The Sun  “Newspaper”, best-selling of Britain’s shameful Shag-rags, has been advised by ex-SAS ghosted “novelist” Steve Mitchel (aka Andy McNab) that waterboarding is an efficient way of extracting the facts from reluctant informants.

In July last year, I suggested this treament for the former editor of the Sun’s  sister paper, the Screws’, Andy “Notso” Coulson after he failed comprehensively to tell the truth to the Commons Culture Select Committee.

Under the heading “A Case for Waterboarding?“, I blogged……..

The MPs on the Culture, Media, Sport Committee must have been asking themselves yesterday, what on earth a reasonable person could do when confronted with three hardened, well-rehearsed liars, all desperate to avoid having their collars felt?

Experienced interpreters of body-language can enjoy a revealing session by tuning into the video-archive of yesterday’s oral evidence in front of the CMS Committee in Portcullis House.

Andy Coulson – bullish, assertive, knowing his best defence is attack, with a dash of cheeky chappy charm.

Tom Crone – for once not so sure of his ground, nervously cutting in a little too quickly when little Colin Myler gets it wrong, with a giveaway sheen of sweat on the strong, ruddy features.

Stuart Kuttner – eau de nil, haunted, shaking like an aspen, fiddling, fiddling, picking up his water, putting it down undrunk, rearranging files and pens, moving his large spectacles from side to side – meaning, for those who speak body language, that he is shitting himself; that after an ignominious dismissal by … who? Which Mr Murdoch? … his long, wicked career at the Screws is well and truly on the skids.

Little Colin Myler doesn’t need to lie. He wasn’t there when events at the centre of this enquiry took place. [When he’d arrived, he did arrange a few training sessions in act-cleaning-up for his newsroom hacks. But did Mazhher Mahmood and Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck attend? From the continuing and relentless shoddiness of their output, it seems they were excused – or just weren’t paying attention.]   

When Crone, legal boss of News Group is asked about the terms of a pay-off to Glenn Mulcaire, a former investigations contractor who has been imprisoned for carrying out tasks from which his company profited, and he claims he doesn’t know what those terms were (although he’s very sure that Mulcaire did not sign any non-disclosure agreement), you have to conclude either that he is suffering from severe amnesia and should instantly be relieved of his post, or that he is not telling the truth.

He directed the MPs to ask Stuart Kuttner.

When Kuttner told the MPs, confirming that an arrangement had been made with Glenn Mulciare, he too was utterly unfamiliar with the terms, conditions and size of the pay-off, and that he didn’t know who in an organisation of which he has been Managing Editor for 22 years was responsible for making such arrangements, you have to conclude that he has become insane – for imagining that any rational person would believe him.

When Andy Coulson tells his questioners that he has no recollection whatever of a story, flagged on the front page of an issue of the paper that he’d edited, occupying the whole of Page 7, depicting a verbatim transcript of a message left by one prince on another prince’s voicemail, knowing that not a single person in the Wilson Room in Portcullis House, or viewing the session on Parliament TV, or in the evening news broadcasts would believe him, you a have to conclude that here is a youngish man who sees his whole future in jeopardy if he breaks and admits to a scintilla of knowledge of the phone-hacking that was involved in acquiring the story.

It was very clear that before the three men came in to answer the awkward questions that would be put to them, they had agreed between themselves that they would simply declare either that they didn’t know the answers or that they couldn’t remember the events

Popularity: 2% [?]

In what looks like a pretty odd pairing, old-Etonian, ex-racehorse trainer, lothario and aspiring scribbler Charlie Brooks has stepped into the shoes of alleged tough-guy actor Ross Kemp to become the second Mr Rebekah Wade. I hope for his sake he’s got himself a head protector; Ms Wade once laid into Kemp so vigorously that he had to call the police, who came and took her away and banged her up for the rest of the morning, while she missed a meeting with her boss, Rumple-Chops Murdoch.

The old boy forgave her though, and she is strongly tipped to move up to the top shelf at News International UK, although she has promised him she will stay on as editor of leading Shag-Rag, the Sun until after the general election. Maybe, if the Boy Dave gets in, he will, as I have previously predicted, feel he must ditch his tainted chief spinner, Andy Coulson, who will then be free to come back to Wapping and take over Rebekah’s chair. But will he be able to give up some of the nasty habits he learned from Stuart Kuttner while editing the News of the Screws?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Last week, at the London College of Communications, Sun editor, Rebekah Wade delivered the annual Hugh Cuddlip lecture to students of journalism.

In the old days, one of the first things they taught young hacks on the Chuffing Sodbury Argus was to make sure they always spelled the punters’ names right. Not, it seems, any more at the London College of Communications, the country’s premier hack school, who announced their up-coming lecturer as “Rebecca” Wade. I wonder if she was cross. You don’t go round spelling your name “Rebekah” unless you really care.

That, however, is not the point. More interesting perhaps are the criteria by which speakers are chosen to deliver this important lecture (past deliverers: Alastair Campbell, Paul Dacre, Andrew Marr and Michael Grade.) What, you might ask, could the editor of one of the most dishonest, self-serving and prurient of British tabloids have to tell any aspiring journalist that might enhance their future career, other than the clear knowledge that, if all else fails, you can always sell your soul?

Popularity: 2% [?]

With a characteristic flourish of hyperbole, twisted logic and demi-truth the Sun proclaims that

“Yesterday was a dark day for British freedom.”

Their sister ShagRag, the News of the World has just been ordered to pay £60,000 in damages and £200,000 in costs to Max Mosley. That was a lot more than their legal boss, Tom Crone had bargained for and everyone in Wapping is feeling jumpy.

They say: “A judge representing power and privilege laid down the law on what newspapers can write about powerful and privileged public figures.”

In fact a judge interpreting the law ruled that to promise to pay a woman £25,000 to film events in a private dwelling in which a number of consenting and willing adults were engaged in unconventional sex constituted a clear breach of privacy, and awarded accordingly.

Popularity: 1% [?]