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Former model told BBC’s Newsnight that in 2001 journalist admitted listening to message following row with Paul McCartney Heather Mills on Wednesday claimed a journalist from the Mirror Group admitted to her that he had obtained a story about her and her former husband Sir Paul McCartney by hacking into her mobile phone messages. The former model told the BBC’s Newsnight that the unidentified journalist called her in 2001, following a row with the ex-Beatle, who was then her boyfriend, and quoted parts of a message McCartney had left on her voicemail after she had travelled to India. According to Ms Mills, the journalist rang her and “started quoting verbatim the messages from my machine”. Ms Mills said she challenged the journalist, saying: “You’ve obviously hacked my phone and if you do anything with this story … I’ll go to the police.” She said the individual responded: “OK, OK, yeah we did hear it on your voice messages, I won’t run it.” The interview will be shown on the programme tonight. It will place the spotlight back on the Mirror’s publisher, Trinity Mirror, and the paper’s editor at the time, Piers Morgan. Mills told the BBC it was not Morgan who called her, but the corporation has chosen not to identify the journalist. Morgan, who now hosts a chat show for CNN, has consistently denied hacking into phones, having any knowledge about hacking at the title, or running stories obtained by using the method. A spokesman for Trinity Mirror said: “Trinity Mirror’s position is clear: all our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct”. Morgan wrote a column in the Mail on Sunday in 2006 in which he described being played a message that had been left by McCartney for Mills. “It was heartbreaking,” Morgan wrote. “The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work it Out’ into the answer phone.” Mills was the subject of intense tabloid interest before, during and after her marriage from the former Beatle. She is considering launching legal action against the News of the World after the Metropolitan police confirmed to her earlier this year that her mobile-phone number and other details had been found in notebooks belonging to Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World. Morgan wrote in his published diary, The Insider, that following a personal request from McCartney he had pulled a story about Mills and McCartney arguing in 2001 over Mills’s decision to go to India to help the victims of an earthquake. Newsnight also claims it has established that other celebrities, including Ulrika Jonsson, beleive their phones were hacked by the Daily Mirror or its Sunday sister title the Sunday Mirror. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter ] and Facebook Daily Mirror Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Phone hacking Trinity Mirror Piers Morgan James Robinson guardian.co.uk