Former Murdoch hack gets the Grant-Prescott one-two

As well as carrying a revealing interview with Nick Clegg – which Left Foot Forward reported on yesterday – the latest New Statesman, out today, features an extraordinary Excluuuusive! in which Hugh Grant secretly tapes a conversation with grubby ex-News of the World phone-hacker hack Paul McMullan.

Grant writes:

“When I broke down in my midlife crisis car in remotest Kent just before Christmas, a battered white van pulled up on the far carriageway. To help, I thought. But when the driver got out he started taking pictures with a long-lens camera. He came closer to get better shots and I swore at him. Then he offered me a lift the last few miles to my destination…

“He turned out to be an ex-News of the World investigative journalist and paparazzo, now running a pub in Dover. He still kept his camera in the car’s glove box for just this kind of happy accident.

“More than that, he was Paul McMullan, one of two ex-NoW hacks who had blown the whistle (in the Guardian and on Channel 4′s Dispatches) on the full extent of phone-hacking at the paper, particularly under its former editor Andy Coulson.

“I wanted to hear more about phone-hacking and the whole business of tabloid journalism. It occurred to me just to interview him straight, as he has, after all, been a whistleblower. But then I thought I might possibly get more, and it might be more fun, if I secretly taped him, The bugger bugged, as it were…”

Even better than the Grant scoop, however, was last night’s ding dong on the excellent 10 O’Clock Live, in which former deputy prime minister and victim of phone hacking John Prescott tore strips off McMullan.

If you missed it, watch it in full:

De. Li. Cious!