“The celeb clique against Murdoch was born at the Groucho. Steve Coogan was a prime mover, but there were others. There was a poker school there*. I think Steve played in it. Steve was, shall we say, a bit of a fan of mind-alteration at the time.

I have spoken to several celebrities and their agents over the last three years about their tabloid dealings. All but one of them (this group doesn’t include Coogan, by the way) trod warily about blowing the whistle on what they suspected as phone-hacking because they had been threatened with cocaine use exposure. The agent of one of these – a well-known model and TV personality – told me last Tuesday, “[She] was a regular at The Groucho. It had never occurred to me before that there might be visual evidence of substance abuse. But [name] was out of control at the time. She admits that, and she is now clean. But she spent a lot of time ingesting at The Groucho. Almost everyone did. And yes, she was told to cooperate or else her Coke habit would be splashed…but she’s still too scared to say that on the record.”