Piers Morgan calls Jeremy Paxman an "ungrateful little wretch"

Published May 23 2012, 16:48 BST  |  By Mayer Nissim

Piers Morgan has called Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman an "ungrateful little wretch".

The journalist-turned-presenter responded on Twitter after Paxman's testimony to the Leveson Inquiry today, where he suggested that Morgan once told him how to hack mobile phone voicemails.



"Right - that's the last time I'm inviting Jeremy Paxman to lunch," Morgan said. "Ungrateful little wretch."

Louise Mensch, Conservative MP and member of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, added: "Have to give it to @Piersmorgan humour! Really I don't know that further focus on historic, industry-wide abuses helps. What's future."

During his testimony, Paxman told the inquiry that he was once invited lunch hosted by then Trinity Mirror chairman Sir Victor Blank.

Morgan was present and reportedly imitated phone conversations between then England manager Sven Goran Eriksson and TV personality Ulrika Jonsson, who was also at the event.

"I don't know whether he was repeating a conversation that he had heard or he was imagining this conversation," Paxman told the inquiry.

"In fact, to be fair to him, I think [we] should accept both possibilities, because he probably was imagining it. It was a rather bad parody."

He later added: "He turned to me and said, 'Have you got a mobile phone?' I said 'yes', and he said, 'Have you got a security setting on the message bit of it?'

"I didn't know what he was talking about. He then explained that the way to get access to people's messages was to go to the factory default setting and press either '0000' or '1234'.

"He said that if you didn't put on your own code… his words, 'You're a fool'."