Neville Thurlbeck: it's a sorry business

Neville Thurlbeck's ability to reinvent himself as the newspaper industry's moral compass never ceases to amaze Monkey. There he was apologising on behalf of his former employer News of the World to Mary Ellen Field, Elle Macpherson's former adviser who is currently suing News Group Newspapers over phone hacking. He approached her privately before a City University debate on phone hacking at which the Independent editor Chris Blackhurst also spoke on Monday night. Field tells Monkey that he confided that his wife had told him to apologise personally. Then when the pair took to the stage, Thurlbeck announced he had just apologised privately to her. "There was phone hacking," said Thurlbeck. "It was a gross invasion of people's privacy, it had the potential to destroy careers, marriages, lives, and we'd lost our way." Field was confounded. "Myself and Mark Lewis [her lawyer] were extremely surprised. We didn't know what to say. We were speechless."