The post you are reporting:
from the telegraph, i thought that paul mcmullan and hugh grant were mates.
I've just had a look at the BBC News' website. Number 2 and 3 on its "most watched/listened" list are clips of Hugh Grant holding forth on phone hacking and the amoral media. Public appetite for celebrity, it would seem, has not been dented by recent events. Viewers, listeners and readers would rather turn to the foppish Peter Pan of Four Weddings and a Funeral for his take on the crisis engulfing the fourth estate than to some unknown media analyst. I'm sure Rupert Murdoch will take note, as he plans the Sunday paper that will replace his News of the World: no more phone tapping, but the same focus on celebs. Readers will have no trouble moving on.
On Question Time last night (the first of those clips in today's BBC list) Grant didn't really look like a celeb. With his fine features, underfed air and greying short-cropped hair, he resembled one of those vicars who used to feature regularly in the News of the World. But if Grant was a vicar, there was also a tart - in the shape of Divine Brown, with whom he was caught in West Hollywood 16 years ago. The Rev Hugh Grant, riding on his high horse, was not always so prim and preachy.
Now, though, the born-again vicar of Sunset Boulevard has taken up the sword of righteousness to smite the sinners of Fleet Street (and not just of Wapping, he warns).
The naughty vicar is lucky. Britain is as keen on rehabilitation as an AA meeting: countless celebs have relied on the public's moral amnesia to rebuild their reputation. Porn stars, drunks, serial adulterers have managed to recycle themselves into someone socially acceptable, with an "interesting" hinterland. I certainly don't begrudge them their second chance; I just can't take Hugh Grant seriously when he waves that smiting sword of his.