Kelvin MacKenzie dropped into the Royal Courts of Justice in London to give the Leveson inquiry on press standards a piece of his lively mind – or lob it in, as he described his old editing technique. In return the cerebral Lord Justice Leveson gave the Sun's rumbustious former editor a delicate sliver of his own. The two bits of mind did not meet.
This was a pity. MacKenzie was by far the most interesting witness fielded by the Sun, charming, abusive, confident and self-pitying by turn, the man who first denied there was any phone hacking, then said it didn't matter, then found his own phone had been hacked and felt violated.
He has recovered. Not only is MacKenzie the physical embodiment of the redtop's Thatcherite golden age – when Fleet Street generated millions, Freddie Starr ate hamsters and Elton John hired busloads of rent boys (except he didn't) – he was nostalgically proud of it.
He cheerfully confirmed how John ("he was no Thatcher") Major once phoned him from Downing Street – he mimicked Major's accent – to ask how the Sun would be covering his Maastricht treaty negotiation in 1991, actually a more sophisticated success than David Cameron's EU veto last month. "I said I've got a bucket of shit on my desk, prime minister, and I'm going to pour it all over you," he explained.
MacKenzie shares one distinctive characteristic with Major: a chippy self-pity which spoils his act. Both men left school early, did very well on merit but never got over it. "I was always astonished that the prime minister would want to meet a tabloid editor with one GCSE, I always struggled to see what the equivalence was," he whinged at one stage. Pure (three O-levels) Major.
The contrast with what followed MacKenzie's 50-minute session was stark and meant to be so. A succession of current Sun staffers, including the editor, Dominic Mohan, a posh legal adviser called Justin, and the paper's really nice picture editor, painted a picture of the scholarly and ethical way the paper now handles sensitive matters like intrusion, bribery and paparazzi pictures. Its philanthropic activities alone would put those hooligans at the FT to shame.
Whether these witnesses would have lasted long in MacKenzie's regime (1982-95) or been eaten for breakfast is a moot point. At various stages in his testimony the man once called Rupert Murdoch's favourite editor broke off from sideswipes at money-losing, inaccurate broadsheets (like the Guardian), Fleet Street snobbery (Guardian again) and Anne Diamond ("a failing breakfast show host") to hint, as old men do, that his successors aren't up to much.
"Cautious" was the charge the self-confessed story-lobber levelled against them. "Probably right," conceded the man who – more than most – made Britain's tabloids what they are today.
Leveson is only gradually getting the hang of how newspapers work. In his business the accused does not ring up a judge to find out how long a sentence he can expect in the morning, only to be told "I've got a bucket of shit on my desk, Lightfingers Thompson … " He seems to think editors sit around all day worrying about ethics and aid to Haiti. Mohan, kitted out like a depressed undertaker, did his best to sustain that impression.
In fairness to the witnesses whenever they were asked what ethics meant to them, none replied: "It's next to Hertfordshire" as snooty broadsheet columnists, watching on TV in the office, must have been hoping. The nearest we got to that was when Robert Jay QC, counsel for the inquiry, asked Gordon Smart, the fresh-faced youth now editing the Sun's showbiz column (it virtually makes him heir apparent), how the paper's culture had changed. " Culturally, it's still a great place to work," Smart replied.
As befits a judge, Leveson, who has months of this to endure, bestirs himself only occasionally. Yesterday he intervened when MacKenzie complained that if the Sun had hacked Tony Blair's mobile (not that it does that sort of thing) to prove his villainy over Iraq, its reporter would get six months – if the Guardian did it, the paper would win a Pulitzer prize.
"You really mean it?" asked Leveson. "Yes, I really do [pause], I sort of three-quarters mean it," came the reply (he called him "sir").
It happened again when MacKenzie said the Sun would have been close to closure if it had got the story of Milly Dowler's hacked phone as "completely wrong" as the Guardian, whose investigations editor, David Leigh, had justified phone-hacking in his own evidence.
Leigh didn't quite say that, he invoked the public interest, remonstrated Leveson. Confusion over the difference between the public interest and what interests the Sun-reading public persisted despite Mohan's smoothest efforts. "It's quite interesting that you assert that the Guardian got the Milly Dowler story completely wrong," observed Leveson, whose mildness may yet prove deceptive.
There was a brief silence, MacKenzie sipped his glass of water and the court moved on to bribing coppers. He knew nothing about it and would not expect to know about any cash payments below £3,000 anyway. On the other hand, after he paid Elton John £1m over the false rent boy story Murdoch had been on the phone for "40 minutes of non-stop abuse".
Happy days. We shall not see their like again, at least not until this inquiry is safely over and scores can be settled with the likes of Hugh Grant and Diamond. That is what Leveson suspects. How can I protect these people, he asked. It couldn't happen, Mohan assured him. Oh, but it has. How short memories are.
