Transcript of the footage of Piers Morgan speaking to Charlotte Church:

PM: “There was a spate of stories that came out because of mobile phones. When they first came out mobile phones journalists found out that if the celebrity hadn’t changed their pin code, right…”

CC: “Yeah, you can access their voicemail.”

PM: “You can access, access their voicemail. Just by tapping in a number. Are you really telling me that journalists aren’t going to do that? If they know they can ring up Charlotte Church’s mobile phone, listen to all her messages…”

CC: “My God”

PM: “Right, now all you have to do and I know it’s hard because celebrities don’t like doing anything for themselves is actually change your security number.”

CC: “Yeah, I’ve changed my security number”.

PM: “And now you don’t have to worry”.

CC: “Exactly”.

Just in case you have forgotten, Piers claims:

“I do not believe that any story we published … was ever gained in an unlawful manner, nor have I ever seen anything to suggest that.”

He told Leveson:

“… I had no reason or knowledge to believe it was going on.”

Uh oh…

Comments in the comments please…

Nick Boles is getting it in the neck today after labelling green-belt campaigners ‘hysterical scaremongering latter-day Luddites’. He is also calling for a third more for the UK to be concreted over and built on. Guido suspects that planning minister is doing the usual trick of going tonto to begin with, so that there is room to row back and look reasonable. Either way, given his distaste for NIMBY-ism, Guido presumes Boles won’t mind if his inheritance is the first place to be built on? Maybe a wind-farm too for good measure? Above is the view from his family’s Somerset pile.

One day son all this will be yours, to concrete.

It could not be a great matter of state without the LibDems sitting on the fence. Yesterday they briefed the FT:

“In spite of the party’s liberal heritage, Mr Clegg’s team say the vast majority of Lib Dem MPs would support Leveson if he says that independent regulation must be underpinned by law to make it fully effective.”

However this morning team Clegg is in full reverse ferret mode:

I understand Nick Clegg believes State/statutory regulation of the press is "not necessarily the answer" #leveson

— norman smith (@Thehackandhound) November 28, 2012

Overnight it emerged that the Burns/Blunkett letter had cross party support, also Ming and Hughes have been making plenty of noise on the issue. Interestingly the party’s leader in waiting, who is not a man adverse to regulating, has been rather quiet. The last time Vince Cable said anything interesting about press regulation was when he had been at the sharp end of a sting. After his complaint about the secret ‘war on Murdoch’ recording by Heidi Blake, then of the Telegraph, was upheld by the PCC, Vince said:

“I’m delighted with the findings which fully vindicates the complaints I and my colleagues made to the PCC. It’s very rare the commission comes down so clearly and we are very pleased with the outcome. It was important this was established by an independent, respected and reputable body.”

Will Cable and the rest of the LibDems be voting to keep regulation “independent” or will their Murdoch phobia overcome their liberal anti-statist, pro-freedom traditions?

click to enlarge

Not only is UKIP eclipsing the LibDems in polls, according to LexisNexis Nigel Farage is winning a higher media profile than Nick Clegg…