Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former spin doctor, has told the Old Bailey that he has not spoken to the prime minister for three years, and said his clandestine affair with Rebekah Brooks was wrong and "should not have happened".
On his first day in the witness box at his trial, Coulson said he and his family spent a weekend with Cameron in the spring of 2011, after he resigned as the prime minister's communications chief, and he and his former boss had not been in touch since then. In that time Coulson has been arrested and put on trial charged with three offences linked to the hacking scandal that closed the News of the World, which he and Brooks once edited.
Coulson told jurors that Cameron's invitation had been made before he resigned in January 2011 as the controversy over allegations of hacking escalated. "Immediately after [my resignation] my family and I spent a weekend with him in the spring after I left," said Coulson.
Cameron hosted Coulson at Chequers in March 2011, and it has previously been reported that the prime minister paid for the overnight stay out of his own pocket.
On Monday Coulson told jurors: "I haven't spoken to him since."
They jury of eight women and three men heard that Coulson, who was editor of the News of the World from 2003 to 2007, was arrested in July 2011 in connection with Scotland Yard's investigation into phone hacking.
He was charged in July 2012 with conspiracy to hack phones, and in November 2012 he was charged on two further counts relating to allegations of payments to public officials for royal phone directories. He denies all charges.
Coulson was asked about his contact with Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News of the World, before and after his editorship. He told jurors he spoke to Murdoch "on average" once every three weeks when he was editor of the paper, and their contact when he moved to Downing Street after the election in May 2010 was limited.
"Yes, sparingly," he replied. "Almost entirely at social events, his summer party – then there were also occasions while David Cameron met with Rupert Murdoch and, although I did not sit in on those meetings, I saw him either before or after," he said. "I think actually there were only two meetings, three meetings, two of them on the same day, I can remember between David Cameron and Rupert Murdoch."
Opening his defence, Coulson was also asked about his career, the use of private detectives by the News of the World and his affair with Brooks.
Speaking for the first time about the six-year on-off relationship, he told jurors at the Old Bailey that he wanted to take full responsibility for the affair, particularly for the pain it had caused his wife, Eloise, who looked on from the public gallery.
"There was an affair that started in 1998 and ended quite soon after but it did restart," he said. "It wasn't by any means continual. There were very long periods when the relationship was what it should have been – a friendship, a good friendship.
"But I don't want to minimise it or excuse it," Coulson said. "It was wrong and shouldn't have happened. I take full responsibility for what happened because of the pain it caused for other people, not least for my wife."
The relationship was revealed by the prosecution earlier in the trial as part of the crown's contention that Brooks and Coulson were so close they would have spoken about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone when they were editor and deputy editor of the tabloid in 2002.
Brooks and Coulson have denied conspiring to hack phones. Coulson denied knowing of Glenn Mulcaire's existence until August 2006 when he was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking. "I did not know the name Glenn Mulcaire until after he was arrested with Clive Goodman," he told jurors.
Asked about the figure paid to Mulcaire's company, Coulson said: "I would not suggest that £100,000 is not a lot of money, but in the context of a £32m budget it's not a massive sum.
"The NoW spent a lot of money, we had a lot of money to spend on stories and a lot of things. I don't want to be dismissive of £105,000, but the reality is it wasn't a lot of money in the business I was running. We paid double that, I think, to the astrologer."
He said he was aware of the name of one of Mulcaire's companies, Nine Consultancy, "being mentioned at some point in a budget meeting" in relation to possible savings the paper might make on use of private detectives for "finding people".
"It [use of private detectives] was not an area of News of the World that I was particularly interested in," Coulson said. "I knew they were used, but as to what they did I don't think I ever instructed a private detective, certainly don't remember if I did."
Coulson said the secrecy and intrigue at the News of the World created a "different atmosphere" than at the Sun, and he found the competition between features and news departments "frankly destructive".
"People were, particularly senior staff, were more secretive," he said.
Earlier the jury heard that Coulson lives with his wife and three children in Kent, having sold his London home and moved recently. He had to go to court to force News International to pay for his legal fees. Did they agree to pay them? his counsel asked. "I'm not sure they agreed it to be fair," he said.
The former spin doctor got his first taste of the media when he was 16 during work experience on his local paper, the Evening Echo in Basildon, after which he fell in love with journalism, he said. He had been set to join the air force, following in the footsteps of his father and brother, but decided this was the career for him.
At the age of 20 he joined the Sun as a freelance showbiz reporter, and after a rapid rise through the ranks he was made number three on the paper before moving to the News of the World where he became Brooks's deputy in 2000.
