Mr Mosley in a "Sieg Heil" salute - which never happened
• The NoW story of singer Charlotte Church's father having an affair came from phone hacking and almost led to her mother's suicide. The paper also revealed Charlotte was pregnant before she had told her parents
• Footballer Paul Gascoigne's wife Sheryl was portrayed as a calculating wife after their divorce
• The private diary of Kate McCann - mother of missing girl Madeleine - was published by the NoW when her husband had not even seen it. The treatment of the McCanns was a "national scandal"
• Christopher Jefferies, the Bristol landlord of murdered architect Joanna Yates, was accused by various tabloids of being her killer using a "frightening combination of slur, innuendo and dirt-digging" all of which was "nonsense"
• Presenter Anne Diamond was continually hounded by The Sun and NoW
• JK Rowling's children were harassed despite "great lengths" by the author to attempt to keep a private life
• An emergency injunction was granted last week to prevent the harassment of the mother of actor Hugh Grant's child

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger asks why it took so long for the hacking allegations to be taken seriously

Earlier, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told the inquiry it was important it looked at the 18 months after News International's "so-called rotten apple excuse" had exploded.
Mr Rusbridger referred to "dogs that didn't bark", asking why it took four inquiries before phone-hacking allegations were taken seriously.
He said the events leading up to Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry had been "shocking and immensely damaging".
Lord Justice Leveson told the hearing he was "starting to get to grip with solutions that work for everybody".
He said he would like to see some sort of mediation system that ran in parallel to the courts.
Prime Minister David Cameron established Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry after revelations that the voicemail of Milly Dowler may have been hacked by the NoW while the schoolgirl was missing.
After the conclusion of the police investigation into NoW phone hacking, and any resultant prosecutions, a second phase of the inquiry will examine the extent of unlawful conduct by the press, and the police's initial hacking investigation.
The inquiry later finished for the week and will resume on Monday.