Elton John accuses Mail of ‘abhorrent’ privacy invasion

Sir Elton John has called the alleged “invasion” of his and his son’s medical information by the Daily Mail as “abhorrent and outside even the most basic standards of human decency”.

- TARA COBHAM

Giving evidence at the High Court yesterday, the singer also described his claim against the newspaper’s publisher as containing “the most horrendous things in the world that you could ever suffer, from a privacy point of view”.

Sir Elton and his husband David Furnish are part of a group of seven high-profile figures, including the Duke of Sussex, actor Elizabeth Hurley and campaigner Baroness Doreen Lawrence, bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL).

Sir Elton and Mr Furnish allege that 10 articles about them between 2000 and 2015 were based on unlawful information gathering, including unlawfully obtained medical information and landline tapping.

ANL has strongly denied wrongdoing, with lawyers for the publisher previously telling the court that the claims made by Sir Elton and Mr Furnish are “unsupported by any evidence before the court and utterly baseless”.

Appearing in a green suit, blue shirt and tie via videolink on the 15th day of the trial, Sir Elton told the hearing in London that he and his husband took legal action against the publisher of the Daily Mail because they were “outraged”.

Speaking of the 10 articles over which their claim has been made, Catrin Evans KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited, said: “It is true you did not complain at the time that they were published, about any of them.”

Sir Elton replied: “We did not know the extent of the seriousness of what had gone on. When we knew the seriousness of what had gone on, we took action, because we were outraged.”