Brooks denies laughing over arrest for beating husband

Rebekah Brooks spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about her arrest over the alleged assault of her former husband, Ross Kemp, telling a court that it was a ‘‘terrible incident’’.

Denying claims that she had made light of the altercation, Brooks said it marked the end of her marriage to the EastEnders actor and described her shock at being put in a police cell. She was responding to evidence in the phone-hacking trial by Eimear Cook, the ex-wife of the golfer Colin Montgomerie, who said that Brooks had laughed while detailing the domestic incident over lunch in September 2005.

The Old Bailey has heard that the arrest did not occur for another two months and Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, said that was ‘‘good reason’’ to show that Cook’s evidence was untrue.

However, she added that in any event ‘‘I would not have been laughing’’ about the arrest, which did not result in any further action, but was reported in newspapers including The Sun, which she edited at the time. ‘‘My initial reaction is, we have to see the funny side of things at times, but at the time it happened, it wasn’t funny. Everyone knows more now about my marriage to Ross than I ever thought. It was the end of my marriage. It was a terrible incident in my life, being thrown into a police cell, which has happened a lot to me in the last few years but then it was the first time it had happened.’’

Giving evidence for the fourth day, Brooks also denied Cook’s claim that she had said that phone hacking was the source of a story about Sir Paul McCartney.

She later told the court that she offered a convicted phone hacker a job at News International to avoid a ‘‘public and embarrassing’’ employment tribunal. Clive Goodman, the former royal editor of the News of the World, was threatening to implicate others after he was sent to prison and dismissed from No laughing matter: Ross Kemp, star of Britain’s television soap Eastenders and his wife Rebekah Wade, now Brooks, are pictured together in 1997. Brooks told a court yesterday her arrest for assaulting Kemp was a ‘‘terrible incident’’. Photo: Reuters the Sunday tabloid.

Police had told Brooks that their investigation into Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire had identified between 100 and 110 hacking victims, but the company was publicly insisting in early 2007 that the illegal practice was the work of a rogue reporter.

She said that News International, now known as News UK, which owns The Times, had ‘‘drawn a line’’ under the episode. ‘‘The company felt that although they believed that the [Goodman] allegations were unfounded, without any evidence or basis whatsoever, that to go through an embarrassing tribunal, which it would have been, and to cause more negative damaging headlines, that although they didn’t want to do a financial settlement, was there another option that could stop that happening?’’ In the event Goodman rebuffed the job offer and reached a settlement.

She was later asked to be a prosecution witness because she had been hacked with ‘‘frequency and consistency’’ by Mulcaire. She decided it would not be right to give evidence due to ‘‘corporate complexities’’.

‘‘Obviously I have had a belief, and still have a belief, that this was not going on under my editorship, the accessing of voicemails for stories. I still believe that now as I did in 2006. Perhaps not knowing didn’t equal it not happening.’’

Brooks and Andy Coulson, the former editor of the News of the World, deny involvement in a phone-hacking conspiracy. Their trial, with five others, continues.

Eight people, including a police officer and three journalists at The Sun are to face charges of misconduct in public office. The journalists at the tabloid are Tom Wells, Neil Millard and Brandon Malinsky. They will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on March 10, with Sam Azouelos, who worked as a Metropolitan Police officer, and four others.