Leveson inquiry: "Piers Morgan told me how to access private voicemails" - Paxman Published on Thursday 24 May 2012 01:17 Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan once told Jeremy Paxman how to access voicemail messages, the Leveson Inquiry was told yesterday. Newsnight anchorman Mr Paxman said he attended a lunch at Mirror headquarters in Canary Wharf in September 2002, where Mr Morgan teased Ulrika Jonsson about her relationship with former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, saying he knew about a conversation they had had. Mr Paxman said Mr Morgan explained to him how to access people's phone messages after teasing the Swedish television presenter about the conversation. Mr Paxman told the inquiry: "He turned to me and said "Have you got a mobile phone?" I said yes, and he asked if there was a security setting on the message bit of it. I didn't know what he was talking about. "He then explained the way to get access to people's messages was to go to the factory default setting and press either 0000 or 1234, and that if you didn't put on your own code - his words - "You're a fool."" When Mr Morgan gave evidence to the Leveson committee by video link from the United States last December, he expressly denied knowing that Jonsson's phone had been hacked. Mr Paxman yesterday said he remembered the lunch for two reasons: he wondered why he had been invited, and because of what Mr Morgan said. "Mr Morgan was teasing Ulrika that he knew what had happened in a conversation between her and Sven-Goran Eriksson," said Mr Paxman. I don't know if he was repeating a conversation he had heard or he was imagining this conversation. To be fair to him, I should imagine both, possibly, because he probably was imagining it. Mr Paxman said Mr Morgan put on a funny Swedish voice: "It was a rather bad parody." He added: "I don't know if he was making this up, making up the conversation. But it was clearly something he was familiar with and I wasn't. I didn't know that this went on. The veteran presenter said Mr Morgan's treatment of Ms Jonsson was close to bullying. "I didn't like it," he said. Mr Morgan, who now has his own chat show for CNN in the US, appeared by video link at the hearing in December last year. At the time, details from the lunch had not emerged, but he told the inquiry he was "still very proud of a lot of the very good stuff that both the Mirror and the News of the World did during my tenure as editor." The inquiry is currently examining the relationship between politicians and the media. Yesterday, Lord Reid, who was home secretary when the investigation into phone-hacking at the News of the World bore fruit, was asked why more was not made of it after the arrests of royal editor Clive Goodman and private eye Glenn Mulcaire. The pair were arrested on 8 August, 2006, and charged a day later and subsequently imprisoned for phone-hacking. Lord Reid said that at the time the government's and Metropolitan Police's focus was - to foil a liquid bomb plot.