Ex-Mirror journalist says he was asked to give Coronation Street star flowers containing listening device
A former Mirror Group journalist has told Sky News that he was asked to give a Coronation Street actress a bunch of flowers bugged with a listening device during a visit to a spa.
Dean Piper, a showbiz reporter at The Mirror in the early 2000s, said he was asked to carry out the task while working for the paper’s sister title, The Sunday People.
However, he said he refused and later decided to leave the paper.
Last week, in a privacy case brought by Prince Harry, a High Court judge found another practice – phone hacking – was carried out by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) from 1996 to 2011.
The judge said hacking was “widespread and habitual” from 1998.
He also found there was “some unlawful activity” – involving the use of private investigators – in 1995.
Prince Harry, pictured outside the High Court in May
Speaking to the UK Tonight with Sarah Jane Mee about his experience working at MGN, Mr Piper said: “The worst thing I was ever asked – and it was probably ultimately what made me walk from my job at The People – involved Coronation Street star Tracy Shaw.
“She was having a lot of issues in those days, but she was very big news. She was on the front cover all the time.
“I was called over at one point and said that I was going to go to a spa and have a spa break, and I thought: ‘Brilliant’.
“They said you are going to have a bunch of flowers, and we’re going to put a bug in it, and we’re going to deliver it to Tracy Shaw, and we have booked the room right next door to her, and you’re just going to stay up all night and write down everything that’s gone on.”
Mr Piper said he “point-blank refused” the request.
“There were enough whipper-snappers that want to further their career that probably would have taken the flowers, but that wasn’t morally right, and it’s kind of illegal,” he said.
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‘It was a Voldemort scenario’
Mr Piper was speaking after Prince Harry’s victory in a phone hacking against his former employers.
The judge ruled in the case that phone hacking “remained an important tool in the climate of journalism” at all three MGN papers – the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – from 2006 to 2011.
The judge also ruled that directors at MGN – Paul Vickers and Sly Bailey – knew about phone hacking but did not inform the rest of the board.
Mr Piper said he was aware that people were phone hacking during his time working there, but insisted “not everybody was phone hacking”.
“I’m able to talk about it because I’ve got a completely clear conscience about the fact that I was never involved in it. But there were people at the paper that did phone hacking,” he said.
“There were certain people on each desk – they were usually away from the main throng of the editorial team – we knew what they did, and we knew that their exclusives were coming from the phones.”
Mr Piper compared the topic of hacking to the main villain in the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort, who is referred to by most characters as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named because of the culture of fear surrounding him.
The ex-reporter said: “It was a ‘Voldemort’ scenario – as far as you didn’t openly talk about it. But everybody knew what was going on.”
Morgan ‘brilliant boss’ but hacking excuse ‘ridiculous’
The judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, said in his ruling that he found it “convincing” that Piers Morgan knew about phone hacking when he was in charge of the Daily Mirror – from 1995 to 2004.
After the judgment, Mr Morgan made a statement outside his London home, in which he said he had “never hacked a phone or told anyone else to hack a phone”.
Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan speaks to the media following the ruling
“There is just one article relating to the prince published in The Daily Mirror during my entire nine-year tenure as editor that he [the High Court judge] thinks may have involved some unlawful information gathering,” Mr Morgan said.
“To be clear, I had then and still have zero knowledge of how that particular story was gathered.”
Mr Piper praised Piers Morgan as a “brilliant boss” who was “very supportive”.
But asked about the judgment and Mr Morgan’s defence, Mr Piper said: “I mean, look, if you’re a national newspaper editor, and you’ve got all of this power, and you’re deciding what the narrative is for the Daily Mirror the first thing you’re going to say is, where did that story come from?
“So I find that quite amusing and kind of ridiculous because that’s the first port of call as an editor and as a journalist, you want to know where the story came from.”
Read more:
What were the articles at the centre of the case?
Key findings in the judgment
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Morgan: “I have never hacked a phone”
Mr Piper added: “But there is an open conversation that I feel is important about the way that those newspapers did work in those days.
“And it wasn’t good what they were doing, and it would be nice if people started to get to the point where they accepted some responsibility for what they put people through.”
He continued: “You only have to look at the front pages in those days to realise how many stories were coming from that [phone hacking]. It wasn’t just the odd one, it was endless amounts.”
A spokesperson for Mirror Group said following last week’s judgment: “We welcome the judgment that gives the business the necessary clarity to move forward from events that took place many years ago.
“Where historical wrongdoing took place, we apologise unreservedly, have taken full responsibility and paid appropriate compensation.”
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
The Salt Path author Raynor Winn’s fourth book has been delayed by her publisher.
It comes amid claims that the author lied about her story in her hit first book. Winn previously described the claims as “highly misleading” and called suggestions that her husband had Moth made up his illness “utterly vile”.
In a statement, Penguin Michael Joseph, said it had delayed the publication of Winn’s latest book On Winter Hill – which had been set for release 23 October.
The publisher said the decision had been made in light of “recent events, in particular intrusive conjecture around Moth’s health”, which it said had caused “considerable distress” to the author and her family.
“It is our priority to support the author at this time,” the publisher said.
“With this in mind, Penguin Michael Joseph, together with the author, has made the decision to delay the publication of On Winter Hill from this October.”
A new release date will be announced in due course, the publisher added.
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Winn’s first book, released in 2018, detailed the journey she and husband took along the South West Coast Path – familiarly known as The Salt Path – after they lost their family farm and Moth received a terminal health diagnosis of Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD).
But a report in The Observer disputed key aspects of the 2018 “true” story – which was recently turned into a film starring Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson.
Raynor and husband Moth (centre) with actors Jason Isaacs (L) and Gillian Anderson (R). Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
Experts ‘sceptical of health claims’
As part of the article, published last weekend, The Observer claimed to have spoken to experts who were “sceptical” about elements of Moth’s terminal diagnosis, such as a “lack of acute symptoms and his apparent ability to reverse them”.
In the ensuing controversy, PSPA, a charity that supports people with CBD, cut ties with the couple.
The Observer article also claimed the portrayal of a failed investment in a friend’s business wasn’t true, but said the couple – whose names are Sally and Tim Walker – lost their home after Raynor Winn embezzled money from her employer and had to borrow to pay it back and avoid police action.
Anderson played Winn in a movie about the couple’s journey. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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It also said that, rather than being homeless, the couple had owned a house in France since 2007.
Winn’s statement said the dispute with her employer wasn’t the reason the couple lost their home – but admitted she may have made “mistakes” while in the job.
“For me it was a pressured time,” she wrote. “It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.”
She admitted being questioned by police but said she wasn’t charged.
The author also said accusations that Moth lied about having CBD/CBS were false and had “emotionally devastated” him.
“I have charted Moth’s condition with such a level of honesty, that this is the most unbearable of the allegations,” Winn wrote on her website.
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