Piers Morgan: 'I've never hacked a phone, I've never told anyone to hack a phone' - BBC News

Good to see you. How are you? Very good. Better known now for being a judge on talent shows or walking off set on breakfast TV, Piers Morgan was for many years a campaigning and influential tabloid newspaper editor. Those years are back in the spotlight this week as Prince Harry and other claimants bring allegations of phone hacking to the High Court. Have you ever hacked a phone? No. Did phone hacking ever take place during your edit ship of the mirror? Not that I'm aware of. Because what you're not saying there is there is no phone hacking at the mirror? Well, I want to be clear.

Originally I said I've never hacked a phone, I've never told anyone to hack a phone and no story's ever been published in the mirror in my time from hacking the phone. And then somebody pointed out, well, you can only know the first two things for sure. Yeah. All I can talk to is what I know about my own involvement. I never hacked a phone, I wouldn't even know how. Let's just take some facts for some people that don't know the detail and haven't been over this. There have been dozens of civil hacking cases against the mirror group and we know at least five who have been awarded damages for phone hacking by the mirror during the period when you were editor.

That's Gazza, Sadie Frost, Shane Ritchie, Luke Taggart and the TV producer Robert Ashworth. Now, those are the ones we know about because they came out in court. But most cases so far against mirror group newspapers have been settled. When you say mirror group newspapers, I only. Or Trinity. I only work for the Daily Mirror. Sure.

Let's be clear, I only worked for the Daily Mirror. I never had any responsibility for the Sunday Mirror or Sunday People or any other titles. No responsibility at all. In 2015, the Trinity Mirror group apologised for historic phone hacking and said such behaviour represented an unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into people's lives. You must see. I hear what you're saying. I agree with that, by the way.

Sure. I think phone hacking is completely wrong and shouldn't have been happening and it was lazy journalists being lazy. But there's evidence that it happened while you were editor. There's no evidence I knew anything about any of it. I never told anybody to hack a phone. And nobody on the Daily Mirror of the hundreds and hundreds, thousands possibly of journalists who work with me on the Daily Mirror have ever even been arrested in connection with phone hacking. So there are lots of civil things going on.

But as you know, the bar for that is a lot lower than it is for any criminal action. Yes, we can keep going over and over and over this. But the police, you know, were pretty thorough in their investigation. What I would say is I have not been involved in any of these settlements at all. Nobody has even asked me for my opinion, which I think says it all. But does it stretch credulity for an editor as hands-on, as energetic, as intricately involved in the papers you were to say this stuff was going on but I didn't know about it? I didn't. So I don't care whether it stretches people's credulity or not.

But I can be certain about what I knew and what I did and no one has ever produced anything to contradict what I'm saying. Prince Harry, he's taking legal action against several tabloid newspaper groups. His legal actions include legal actions which concern claims about your record at the Mirror. Are you worried? No, not at all. Most people, peers, would find that quite concerning. I couldn't give a monkey's cuss. You couldn't give a monkey's cuss about the fact that he might be.

Why don't you walk around and ask 100 members of the public? Do you think. Do you have any sympathy for Prince Harry when it comes to privacy now? Zero. This guy, he's got no time for his family. He comes all the way 5,000 miles, this eco-warrior, to come and lecture the media once again about invasion of privacy and intrusion. And yet he is the biggest invader of privacy in royal history. So no, I'm not going to take any lectures from him and I don't give a damn what actions he wants to take. Good luck to you.

But honestly, it's like being lectured on the truth by Donald Trump.

bbc, bbc news, news, world news, breaking news, us news, world