Brooks: 250,000 pounds paid for Hugh Grant tale
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Britain’s News of the World tabloid paid out 250,000 pounds (US$416,000) for an exclusive interview with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown after she was caught performing oral sex on actor Hugh Grant, the phone-hacking trial heard yesterday.
Rebekah Brooks, a former editor and executive at the Rupert Murdoch-owned title, said Brown was paid around 100,000 pounds but large sums were also spent moving her and her family to a desert hideout to stop other papers stealing the 1995 scoop.
“It was probably one of the biggest expenses that I had ever dealt with. It was a lot of money,” said Brooks, who was features editor of the News of the World at the time, of the 250,000 pounds.
Brooks, 45, was giving testimony for the first time on day 62 of her trial at London’s Old Bailey court. She is charged with phone hacking, paying a public official for information and trying to conceal evidence from the police.
“Four Weddings and a Funeral” star Grant, 53, was arrested with Brown on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on June 27, 1995.
The News of the World secured an exclusive interview with Brown, whose real name is Estella Marie Thompson, and went to great lengths to stop rival papers from spoiling it.
“There was a huge interest, and once we had found Divine Brown there was an expectation that the (Daily) Mail and The Sun would not be far behind,” Brooks told the court.
“We asked Divine Brown if she would move from her home ... to a different location.”
“It all seems so silly now but actually it was really important,” she said.
A few weeks after the arrests, Brown was sentenced to 180 days in jail for lewd conduct and violating her probation on prostitution convictions.
Since the hacking scandal, Grant has become one of the most high-profile campaigners for tighter press regulation.
Brooks’s rise from humble researcher to wield vast power from the pinnacle of Murdoch’s British newspaper empire should not be held against her when jurors decide whether she is guilty of phone-hacking, her lawyer told the court.
The case centers on phone-hacking by journalists at the 168-year-old News of the World Sunday, which Murdoch closed in July 2011, and other allegations of crimes by staff on its sister daily The Sun, which Brooks edited at one time.
She was cleared of one charge yesterday on the judge’s instruction but faces four charges, which she denies.
Six others are also on trial.
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