Friday, 8th July 2011
GEORGE MICHAEL has led celebrities in having fun with the phone-hacking scandal, calling the demise of the News of the World "a fantastic day for Britain".
Like hundreds of other celebs, Michael is thought to have had his phone hacked by NOTW journalists and has frequently been a target of the tabloid press in general.
"You gotta have faith in Karma," he said.
"Today it's very real. And I hope the families of Milly Dowler and all the others who died get way more than an apology. God bless them."
The former Wham! singer also aimed his sights at NOTW owners News International and its CEO Rebekah Brooks.
"I believe every individual, whether privileged or the average citizen, deserves the law," Michael wrote on his Twitter feed.
"And many of us, rich or poor, have been denied it by News International."
Michael alleged that Brooks told him personally that the police were a prime source of her paper's stories. The Met is currently being investigated for its links to News International and some of its officers are accused of making over £100,000 by selling information to the NOTW.
"Rebekah Brooks sat two feet from me in my own home and told me that it was never the public that came to them with information or celebrities, and that the police always got there first," said Michael.
Lily Allen was also on Brooks' case, joking about the way the NI CEO managed to cling on to her job.
"Rebekah Brooks must have something on the Murdochs, or she gave them a really nice christmas present," said Allen.
But Allen admitted that she had been a regular buyer of NI titles.
"Today I will mostly be swapping our daily subscriptions to The Sun and The Times with The Mirror and The Guardian," she said.
Meanwhile, Hugh Grant, one of the celebs most vocal about the phone hacking scandal, didn't agree with Michael's celebratory stance on the passing of the NOTW.
The actor, himself repeatedly hacked by NOTW journalists, thinks the decision to close the paper is simply a "cynical stunt".
"The NOTW was going out of business anyway," said Grant on the BBC's Question Time show.
"It is a very serious managerial manoeuvre that has put several hundred people out of work and kept one highly paid woman in a job."
Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher also struck a serious note.
"[Phone-hacking] is probably the most gross an infringement of people's civil liberties as there is ever likely to be, particularly in the case of that young girl who died," said Gallagher.
"It's the dark side of the media."
Tickets for George Michael's tour, including dates at the Royal Albert Hall, are on sale now.
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