Hugh Grant knør slask

Hugh Grant skrev et innlegg i New Statesman for to dager siden. Like før jul fikk han bilstans og tok nølende mot hjelp fra en ex-kjendisjournalist, nå pub-eier. Hugh ble med i ex-journalistens bil for å skaffe seg hjelp og de kom i snakk om journalister som hacker seg inn på mobiltelefoner, blant annet Hugh Grants. Hugh stilte spørsmål.

Da kjæresten til Hugh Grant senere ble gjesteredaktør for en engelsk avis bestemt han seg for å knø slasken skikkelig.

He also had an unusual defence of the practice: that phone-hacking was a price you had to pay for living in a free society.

I asked how that worked exactly, but we ran out of time, and next thing we had arrived and he was asking me if I would pose for a photo with him, "not for publication, just for the wall of the pub".

I agreed and the picture duly appeared in the Mail on Sunday that weekend with his creative version of the encounter. He had asked me to drop into his pub some time. So when, some months later, Jemima asked me to write a piece for this paper, it occurred to me it might be interesting to take him up on his invitation.

I wanted to hear more about phone-hacking and the whole business of tabloid journalism. It occurred to me just to interview him straight, as he has, after all, been a whistleblower.

But then I thought I might possibly get more, and it might be more fun, if I secretly taped him, The bugger bugged, as it were.

Me: I'd rather no one listened in, to be honest. And I might not be alone there. You probably wouldn't want people listening to your conversations.

Him: I'm not interesting enough for anyone to want to listen in.

Me: Ah . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].

Him: Yeah. Yeah. It's more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah - friends and family is something that's not as easy to justify as the other things.

Me: But celebrities you would justify because they're rich?

Him: Yeah. I mean, if you don't like it, you've just got to get off the stage. It'll do wonders.

Me: So I should have given up acting?

Him: If you live off your image, you can't really complain about someone.

Me: I live off my acting. Which is different to living off your image.

Him: Yeah, but you're still presenting yourself to the public. And if the public didn't know you..

Me: They don't give a shit. I got arrested with a hooker and they still came to my films. They don't give a fuck about your public image. They just care about whether you're in an entertaining film or not.

Det er adskillig mer å lese, du kan gjøre det her.

Those are the highlights. As I drove home past the white cliffs, I thought it was interesting - apart from the fact that Paul hates people like me, and I hate people like him, we got on quite well. And, absurdly, I felt a bit guilty for recording him.

And he does have a very nice pub. The Castle Inn, Dover, for the record. There are rooms available, too. He asked me if I'd like to sample the honeymoon suite some time: "I can guarantee your privacy."

Litt googling viser oss pubeieren selv og hans bartendere: "The girls want to make a bit of extra cash by taking off their pants for a tenner and who can blame them?"