Hugh Grant drags another national tabloid into hacking scandal

The newspaper, which is not owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, last night said it “utterly refuted” as “smears” claims by the star, who told the Leveson Inquiry into Press standards of his suspicions about a story published four years ago.

It centred on his relationship with then girlfriend Jemima Khan which it was claimed was on the rocks because of his “late night phone calls to a plummy-voiced studio executive”.

He could not think “for the life of me” what the source of the story was. The only explanation was that messages had been left on his phone by an executive’s assistant, who had a voice which could be described as “plummy”.

He said he had not made the allegations before but would “love to hear” the Mail on Sunday’s explanation.

Last night its spokesman said: “The Mail on Sunday utterly refutes Hugh Grant’s claim that they got any story as a result of phone hacking. In fact in the case of the story Mr Grant refers to, the information came from a freelance journalist who had been told by a source who was regularly speaking to Jemima Khan.”

In another development, private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was hired by the News of the World to intercept voicemail messages, denied deleting messages from murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone.

His solicitor, speaking hours after Milly’s mother told the inquiry she did not sleep for three nights after police told her Mulcaire had hacked her 13-year-old daughter’s phone, said he had “no reason” to erase any of the messages after she went missing in 2002.