From Matthew Parris's written witness statement to the Leveson Inquiry (page 7).
Parris, now a Times columnist, was a Tory MP - and as he documented in his memoirs, Chance Witness, behaved somewhat recklessly.
He was regularly cruising Clapham Common of an evening, for example, and was badly queerbashed there once while he was an MP.
Parris goes on to ask why there is so much indignation over phone hacking "as opposed to other journalists' subterfuges";
"I cannot see message-hacking as simply the newest, but not in principle the most shocking method by which some journalists have been spying on people."
A good point.
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"I believe that as a relatively new young MP in the early 80s, I was targeted by a would be agent provocateur, but I spotted the likely stratagem and cheerfully ignored it. Had I been successfully entrapped, my feeling in retrospect would be that it would have served me right."
ReplyDeleteDidn't Parris write in his autobiography years ago [ picked it up in a second hand book store and fucked if I can remember the title ] that he was honeytrapped by a young good looking eastern european agent and he was only put off by his crap teeth and his shitty breath...or otherwise things might have been different?
Maybe his tiny cock might also have been a turn off for him.
DeleteAha! Dunno, never read it.
ReplyDeleteThere is a picture of the book's cover in the blogpost, by the way...
It's a much older book, where he goes into the details of the meeting...the pick up..willing and a far more realistic level of attraction rather than the heroic shite.
ReplyDeleteIs there an older one?
ReplyDeleteThat's 2002.
Same book, different cover ..so the story will be in it.
ReplyDelete