LONDON — Former Beatle Paul McCartney on Thursday said he would contact police about his ex-wife’s claim that their private communication had been spied upon by British tabloid journalists.
In comments to television journalists delivered via videolink from Cincinatti, McCartney said he would be in touch with police as soon as he was finished with his summer tour.
“I will be talking to them about that,” McCartney told the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles.
McCartney is the latest celebrity to be dragged into Britain’s phone-hacking scandal, which centers on allegations that journalists routinely eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police officers for tips and illegally obtained confidential information for stories.
So far, the scandal has largely been limited to the Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, but an allegation made Wednesday by McCartney’s former wife Heather Mills implicates the Trinity Mirror PLC group of newspapers, whose flagship Daily Mirror tabloid used to be edited by CNN celebrity interviewer Piers Morgan.
Morgan has come under increasing pressure to explain himself, with several British lawmakers calling on him to return to the U.K. to face questioning about the scandal. Mills’ allegation, made Wednesday in a BBC interview, was that a senior journalist admitted to her his paper was spying on her messages.
Mills identified the journalist, although the BBC bleeped out the name, citing legal reasons.
And while the broadcaster said that the journalist was not Morgan, Mills’ allegation echoes a claim Morgan made back in 2006, a few months after the couple began divorce proceedings. In an article published by the Daily Mail, Morgan said he had been played a tape of a message McCartney had left on Mills’ cellphone in the wake of one of their fights.
“It was heartbreaking,” Morgan wrote. “He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the answerphone.”
In a statement Wednesday, Morgan described Mills’ allegation as unsubstantiated and noted that the judge in the couple’s divorce case had cast aspersions on her credibility. He has repeatedly denied having ever ordered anyone to spy on others’ voice mails.
In a separate development, the publisher of the Daily Mail announced late Thursday that it was reviewing its editorial procedures. No reason for the review was given, but Morgan is one of many media veterans who’ve claimed that a host of different publications engaged in phone hacking. A similar review is already underway at the Daily Mirror.
