“People keep saying it is a very bad day for the press,’ said Coogan. ‘But it is a wonderful day for the press; a small victory for decency and humanity.
“People talk as if they have fallen below their usual high standards. They were already in the gutter, it is just that they have sunk lower than anyone thought they could.”
The hacking of his phone aside, Coogan has more reason than many to feel relief at the demise of the News of the World – as his own tangled love life, penchant for lap-dancers and taste for Class A drugs have led to him featuring in its pages on many occasions.
Yet both, bizarrely for a man on such a mission, were produced by the Rupert Murdoch-owned Twentieth Century Fox.