U.K. COMIC WANTS TO KNOW WHO ORDERED HIS VOICEMAIL HACKED

British TV comedian Steve Coogan has asked a London court to order former private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to disclose which executives of Rupert Murdoch’s news empire ordered him to hack the voicemail of thousands of celebrities and politicians, including Coogan’s. At a pretrial hearing on Monday, Coogan’s attorney, Jeremy Reed, said that his client “conducts business by voicemail messages. He tends to let messages stack up … There is essentially a treasure trove of commercial information on his voicemail at any one time.” Scotland Yard has confirmed that Coogan, who deftly plays unsympathetic characters — in the U.K. he has been the fictional blockheaded talk-show host Alan Partridge; in movies, he was the corrupt billionaire in last year’s The Other Guys — was a “person of interest” to Mulcaire, who had noted the comedian’s cellphone number, voicemail pin, password and other telephone details in his notes, along with the name “Greg” — presumably Greg Miskiw, the investigations editor of the News of the World at the time. A lawyer for Mulcaire has insisted that there is no evidence that Coogan’s voicemail was actually hacked.