Channel 4 claims to have obtained exclusive footage dating back to 2003 of the then editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, discussing phone hacking with singer Charlotte Church. 

The footage will feature in tonight’s C4 ob doc Hugh Grant: Taking on the Tabloids, produced by Roger Graef’s Films of Record, which follows the campaigning of the actor Hugh Grant and the ‘Hacked Off’ campaign in the run up to the publication of Lord Leveson’s report on press regulation.

The broadcaster claims that the footage has never been seen before. In it Morgan tells Church about the lax security of mobile phones and says that celebrities ought to have PIN numbers to stop their phones being hacked.

He says: “Right, now all you have to do - and I know it’s hard because celebrities don’t like doing anything for themselves - is actually change your security number.”

In the programme Grant explains how the team got hold of the footage: “We were chatting to Charlotte Church and she suddenly remembered that she had interviewed Piers Morgan for a speech she was making - and it was videoed and in it he talked about phone hacking. So she has lent us the DVD and this it.”

Conservative MP Alun Cairns has already written to the C4’s chief executive David Abraham, questioning whether a programme presented by Grant about press standards “will ever comply with Ofcom’s rules about impartiality”.

However C4 and Films of Record have said that they making an “extremely balanced programme”.

Topics