they very nearly ruined my life. i have certainly seen how they have ruined the lives of others. it's really difficult for me to sit here and talk about this because... the whole point of fighting these newspapers is because i was so keen to have my privacy. i feel a sense of duty to expose them as they've exposed us. prince harry and sir eltonjohn have launched legal action _ against the publishers of the daily mail. - action is being taken against the sun newspaper. legal action against the mirror group over allegations of phone hacking. who did you hack? be quicker to say who i didn't hack, wouldn't it? _ be easier. celebrities, politicians... i was living in this sort of superhighway of illicit information.

it was exciting. you felt like a spy. i don't know to this day how many people have heard my deepest secrets, my desires. phone hacking was not practised by the mail. on sunday or the daily mail. you have just about anybody who's ever appeared in a tabloid newspaper saying, "give me large wodges of cash, please." i think it's actually a legal scandal. it's not the money i'm after. it's...it's to expose their guilt. it's justice. as long ago as i can remember, all i ever wanted to do was act.

that was it. that's my only memory. i've been lucky that i have loved myjob. but the other side of it, which i was completely and utterly unprepared for, was overwhelming. i fell very much in love with my first co—star, and got papped with him, and the next day had ten people outside my house, and that was it. it was from one day to the next, it was not there, and then it was very much there. ever since jude got together. with sienna on the set of alfie, they've been a real golden couple. we talked before about the paparazzi, how are you coping? because you seem to be followed all the time? not very well, it's a little invasive. i think it's a little unhealthy. but i mean, i suppose you make your bed and you have to lie in it. i mean, theirargument now is that, you know, you're public property now, but how do you feel about that? i think there's a level

where you become public property, but if you're a girl being chased down the street by five men in the middle of the night, then that's not...should not be legal. watch your backs. it was the wild west in the �*90s, i mean, �*90s and early 20005, it was completely crazy the amount of stories that were coming out. and the amount of accurate stories that were appearing in the press was baffling. we would make a plan between my partner and i to meet somewhere, and when we got there there would be press, which would be astounding and impossible. of course, the initial reaction is that somebody is leaking information and somebody close to us, people that i love and still love dearly, i did suspect and distance from, and also try to plant stories or tell them information that wasn't true to see if it came out. now, sienna was very much

of interest to all the tabloids because she was involved with the actorjude law. we've seen listed in court documents that on the 21st ofjuly 2005, the sun paid £250 for... ..sienna... ..phone... ..inquiries. which we say is a clear reference to unlawful information gathering. and that payment was authorised by the news editor. so notjust a reporter in the showbiz department, the news editor who reported directly to the editor. the attention on my private life was so loud that i was just desperate to be seen as an actor. and somebody approached me with the idea of being in as you like it in the west end, and shakespeare in the west end felt like an opportunity to not only do a play, which was a dream, but to show that

i was serious, that i was, you know, i was doing this because i loved what i did. i had found out on the saturday night that there was a story coming out on the sunday about an affair that my partner had had. the person had sold a story, so i was in a state of shock. 0n the monday, i went to the theatre and it was carnage. it was chaos. there must have been 60 photographers outside, and i was really extremely vulnerable and heartbroken. but then on the tuesday i found out that i was pregnant. so that was the trajectory of those three days. nobody knew that she was pregnant. only very close friends. it was awful. it was honestly terrible.

and then, of course, press, knowing where i would be eight times a week meant that i had no opportunity to disappear or hide. i can't even remember anything other than... ijust, i had a job to do and i had several decisions to make. and i was really frightened. i remember that. but...yeah. around this time, we believe that nick parker, the foreign correspondent of the sun, met with a medical records blagger... ..in order to confirm whether sienna miller was pregnant. and we said they've been given a tip that she was. he was meeting with somebody who was a blagger who was able to obtain medical records to try and stand up that tip.

it was done over the phone by blagging the, say, for example, a secretary, a gp surgery by pretending to be an employee of the hospital, asking for somebody's records to be sent or asking for details from their file. and that way you would get all kinds of private medical information. and that was highly prized. it cost a lot of money, and there were very few people who could do it. but the newspapers did have specialist blaggers who could obtain that information. i remember my doctor's office phoning me and saying, "we sent the records that you'd asked for." and me saying, "i didn't ask for any records." parker met with a blagger, and there is a payment of £950 to the blagger for "sienns," and that's a typo, "miller pregnant research. "

now £950 is a lot of money, and in newspaper terms was a lot of money. you didn't pay £950 unless you got something useful for that information. the claimants alleged that sienna's publicist ciara parkes was called by rebekah brooks, the editor of the sun. i've known rebekah for over 30 years and she and i had been friends for a long time, so i was very surprised to get that call from her to say that she was aware that sienna was pregnant. she didn't explain how she knew, but i asked her, given the sensitivity of the matter, and that sienna was very early on in her pregnancy and going through a lot of turmoil, not to publish the story. and she agreed that she wouldn't publish it. i suppose i wasn't comforted

by the fact that she wouldn't run it, because i was just horrified about how she might have known. i felt somebody must be selling stories and i sat down the five people in our lives who knew, and interrogated them violently. you know, i was under such intense pressure, and said, "it has to be one of you, so who is it?" and lots of tears and denials. i tried to feel relieved that it was. . .that she had given us her word. but i also, by that point, understood the nature of the beast, and that it was probably only a matter of time. so the clock was ticking. so what happened next? the sun actually didn't run this story, despite apparently having the confirmation of sienna's pregnancy. the story appeared in an american publication called the star.

now, we can speculate how it ended up in an american publication. it was an age old thing that when something had been published abroad, then the gloves were off and the british press were allowed to also report it. eventually, a story did appear in the sun, asking the question, "sienna's pregnant, is that a fact?" reporting a celebrity on a tv show saying that. she sniffs it's just horrible to have to talk about it. sorry, but ijust, yeah, i remember, i sort of wailed and like... and that was sort of it. it was like... oh, god, it's so long ago. but it was... ijust remember feeling like if that had been taken as well, it was like, "that's it," you know, "i can't do this. "i can't go ahead with this." i also felt so conscious of...

the decisions that she had to make were horrendous. no one should be in that position. but then to have to make them publicly, because it was completely obvious as to whether she would or wouldn't be having a child, wasjust an appalling situation to be in. and the fact that... that decision should have been hers and it should have been kept private, no one could argue with that. but she wasn't afforded that. newspapers were so powerful at that time. so every tube or every bus or every... you know, your photo and that headline is there, and then making the decision to have an abortion on a sunday, to be back on stage on a monday, at which point i don't think i remember six weeks of my life.

actually don't remember. i think i was in such a deep state of trauma by that point that i totally blacked out. i still dojournalism. i do journalism that has real impact. i've ended up kind of working in press reform. i am the creator of a public interestjournalism database which essentially unpacks in great forensic detail the crimes that went on at news group

and mirror group newspapers. it's sort of like a poacher turned gamekeeper. i definitely think that a policy decision was made from the very top of these news organisations to mine celebrity culture. if there's a tv show that was particularly popular, then that would become a focus of interest. that extended to big brother. oh, god, i'm so fed up. so if you went on the big brother tv show, then you were more or less saying to the editors of national titles, "come and get me." millions of people tuned in to watch it. it was massive in the press. it was the show to be on.

cheering the night that i got evicted, i was just so surprised with the amount of people who were there, the amount of cheers that i had. the worst part for me was seeing all the stories that had been written about me. i was just mortified by a lot of them. imogen would have been a very natural target for the news editors. they would have just looked at her and gone, "0k, here's an attractive person. "a former miss wales. "so, a, there must be photos of her looking good out there." there was a big moneymaking exercise going on on both sides, actually. so imogen would immediately have been kind of targeted by an agent who had been pushing every aspect

of their private life to the papers, because at that time there was a great accent on kiss and tells, this sort of thing. and this is where that line between what you choose to sell and what's been stolen from you becomes very, very fluid. so when i left the house, i'd have a few days with a few other celebs. you get paid thousands of pounds just to even say the smallest amount of detail. and my manager thought it was, you know, easy money. "why not, imogen? "it's tomorrow's chip paper." i'd done about two kiss and tells, and that i deeply regretted. so after those couple of times, i was like, "i do not want to do this again, and my love life was always private." so once you became a person of interest, then you would just be revisited on a regular basis. and so every couple of months, somebody somewhere would have another look at imogen thomas and go, "oh, who are they speaking "to at the moment?" in 2011, a journalist from the sun newspaper turned up on my doorstep

and said that they had details of me having an affair with a married footballer. the fact that the sun newspaper had so much details of this affair, it was worrying. it was really worrying, actually. then the next day, it was in the newspaper, and that is when my life changed. it was a horrible time. i was the most hated woman in britain because, you know, the papers just wanted to sell and sell and sell. for me, it was, like, impossible. the only people who knew about what was going on in my personal life at that time was my mum and my sister. it was basically just stamping into people's most private lives, without any thought of the human impact. it was done ostensibly for the profit of a large corporation.

my mental health was in a bad way. i would leave so many voicemails for my mum. and yeah, i think they were all being listened in to. in 2019, imogen thomas and sienna miller launched claims against news group, owners of the news of the world and the sun. as with most previous claimants, news group paid undisclosed sums to settle the claims before a trial. it was not my choice to be standing here today. i wanted to go to trial.

i wanted to share news group's secrets just as they have shared mine. unfortunately, that legal recourse is not available to me or to anyone who does not have countless millions of pounds to spend on the pursuit ofjustice. under english law, if a claimant refuses a settlement and is then awarded a lower amount by a judge at trial, they risk having to pay the legal fees from the trial for both sides. this could amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds. between 2016 and 2022, news group and mirror group paid money to settle hundreds of claims against their newspapers before they got to trial. morning. just going to read a brief—ish statement. today, mgn limited, part of the trinity mirror group, settled my case by apologising for hacking my phone

and is paying me a sum in damages which they've insisted i keep confidential. were it not for the mirror's threat to seek their costs if i continued with my case, i would have sought to scrutinise these activities further and get to the bottom of the extensive cover up which i believe took place. when i said to the mirror, "i want to go to court," they would say, "here's some money." and i'd write back to them through my lawyer, "i don't want money, i just want to go to court." "oh, this is ridiculous. "go away. "here's some more money." why are you offering me more money? i'm not asking for money. i just want to go to court to hear the truth. "oh, this is ridiculous. "go away. "here's some more money." and they kept going up and up and up, offering me more and more money. it got to the stage where, and it sounds like, it is very much a first world problem, if i didn't accept their offer and then went to court and the judge decided an offer that was less than that, i would have been liable for all the costs and that could bankrupt me quite easily.

i fear that many other victims of press misconduct are too afraid to fight for their rights because of aggressive newspaper legal teams and our expensive legal system. that's the key strategy that a lot of these newspapers employ to stop these cases coming to court, where they would be subject to real scrutiny. i think it's important to recognise that there are two separate things. there is a criminal investigation into phone hacking. and there is civil proceedings about phone hacking. the criminal investigation into phone hacking ended years ago. and what you have is now an industry whereby anybody who thinks they've got any kind of excuse is trying to get civil damages. the main newspaper groups are caught between a rock and a hard place.

do you spend £1 million on fighting that case, if you can settle it for £100,000? i'm afraid it's a no brainer. it is cheaper to settle than to fight for the truth. we're waiting for the one person with the money and the resolve to take this all the way to trial. "i don't care if i risk losing £3 million or £4 million on this. "i don't care what they chuck at me in disclosure or in the courtroom. "i am willing to take that on myself because for me, the moral victory is more important than the financial victory." good evening. buckingham palace has said that prince harry has begun legal action against the owners of the sun, the now defunct news of the world, and the daily mirror in relation to alleged phone hacking. all smiles at the end

of a high—profile tour, but in the works, a legal bombshell. harry is suing two of the biggest newspaper groups in britain. the case, allegations of harry's calls being hacked in the early 20005. prince harry is pursuing legal action against an extraordinary number of uk publishers. i mean, the sentence i'vejust uttered is pretty extraordinary. we're talking about the king's son taking on much of the british press. what he, at considerable personal cost, is pursuing, are cases where he believes that this press has acted on illegal information. from his telling, he has known no other life, which hasn't involved some form of alleged activity by elements of the media in order to find out what he was up to. this has completely tainted his experience of life

and been there all the way through from when he and william were young boys. i remember sitting down with rebekah brooks about the royal job. she said she was sick of the royal coverage of the sun simply being a funny face that prince charles had pulled when he stepped on a cow pat visiting an organic yoghurt factory. she didn't want that any more, it was time for the focus to really be on the next generation, on william and on harry. and frankly, the newspaper needed someone that wasn't tainted by diana's death. they wanted someone younger. i fitted the bill. i was into things that they were into. i wasn't that much older than them. it was a high pressure job with some fantastic rewards. i mean, who wouldn't want to get drunk with prince harry and prince william at the same time

in the same nightclub? we love you harry, we do! the image people have of harry the party prince comes from that period. do you want to bleep off? he was charging around the world partying like a maniac. he even admits that he was in that period. he had been seen punching a cameraman and a bodyguard lifting him off the street. and it got to the point where once we got the nazi story, the gloves were off. prince harry would often go to social events which weren't official events. meeting people in the pub, for example, and members of the press would already be there. he had absolutely no idea how these people knew. he thought it was probably leaks from his close friends or people from the palace, or perhaps even a girlfriend. his circle of friends decreased drastically because of his paranoia.

he was very guarded about who he could speak to and trust, etc. and that's a huge thing for somebody going through their adolescence at the time. there was virtually a story about him every single day.

hello. today was quite a showery day for some of us, particularly in the north. further showers to come through this evening and overnight. how about sunday? it starts off quite bright in a number of locations but clouds will thicken through the morning into the afternoon and more persistent rain is on the way, too. here is one weather system ready to come our way. this is the one that we had through the course of sunday and this is what brought showers. in fact, the showers will continue through the night, broadly speaking, across the northern half of the uk. further east and south, the weather will be drier with some clear spells. early morning temperatures around 10 in aberdeen, 13 or 11; in the south of the country.

this is the next weather front heading our way. early in the morning, some bright and sunny weather around in a number of locations, although the showers continue in the north. but then this more widespread weather front sweeps into ireland, through wales and many parts of england eventually. i think newcastle and hull will hang on to the sunshine the longest in england and also some very decent weather there in northern and eastern scotland. elsewhere, you can see the cloud spreading in, south—westerly wind, a lot of murk and drizzle around the coasts, not a very pleasant second half of the day. an increasing breeze, too, and quite a large area of low pressure, elongated, slow moving from west to east, and it brings a lot of cloud on monday, too. you can see the weather front is placed across scotland at this stage, middle of the day, with heavy rain for a time at least in the lowlands. to the south of that, we have got the cloud, showers and occasional sunny spells. temperatures hovering around the high teens or low 20s. august is just around the corner.

how about the weather and this jet stream pattern? well, the jet stream is going to be quite strong, close to us and generally south of us through the course of this week, especially the middle of the week onwards. that allows the cooler air to stream in from the north. if we have a look at the pattern through tuesday and into wednesday, a big low pressure parks itself across scandinavia and around it, the winds are coming in from the north. it will be cooler than average. showers are expected, quite widespread showers, even some cracks of thunder from time to time. here is the outlook from sunday into the week ahead. it is looking, surprise, surprise, very unsettled. that is it from me. goodbye.

live from london, this is bbc news. the eu has suspended all security cooperation with niger after the country's army took power in a coup. england cricketer stuart broad announces his retirement at the end of the ashes series at the oval. much of britain's railways are at a standstill as staff walk out again in a long—running dispute over pay, jobs and conditions. and first eurovision — now pride.

liverpool plays host to ukraine's celebration of lgbt rights. the eu has suspended all security cooperation with niger after the country's army took power in a coup. it comes shortly after the us declared its "unflagging support" for ousted president mohamed bazoum, seen as a key western ally in the fight against islamist militants. on friday, the head of the presidential guards unit general tchiani declared himself niger's new leader. he said insecurity, economic woes and corruption led him to seize power. but there are now concerns in the west about which countries the new leader will align with. niger's neighbours, burkina faso and mali, have both pivoted towards russia since their own coups. nick westcott was the british ambassador for niger between 2008 and 2011. i spoke to him earlier and asked him what his thoughts

were on the current situation there.