Is Rupert Murdoch really any dirtier than anyone else in the British media?

The whole News International scandal has spiralled into some ridiculously insane combination of conspiracy theory and witch hunt. It has become an excuse for drooling Ed Miliband – the man with the mesmerising mouth – to get more TV airtime and to leer at the camera in an increasingly unappealing way. I seem to remember it was the Labour not the current Conservative government sucking up to Rupert Murdoch’s empire 2005-2010

I have no love for the Metropolitan Police who have been deeply corrupt since way before the Richardson Gang were ever rumoured to have a Met Assistant Commissioner in their back pocket.

But, yesterday morning, I woke up to the sound of the Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson getting attacked by former London Mayor ‘Red Ken’ Livingston because it was reported in Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times that he (Stephenson) had received five weeks of free hospitality (worth £12,000) from Champneys health spa while recovering from the removal of a pre-cancerous tumour in his leg at a time when the News of the World’s now-arrested former Deputy Editor Neil Wallis was doing PR both for the Met and Champneys.

In fact, the boss of Champneys was a personal friend of Stephenson. Why the hell would he check who handled PR for Champneys?

Perhaps the Met Commissioner should not go around accepting £12,000 gifts – even if ‘accepting gifts’ is a long-established tradition of Met officers – but the swirling implications were that it was all somehow part of the phone hacking scandal.

Then I switched on the TV to find John Whittingdale, chairman of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Sport Committee which is due to question former News of the World editor Rebekah née Wade now Brooks tomorrow. He was being asked if he was going to resign as chairman of the committee because flame-haired Rebekah was a Facebook Friend of his.

Hellfire! If Facebook Friends count for anything, I could never review a comedy gig and would get arrested as an accessory after the fact in many a dubious minor crime.

The fragrant Rebekah had already been arrested.

And then, yesterday afternoon, Sir Paul Stephenson resigned!

We are now at a point where the UK’s largest-selling newspaper has been closed; the UK’s most powerful newspaper executive has been arrested; the UK’s most important police officer has resigned; and there is a smell of Witch Hunt in the air.

It feels like Westminster politicians – recently exposed by the press in the Parliamentary Expenses Scandal – are gleefully taking their revenge while Open Season lasts. And the media are playing dog-bites-dog in the Rupert Murdoch morality stakes.

But, as someone tweeted, in the recent Twitter flurry of Shakespearean Murdoch quotes – Let he who is without PIN hack the first phone…

What and where is the line you don’t cross in journalism and PR?

The News of the World clearly crossed it.

Erasing the voicemail messages of missing (later known to be murdered) 13 year-old Milly Dowler, collecting the telephone numbers of dead British soldiers’ families, 7/7 terrorist bombing victims and so on… perhaps, in the US, even trying to get the personal phone numbers of 9/11 victims. That is not acceptable.

But presumably most people would accept phone hacking, secretly recording and secretly filming is entirely acceptable to expose some people’s criminal acts: murderers, paedophiles and fraudsters, for example.

When it comes to celebrities, it is only slightly more iffy; but most people probably reckon invasion of privacy comes with being a celeb… and they enjoy reading the resultant titillation.

So where exactly does the line lie?

It is like PR in showbusiness and the media.

Where is the line?

In the early 1970s, there was a sex-for-airplay scandal revealed by the News of the World. Janie Jones was supplying prostitutes to BBC Radio 1 DJs on behalf of record labels wanting their artists’ records to be played on air.

On BBC TV’s Top of the Pops (which had varied producers over the years) it was often assumed ‘perks’ were required if you wanted your rising but not yet mega-famous group to appear on the make-or-break chart show.

Where is the line? A gift of a bottle of booze? Supplying cocaine (or ‘flowers’, as I think many record companies called it on their lists of expenses)? Prostitutes? Blackmail?

When BBC TV, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 or Sky buy a major blockbuster movie, the distributors tend to tell them they can only have it if they also buy a bundle of less-good movies as part of the deal. That feels like good marketing by the distributors, rather than blackmail or corruption.

It is equally common for agents, managers and PR people to tell TV producers that, if they want an ‘A’ list star on their show, then they will also have to have a lesser, up-and-coming ‘D’ list starlet on the show. I think most people would accept that as a strong negotiating stance.

There is the case of a famous, high-rating TV chat show where the producer asked a PR person for major star A as a guest on the show. It would have been a coup for the show. The PR said, “Well, if you want A on the show, it would be nice if you could also put X on the show.”

X was a struggling starlet.

The chat show producer said No – because she wasn’t really right for the show and it would, in a way, have lowered the show’s perceived standard in guests.

It was then implied conversationally that “we wouldn’t want the photographs to be made public, would we?”

Every week, that particular PR person turned up at recordings of the show with different lovely girls on his arm – sometimes three girls – a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. The TV producer was a bit of a philanderer; it was for him to choose whether he wanted the blonde, the brunette or the redhead. Or two of them. Or all three. After the show, they would all go back to a London flat where there were mirrors on the walls.

Yes, indeedy…

You and I can see as clear as crystal that there were cameras behind the mirrors. The producer was obviously more of a philanderer than a great thinker.

He thought the mirrors were just sexy.

It was reminiscent of British film star Diana Dors, who used to hold orgies at her house. On  one occasion the great British comedian Bob Monkhouse ended up in bed with some girl or other and heard a rustling behind a mirror. He discovered it was Diana Dors and her chums looking on: something they liked to do.

As did the PR in this case.

Whatever the reason, X the struggling starlet did appear on the high-rating TV chat show.

Had the PR person crossed the line? Or was it just strong negotiating?

If she scratches your back, you may have to scratch mine.

It is not a lone case.

There are even rumours of a British PR person who has photos on the walls of his private office of famous people caught in flagrante.

It shows he is powerful.

The rumours run that he also has naked photos of an ex-member of the Royal Family.

True? Or just a strong negotiating position?

Where is the line?

Is Rupert Murdoch really any dirtier than anyone else in the British media?

Why is taxpayers’ money being spent helping policemen become comics?

(This blog was also published in The Huffington Post)

We are in an economic recession. Even without that, life is tough enough for the aspiring stand-up comedian without policemen trying to muscle their way into the act.

Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner John Yates and former Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman were questioned by the House of Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee about the fact they had claimed there was nothing to investigate when News International papers were accused of phone hacking.

In 2009, John Yates carried out an ‘investigation’ into a previous 2006 phone hacking investigation. His ‘in-depth’ investigation lasted a whole eight hours (presumably including a lunch break) after which he decided there was nothing to investigate.

He had not bothered to examine several bin bags of incriminating paperwork seized from the home of private detective Glenn Mulcaire nor read the 11,000 pages of evidence held inside Scotland Yard which included the fact that both future Prime Minister Gordon Brown and future Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had been hacked.

His defence yesterday for what, on the face of it, was a breathtaking lack of investigation was that he could not investigate the allegations against News International properly because News International would not co-operate with him.

This is a bit like saying that the police could not investigate the Yorkshire Ripper killings because the Yorkshire Ripper would not send them information incriminating himself. If I ever commit a major bank robbery, I would want John Yates to be the investigating officer.

John Yates is Scotland Yard’s new head of counter-terrorism and Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson says that Yates “currently undertakes one of the most difficult jobs in UK policing and is doing an outstanding job leading our fight against terrorism.”

I don’t know if I am alone in finding that this – far from reassuring me – makes me feel even more uneasy and unsafe. Presumably he would have difficulty investigating a planned terrorist attack if al-Qaida did not co-operate with his investigations.

We value tradition in Britain. The Metropolitan Police appear to be continuing a long tradition of being staffed by would-be dodgy double-glazing salesmen. Though I have to be careful because I would not want to be sued for defamation by dodgy double-glazing salesmen who might object to being compared to the Met.

Andy Hayman – whom Commons committee member Lorraine Fullbrook called “a dodgy geezer” – was in charge of the original phone hacking enquiry at the Met.

While ‘investigating’ the accusations against News International papers of phone hacking, Hayman (who had wanted to be a journalist when he was younger) had dinners with News International executives (one wonders if he would have dinners with bank robbers while investigating alleged bank robberies) and, on retiring from the Met after reported ‘controversy about his expenses’, he was given work by News International – writing for The Times.

An article in today’s Independent describes the Hogarthian scene in the House of Commons’ committee room yesterday:

When Ms Fullbrook asked him (Andy Hayman) whether he’d ever taken money from a paper in return for information, he threw his arms into the air, as in a Feydeau farce: “I can’t believe you asked that!” And: “I can’t let you get away with that! Taking money?” He was gasping; speechless; eyes bulging. Julian Huppert had observed mildly: “Other policemen have.” Hayman cried something about his integrity and seemed on the point of scrabbling at his chest. The whole room was laughing – at, not with; scornful, down-the-rabbit-hole laughter at a figure who not long ago was defending 90 days of detention without charge. He was, in Keith Vaz’s words: “More Clouseau than Columbo.”

Last week, the London Evening Standard claimed that “Assistant Commissioners Andy Hayman and John Yates were both scared the News of the World would expose them for allegedly cheating on their wives if they asked difficult questions of the Sunday tabloid.”

Previously, Labour MP Tom Watson had used parliamentary privilege to say: “John Yates’s review of the (private detective Glenn) Mulcaire evidence was not an oversight. Like Andy Hayman, he chose not to act, he misled parliament.”

In a blog back in February, I mentioned that Margaret Thatcher’s solicitor – a partner in a major law firm – once told me he would never put a Metropolitan Police officer in the witness stand without corroborating evidence because you could never be certain a Met officer was telling the truth.

Likewise, the owner of a prominent detective agency who employs ex-SAS troopers etc, told me he never employs ex-policemen because you can never trust them.

I am not particularly outraged that the News of the World was hacking into people’s phones – they allegedly bugged both John Yates and Andy Hayman’s phones while the dynamic duo were allegedly investigating the News of the World for phone hacking – I am not even surprised that a policeman was flogging the Royal Family’s personal phone and contact details if he was paid enough – but I am outraged that the taxpayer appears to be footing the bill for policeman apparently attempting to build their performance skills for a future career in stand-up comedy should this ‘police job thing’ not work out.

Sucking up or sucking off? UK Prime Ministers, Rupert Murdoch and a puff

Look, I only plug people and things I believe in on this blog so, with that in mind, read on…

British Prime Ministers have been sucking Rupert Murdoch’s corporate cock since the 1960s. It’s nothing new. Nor is amorality.

Lance Price was a special advisor to Tony Blair. In 1998, he became deputy to Blair’s Communications Director, Alastair Campbell; and he was the Labour Party’s Director of Communications from 2000 until the General Election of 2001. Price says Blair was under Murdoch’s thumb from the beginning:

“I started working for Tony Blair a year after he became Prime Minister. I was shocked to be told by one of those who’d been closely involved with the talks in Australia, and subsequently, that: ‘We’ve promised News International we won’t make any changes to our Europe policy without talking to them’.”

But – hey! ho! – political pragmatism, like journalistic amorality, is good news for some…

My elfin comedian chum Laura Lexx is staging her first straight play Ink at the Edinburgh Fringe in three weeks time.

The play is actually about the London 7/7 terrorist bombings and the media intrusion into victims’ lives but, of course, the subject of where the journalistic tipping point lies between investigative illumination and amoral intrusion is timeless.

Laura’s press release (written months ago) says: When reporting the news is business, is there space for truth and a conscience?… Will we accept hack journalism as a necessary evil for swift information?

It could have been written last week about the phone hacking scandal and the closure of the News of the World. It is a subject, as the red-tops might themselves say, RIPPED FROM TODAY’S HEADLINES – but of eternal relevance.

The play’s billing reads: “Ordinary man blown up by terrorists – he made jam and had a son. Nothing special. The media made that clear as they conjured headlines from victims and sprinkled them between crosswords.”

My elfin chum Laura Lexx was both a Chortle and Paramount Student comedy finalist in her first six months of live stand-up performance; then she went on to reach the semi-finals of both the Laughing Horse and Funny Women competitions.

I saw Ink when it was a student production at the University of Kent.

It was impressive then.

With the number of actors in the cast cut back for financial reasons and the writing sharpened up even more, it will be interesting to see how it fares at the Edinburgh Fringe, given its accidentally up-to-the-minute relevance.

Now.. if only I could see some RIPPED FROM TODAY’S HEADLINES angle for my own two spaghetti-juggling events at the Fringe…

My head is spinning.