Like all skiving media berks, we’ve been watching the Leveson inquiry all afternoon while simultaneously wondering whether it was ‘inquiry’ or ‘enquiry’ because we can never remember.
What’s this inquiry? Well, it’s about phone hacking and actual celebrity Steve Coogan was the star of this afternoon’s session.
In the session, he revealed some of the tactics used by news rooms to get stories on him, which of course, shocked us to our core until we remembered that we in turn, steal the stories of the tabloids and republish them here with crass jokes crowbarred in.
Anyway, we watched the footage from the inquiry and felt very illicit indeed. See, watching celebrities talk nakedly about their private lives is the broadsheet equivalent of seeing leaked nude photographs.
It’s the same titillation gland that gets tickled.
So what did Coogan say, for the benefit of those who can’t arse around all afternoon watching grainy webstreams of government doo-dah? Well, he told the inquiry that reporters have been through his rubbish bins while looking for “lurid” details of his private life.
And of course, the Alan Partridge creator had to dredge up the story that ran about him concerning Owen Wilson. Remember that? The papers pointed at Coogan and said that Wilson tried to commit suicide because of Coogan.
Coogan noted about the whole mucky business that some people entered a “Faustian pact” with the press but he had never sought fame and was actually a private person. He noted that the press themselves were akin to the “mafia”, as there’s no emotion in these actions as it’s all “just business”.
Naturally, you wind the papers up and there’ll be a comeback. Hugh Grant, inside the hearing, accused the Mail on Sunday of hacking his phone, so they retaliated by accusing the actor of “mendacious smears”. We strongly suspect that there’ll be mention of Divine Brown in the Mail at some point this week.
He stated:
“The reason other – for want of a better word ‘celebrities’ – don’t want to, is that they say they don’t have the stomach for it and fear what will happen.”
Lord Justice Leveson notes this line of thinking by saying witnesses might be put off raising their head above the parapet and criticising the way reporters behave, because it’s likely they’ll be attacked in print once they leave the witness box.
So why hasn’t Coogan done anything about it yet? Well, looking at the toothless PCC (Press Complaint Commission), he said:
“The main reason I didn’t do anything is because on balance, what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts, if you complain you push the story forward and keep it up there in the newspapers.”
Wait. This is a bit serious isn’t it? BALLBAGS. SPUNK-O-WIG-POM. That better?