Home Affairs correspondent
Her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, Ms Wightman told the court that after her diagnosis in 1997, she was repeatedly visited by journalists desperate for her to tell "her story" about her cancer. Earlier the barrister David Sherborne, representing Ms Wightman, spent several hours detailing her claims that Mirror group journalists with a record of phone hacking and commissioning private investigators, tried to get information about her and Paul Whitehouse, a comedian known in the 1990s for his comedy sketches in The Fast Show.
The "blagging" attempt was unsuccessful but Andrew Green KC, for MGN, apologised on Wednesday in court saying "it shouldn't have happened, it did and it won't happen again"."I felt under huge pressure at the point I was being asked to discuss something so personal," she told the court. They remained friends with shared children despite the break-up and continued to leave each other voicemail messages, to which she alleges journalists and private investigators listened.