Hugh Grant Proud of 'Hacking' News of the World

Hugh Grant is very proud in the part he played to bring down former British tabloid News of The World (NOTW) by secretly recording a conversation with a NOTW reporter saying that the practice was widespread.

Grant said that former NOTW journalist Paul McMullan had admitted to him that he had been hacked by a private investigator hired by the tabloid. Grant decided to investigate the matter further after the police did nothing when alerted them about the scandal earlier this year.

He met up with McMullan and probed into what the hack insisted was 'routine' while secretly taping the conversation.

United Press International Reports that Grant told Entertainment Weekly, When he started boasting about how they'd been tapping my phone and everyone's phone, and what a close relationship they'd enjoyed with the police and the government, I was so appalled that I did go back a few months later and I got him doing it again over a few drinks.

The transcripts of the conversation became the basis of an article that Grant wrote for New Statesman, which first brought to the public notice the extent of NOTW's sleazy practices.

Karma seems to have caught up with NOTW and Grant has no qualms about secretly recording the conversation. It felt like symmetry for sure, Grant told Entertainment Weekly. You know, they hacked me, I hacked him.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral star called for a full-scale investigation into the workings of the British tabloid newspaper industry and has joined a protest in London calling for a probe into the scandal.

We need an inquiry that uncovers all the practices and indeed culture, not just at the News of the World but of all tabloid journalism in this country because what we are going to find out over the next weeks and months is that this wasn't just at the News of the World, Gant told Sky News.