Newspaper hacked my phone over my affair, says ex-Blades star Garry Flitcroft

A FORMER Sheffield United footballer who tried to stop a tabloid paper publishing details of his adultery has suggested that journalists may have hacked his phone.

Premiership team captain Garry Flitcroft took out an injunction in April 2001 to prevent the People newspaper running a “kiss and tell” story about a brief affair. This was overturned by the Court of Appeal in early 2002, leading to public humiliation for the married father when his name was finally disclosed.

Flitcroft, the brother of Barnsley’s assistant manager David Flitcroft, told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that he “strongly suspected” that reporters hacked his phone to discover details of a second woman with whom he had an affair. But he admitted he had no firm evidence that his voicemail messages were illegally intercepted.

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He told the inquiry: “That is just speculation. I have no evidence at all. It just seems a massive coincidence that the same newspaper gets two girls in the space of a couple of months.”

The Bolton-born father-of-three, who is now manager of Northern Premier League side Chorley FC, is separated from his wife and living with his girlfriend, Sarah Lancashire. He claims he was contacted by the second woman, who demanded £5,000 in return for not selling her story to the People, after the first woman. He said he was surprised by this because the first woman lived in Chester and the second in Stockport, and they did not know each other.

“I strongly suspect that my phone was hacked by journalists and as a result the second woman was contacted, and asked to sell her story to the papers,” he said in a statement to the inquiry. Carine Patry Hoskins, counsel to the inquiry, said both women denied blackmailing Flitcroft.

Once the injunction was lifted, his solicitor called him and warned him to “get out of the house”, he said. Before Flitcroft had a chance to tell his wife Karen about the affair, a reporter from the Daily Mail rang his buzzer and he took her out for a drive to tell her about it.

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“She was angry and started crying - she hit me in the chest, she was devastated,” he said. The couple and their young son had to leave their family home for a time to avoid the press attention. The strain of the revelation and the media attention were contributing factors to the couple splitting up, he said.

He said his estranged wife has “always been a private person”, adding: “She has done nothing wrong, she should not have to deal with all of this.”

The manager said they were sending a message to him “never to mess with the press again”. He said: “The Sunday People printed the story because it was in the ‘public interest’. At the end of the day, it was not in the public interest. If I had been done for match-fixing or taking cocaine then it is in the public interest.”

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