Hackgate: Was It This Gaydar Pic What Started It?

'Bryant's enemies are unlikely to let up, however, though the Murdoch red-tops might be well advised to lay off him for now. Now, more than ever, Bryant is loathed by the right. Only yesterday Richard Littlejohn used his Daily Mail column to write about "the self-appointed moral conscience of the nation, Chris Bryant – last seen posing on the internet in his underpants, soliciting for casual gay sex".
'That refers to Bryant's entirely unforced error of appearing on the gay dating website Gaydar posing only in his underpants, and apparently unflattering ones too. He could be allowed some pride in his physique, being the parliamentary swimming champ, and obviously fit. How he thought he might remain anonymous in such circumstances remains a mystery almost as deep as how News International thought its industrial-scale hacking could remain a secret.
'"I honestly don't know how they got hold of the story – it was the Mail on Sunday that ran it," he told me yesterday. "I remember a woman turning up at the constituency office [in Rhondda] and I thought, 'That's a very posh coat she's wearing' and they doorstepped me. It was horrid and I didn't sleep very well."
'He went on to describe how his phone was hacked. "On 3 December 2003, four attempts were made to blag my PIN number from my mobile phone. I don't know if that was News International. But I was a Mulcaire target for the News of the World." It was after that that Bryant began pursuing the police over the scandal and pressing for a judicial review and inquiry, which he has now achieved...'

From a profile of Chris Bryant in The Independent last Friday (When Fagburn was away - try and keep up).
The Mail On Sunday story appears to have been removed from their website - here's The Sun's charmless take on it - it was Bryant who had a few months before the Gaydar story surfaced who asked Rebecca Brooks the killer question at committee if she'd ever ever paid police.
Chris Bryant has behaved quite heroically over this story.