Leveson: Daily Mail owner spent weekend with Cameron and Hunt Lord Rothermere said: "The only conversation I had with any minister about media issues was when Jeremy Hunt arrived, we talked a bit about local TV. Jeremy was very passionate about his ideas for local TV and wanted us to be a core participant of that. Mr Jay asked whether the BSkyB bid was discussed, and Lord Rothermere said it was not. "You're sure about that, are you?" asked Mr Jay. "I'm absolutely positive," said the witness, who claimed that the full "ramifications" of News Corp's attempt to buy the 61 per cent of shares in BSkyB it did not already own had not yet sunk in. Is that really right? Mr Jay asked. It must immediately have struck you when the bid was announced in June, and I would suggest caused you concern. Isn't that true? Lord Rothermere, chairman of Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, said it would have been "bad manners" for him to accept an invitation to stay with someone and then "bore them with my problems." An alliance of media companies including the Daily Mail and Telegraph Media Group grouped together to oppose the proposed BSkyB takeover. It was eventually dropped last July after the closure of the News of the World over the phone-hacking scandal. Lord Rothermere also told the Inquiry he would "tease" the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre over his much talked-about friendship with Gordon Brown. He said: "I thought it was amusing...Paul has a view of the world which is, I suspect, quite different from Gordon, but they shared an affinity with one another, which is surprising."