Why does Hugh Grant keep popping up on Sky News?You're watching the Leveson Inquiry, a public British-government inquiry established to examine claims relating to the News International phone-hacking scandal, as well as press ethics, media misconduct and the relationship between press, politicians and police.
And what's Grant got to do with it?The actor turned the tables on the tabloids when he secretly recorded former News of the Worldjournalist Paul McMullan talking about phone hacking. Since then he has become the face of celebs fighting back.
So who else is up?The author JK Rowling, the actor Sienna Miller, the former racing boss Max Mosley and Sheryl Gascoigne, former wife of the footballer Paul Gascoigne, to name a few. It's not just celebrities who are speaking to the inquiry. Bob and Sally Dowler, the parents of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, who were given false hope that she was still alive when her voicemail was accessed by a tabloid reporter, pitched in this week. Kate McCann, the mother of the missing child Madeleine McCann, also said she felt "totally violated" after the News of the Worldpublished her private diaries. She and her husband, Gerry, won a libel case against Express Newspapers three years ago.
It’s even less acceptable when children are involved JK Rowling told the inquiry that a journalist had put a letter in her daughter’s school bag. “It is very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter’s school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists,” the author said.
So it's not just about phone hacking, then?The inquiry was sparked by that but goes beyond it. While Miller spoke about how she accused her family and friends of selling stories to the media, unaware that her personal information was being acquired through phone hacking, she also spoke about the intimidation and harassment she experienced from British tabloid paparazzi. "As a 21-year-old, I was followed down a dark street by 10 to 15 men with cameras," she said. "Because they had cameras, it was all apparently legal, but take away the cameras and all you have is a group of men following a woman." Miller has already received a £100,000 settlement and an apology from the News of the World.
Remind me why Alan Partridge was thereYou mean Steve Coogan. He seems to have a never-ending amount of gripes with journalists, including the old classic of them rifling through his bins. He described one "sting" by the gossip columnist Rav Singh as "a dispassionate sociopathic act by those who operate in an amoral universe where they are never accountable".
And what about Gazza's ex?Sheryl Gascoigne spoke about having to crawl around her house on her hands and knees below the windows in order to stop the paparazzi taking photos of her in the 1990s.
Yikes! Who's still to come?Paul Gascoigne, Ulrika Jonsson, Calum Best, Abi Titmuss, Kieren Fallon, Charlotte Church and more have been given "core participant" status by Lord Justice Leveson, who is leading the inquiry, the common thread being that they all believe they may have been victims of intrusion by the media.
