Over the last 30 years the BBC has stealthily assumed the mantle of the nation’s cultural and social anthropological arbiter. This has encouraged them to foist on their listeners and viewers certain performers – mostly in the non-talent-related field of presenting – of minority types to which they feel we should become accustomed and appreciate. A recent example of this activity is the adoption and promotion of the untalented, blubber-lipped, dim-witted, mono-toned, unfunny, unattractive fatso, Adrian Chiles.
Slowly, inexorably as the style wizards at the BEEB have let it be seen that Chubby Chiles represents a suitable role model for our young and impressionable, his flabby frame has been increasingly exposed – until they have given him an early prime time slot on the One Show, a kind of Blue Peter for almost-grown-ups, to which a well-groomed orang-utan could not fail to draw knackered and desensitized viewers after a hard day’s work.
But someone up there in White (Ivory Tower) City has at last spotted that Chiles is about as exciting a performer as a plate of blancmange, and they’ve thought it expedient to replace him on the all-important Friday show with the idiotic but immeasurably more watchable Chris Evans (despite the Ginger One not speaking Brummie, Ulster or Geordie.)
Chiles’ blubbery lower lip is reported to have gone all wobbly at the news. He says he doesn’t want to do the other days if Evans does Friday sitting next to the perma-grinning Christine Bleakley. The BBC are said even to have offered him his own Friday night Plug-Whinge-And-Fart Show – what they like to call a Chat Show.
Incredibly, Chubby Chiles is on a £1m a year contract. It is contemptible that the Corporation should chuck our money around to people like this without even asking us. I challenge them to provide any evidence that there is a demand for Chiles, or others like him – e.g: the grim Mogadon that is Stephen Nolan, brought over from Belfast at great expense every week to turn off the listeners of otherwise perky Radio 5 Live for four hours over the weekend.
If Chiles walks from the One Show – which he is mercifully threatening to do – don’t be surprised if they try and slip Nolan in – another dreary fatty with no manners and a bowl of French fries on each shoulder.
And this is not the first time I’ve had to talk about this…

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The House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee today publish the long-awaited report on their Inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy & Libel. It pulls no punches in its view of the evidence given by Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner and Tom Crone, respectively editor, managing editor and legal boss of the News of the World at the time of the royal phone-hacking scandal.
       “Throughout our inquiry … we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World,” the report states, and later…..
“We have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.”
Nevertheless, they say, “We have seen no evidence that Andy Coulson knew that phone hacking was taking place.”
Further on, they refer to a story they published containing a verbatim transcript of a voicemail from Prince William to Prince Harry with an “exclusive” front page strap on an issue edited by Coulson. The story could only have been obtained by illegal phone-hacking. When Coulson was questioned closely on this by committee members Adam Price and Paul Farrelly, he claimed, incredibly, that he had any knowledge or recollection of the story. His denial, with a copy of the 0ffending paper in front of him, was broadcast that evening on Channel 4 News. It was clkear to the millions watching that he was not telling the truth.
I asked committee chairman, John Whittingdale at yesterday’s briefing if he had believed Coulson.
Whittingdale could only say that they’d had to “accept at face value Andy Coulson’s assurances that he had no recollection of the major royal story in his paper.

It has also emerged, the report goes on, that substantial, gratuitous pay-outs were made to private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, and royal reporter, Clive Goodman in order to ensure their silence.
Since publication of the report this morning there have been calls for a Judicial Inquiry by Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw and Lib Dem spokesman, Chris Huhne.

Beyond this most politically charged aspect of their report, John Whittingdale and his committee have come to several well-considered and, if adopted, useful conclusions.
       Unless the Press Complaints Commission is extensively overhauled and reconstituted, the report says, it cannot deliver satisfactory regulation of the press. They recommend that the lay (non-journalist) membership of the commission be increased from 10 out of 17 to a two-thirds majority and that its powers be enhanced, to give it effective teeth, although they stop short of advising a statutorily created body. They feel that this shouldn’t be necessary if all the participants are willing.

The PCC should also be more proactive when they see abuses of the Editors’ Code, and not wait for someone to lodge a complaint. They should ensure that all relevant bodies that liaise with potentially injured parties are fully aware of the services the PCC can offer. Victims like the McCanns and the families of the Bridgend teenage suicides should have been referred to the Commission right from the start.

All the national press should participate in the funding of the PCC and their journalists should be mandatorily contracted to adhere to the PCC Code.

The PCC should also have power to ensure that any apologies or corrections appearing subsequent to offending stories should have a prominence equal to the original story. In addition, the Commission should be able to impose financial penalties and, in extremis, the power to order suspension of the printing of a publication for one issue. The committee recommends that PCC be renamed the Press Complaints and Standards Commission, to underline this broader remit.

Under the heading of Press Standards, there are recommendations that the PCC adjudicate over misleading headlines that don’t reflect the content of the piece below them. Public comments on papers’ blog-sites should be more rigidly moderated, and offending text removed as soon as it comes to light.

The use of injunctions and parliamentary reporting was also scrutinised by the Committee, especially as experienced last year in the Trafigura case and more recently in the John Terry case.

They had taken evidence last summer from Max Mosley who explained that as a result of his own experiences he had approached the European Court in Strasbourg in an attempt to establish in England the right of the potential target of a damaging story to have it injuncted until such time as the paper can demonstrate a genuine public interest, on the grounds that a retrospective judgement against a publication will not put the cat back in the bag, after the damage has been done.

The CMS Committee, however, conclude that it would be more appropriate to “encourage editors and journalists to notify in advance the subject of a critical story or report by permitting courts to take account of a failure to notify when assessing damages in any subsequent proceedings for breach of Article 8.” (the right to privacy). Meanwhile, however, the cat is still out of the bag.

John Whittingdale and his Committee have, on balance, produced a thorough and wide-ranging report and have pitched their recommendations within the realms of the practicable, although what legislation will follow a general election, with one of their principal and most elusive witnesses sitting in Downing Street, is another matter.

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Tomorrow, Thursday 18th, Max Clifford’s lawyers were due in the High Court to request disclosure by the Metropolitan Police of all documents seized by them as they raided the offices of Screws’ investigator, Glenn Mulcaire when they arrested him in Aug 2006.
BUT, the hearing is not now listed.
Nor has the paper complied with an order in the High Court to disclose (by earlier this week) the terms of their agreement with Gordon Taylor when  they gave him £700k+ after he pursued them for invasion of privacy by hacking his phones (although they still deny anyone in the paper knew). Nor has co-defendant, Glenn Mulcaire, as ordered by the court, disclosed the names of the paper’s management who ordered him to hack into Clifford’s voicemail (for which he has already been convicted.)
Could it be that the Screws would rather sign a very large cheque then reveal precisely who in the paper knew about the extensive phone hacking that’s come to light? After all….. how much can it be worth to avoid the risk of former editors going to jail for conspiring to offend under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000)?
And they’d have to pay Max Clifford a great deal more than the Court would award to make him drop a claim which he’s looking forward to pursuing.

Just as alarming is the demeanour of the Met, who seem determined not to assist anyone in establishing the truth, including the Commons CMS Committee. To say that Asst. Commissioner John Yates was economical with the truth when being questioned by the committee, would be to put it politely.
AND NOW… after all the rubbish press – the ShagRags and Arse-Wipers  – have said they were cleaning up their act in the wake of the Screws’ blatant misbehaviour, someone’s been at it again. A Certain Footballer’s former lover has been told officially within the last fortnight that her voicemail and that of sympathetic friends have been accessed …….

WAS IT THE SCREWS, AGAIN?
Watch out for stories this Sunday with signs of phone hacking (as well as the usual hackery).
I hope to reveal more soon……..

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Max Clifford’s legal team, barrister Jeremy Reed, and solicitor Charlotte Harris (bright and sexy in six inch heels) on Wednesday gave the News of the World a good trouncing in the first skirmish of a High Court battle over the paper’s (one is supposed to say “alleged”) raid on the formidable publicist’s voicemail. This represents another step closer to the truth, which the paper has been desperately trying to hide, about the way their journalists have been systemically, and with the full knowledge of management, breaking the law to discover personal details of celebrities and thereby create invasive, damaging stories about them which are of no public interest. Significantly, so far, only the Guardian has chosen to report this result.
Clifford’s lawyers had asked for and were granted by Mr Justice Vos three specific orders for disclosure – despite the Screws’ peevish objections.
       First, they required Glenn Mulcaire, the investigator responsible for accessing Clifford’s voicemails, to disclose which individual or individuals (editor at the time: slippery spinner, Andy Coulson) asked/ suggested/ ordered him to perform this illegal act, which was included in his conviciton after he pleaded guilty 3 years ago to hacking into the Royal Household phones.
       Mulcaire, second defendant, has also already admitted Max Clifford’s claim, but, as his counsel explained, the father of five children under 16 is out of work (having made known his intention not to return to the snooping game) and living on job-seekers’ allowance. Even taking that with a hefty helping of sodium chloride, the judge might well have asked who was paying his legal bills, and how he would pay any damages awarded against him. But then, it’s not inconceivable that the paper is picking up these tabs – especially if it was they who got him into trouble in the first place by pressurising him to do what he did. If this is so, though, it would undoubtedly make some people think that the way he frames his responses might be influenced by News Group’s support. The paper’s bosses would probably like him to say that he was on a fishing expedition on his own account, and luckily stumbled across messages left by (and the mobile nos. of) several of Mr C’s hapless, high profile clients, and passed them to the lucky hacks without saying where or how he found them.
       He’s also been asked to reveal to whom he passed the contents of any voicemails acquired by him from this source, and to name anyone whom he might have instructed on how to access the voicemails themselves. The judge accepted the absolute necessity of this, and ordered that this information be made available to the claimants within 14 days.

Clifford’s counsel also requested that the News of the World release details of the secret settlement they reached out of court with Professional Footballers’ Association boss, Gordon Taylor for invading his privacy by accessing his voicemails (to which Mulcaire had also pleaded guilty).  And the court was treated to the strange sight of Taylors’ brief, Manual Barker standing alongside counsel for the Screws, who only last year had to pay Taylor £700k+ for their crimes. Now both parties were intent – for their differing reasons – on not letting the public see what they had agreed. The judge sensibly granted that while private details of Gordon Taylor’s messages which the paper had illegally acquired should remain secret, the terms and conditions and, significantly – the sums paid by the paper in recompense should be released to the claimant’s lawyers under strict terms of confidentiality.
Thirdly he ordered that the Information Commissioner’s Office should be allowed to release (which they have asserted they are happy to do) all data, files and documents accumulated during their investigation into illicit information  gathering which resulted in the 2006 report, What Price Privacy, specifically those relating to News of the World journalists. The Screws claimed this was irrelevant, because it contained no information on phone hacking; Clifford’s lawyers said it would help to establish that there was an endemic culture of illegal information gathering at the newspaper, and how phone hacking was a natural extension of the activities in which they’d been engaged for years.
 
Next time….
Clifford asks the Metropolitan Police to release the stack of documents they took from Mulcaire’s office when they arrested him in August 2006.

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