At the risk of having my site hacked I am going to write about Les Hinton, his wife Kath, their friend Sharon Marshall and my relationship with The News of The World.
After I made The Method with Elizabeth Hurley I was a boiling bag of resentment…not unlike I was after I received Jake’s vile email last August. I had been bullied, mistreated and maligned by Elizabeth and my only revenge was to sell my story to the highest bidder.
I had been on the front cover of the NOTW myself after I was found guilty of spending too much on my credit card and not paying the bill. I rather enjoyed the attention.
It is quite easy to sell ones story if the celebrity you are pissing on is famous enough.
My agent contacted all of the relevant tabloid British newspapers and we negotiated the best price with News Corp. I was offered The Daily Mail for the same price. I was assured that The Daily Mail was a more ‘classy’ decision but I was not interested in ‘classy’. I was interested in, as I said, revenge.
I was on vacation in Sydney at the time, Sharon Marshal was assigned to interview me. We met in a smart hotel in Wooloomooloo. Sharon is an attractive brunette who became, after the event, a great friend. The NOTW flew me to London from Sydney for the weekend. I told my story, they paid me the money.
Justice was served.
Elizabeth wrote to me. She said, “I hope you enjoyed your thirty pieces of silver.” I replied, “Actually, I really enjoyed my sixty thousand pieces of silver.”
When I returned from Australia Sharon invited me to stay at her home.
Sharon lived in Vauxhall at the time with Kath Raymond who was dating Les Hinton and would later marry him. The entire cast of this current controversy were at their wedding reception: Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson.
Kath worked for Gordon Brown as a ‘special advisor’ whilst dating Les Hinton. One didn’t need underworld contacts to get information with Kath working so closely with Gordon. Also, however outraged Gordon and Sarah are now their links to News Corp are just as suspect as anyone elses.
Sharon now works with and for soap operas which is ironic given what she used to do.
I texted Sharon after the Milly Dowler scandal hit offering condolences, she texted back, ‘terrible times.’ Her loyalty obviously and quite rightly remains with her friend Kath and she must be torn between her old life and her new.
Sharon long ago turned her back on the NOTW, she ended up disgruntled enough to write a book called Tabloid Girl which was her way of stuffing her ex bosses. Read it, it’s fun and insightful.
The NOTW is no more…until risen again as The Sunday Sun.
The establishment is dancing the streets. They are free of the tyrannical Murdoch, the ocker scoundrel. The dirty old man. Prince William cheered, threw his hands in the air, when he heard the news I am told by very good sources.
It amuses me to see Jarvis Cocker wipe his ass on the freshly murdered newspaper. Our relationship (the British) with this widely sold and read ‘newspaper’ is confused. I am sure that, like most other celebrities, Jarvis has benefited from the newspaper as well as suffered. I don’t believe that he hasn’t ever bought a copy or read a copy when salacious details of people he doesn’t know were made public.
Les Hinton may very well cop some jail time for his erstwhile ex-boss. Kath may lose their upper east side apartment. Wade et el are being hounded as they hounded, their drawn faces peering incredulously from chauffeur driven cars.
Karmageddon has arrived at News Corp.
Hinton’s profile is about to get a lot higher over his role in the scandal that brought down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. As a Murdoch staffer for more than half a century, Hinton spent a dozen years running News International, the British unit of Murdoch’s global company, including while the phone hacking was taking place at News of the World. And it was Hinton who told a parliamentary committee in 2007 that he was “absolutely convinced” that the illegal accessing of phones was limited to a single rogue reporter.
