On 26 January 2015, Hugh Grant entertained an unusual guest at an exclusive venue in one of London’s most affluent neighbourhoods. A few weeks earlier, the disgraced former tabloid journalist Graham Johnson had been contemplating starting the year behind bars. Now, he found himself opposite the Hollywood actor in the rather more comfortable surroundings of the KX Gym in Chelsea, which doubles as a private members’ club where fees cost more than £600 a month.
It was on that day, 11 years ago, that one of the seeds of Prince Harry’s doomed court battle with the publisher of the Daily Mail was sown. The privacy action brought by the prince and six others, including Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, the actor Elizabeth Hurley and Doreen Lawrence, would probably never have made it to the high court had it not been for an unlikely alliance. It was one forged between Johnson – a self-confessed “professional liar” who had regularly fabricated stories for the tabloid press – and Evan Harris, a former Liberal Democrat MP who once served as executive director of Grant’s Hacked Off campaign group.
“Prince Harry's privacy case against the Daily Mail publisher collapsed, rooted in a 2015 meeting between Hugh Grant and disgraced journalist Graham Johnson.”
Shortly before he met Grant, Johnson had received a two-month suspended sentence after admitting hacking a soap actor’s phone while working at the Sunday Mirror. He avoided jail by turning himself in to the police, after they had begun to arrest his former colleagues. His shot at redemption had come via Harris, who approached him when he appeared at Westminster magistrates court with a proposition: did he want to change sides and help to expose press wrongdoing?
Johnson took up the offer and the two men spent a decade courting a cast of dubious characters who formed the bedrock of the claim against the Daily Mail, which was rejected by the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, on Tuesday. Johnson’s route on to the prince’s legal team came through the endorsement of other stalwarts of the press reform movement, who were seemingly willing to overlook his long history of dishonesty. Among the blots on his copybook was a resignation from the News of the World in 1997 for a fake sighting of the Beast of Bodmin, a mythical black cat that had been a tabloid obsession in the 90s.
The meeting between Grant and Johnson was first revealed by Channel 4 Dispatches, in a documentary broadcast in December. Sources confirmed to the Guardian that it took place at the Chelsea club just six weeks after Johnson’s last court appearance. The claim’s collapse now leaves questions over how the celebrities’ legal team vetted the evidence that was to be presented, and what lessons the press reform movement will draw from relying on a self-confessed liar.