Phone hacking in 1934

Roy Greenslade in a blog in the Guardian tells the tale of Trevor Wignall, a Daily Express journalist, who believed he had a scoop about the illness in the Australian camp during their England tour of 1934. But his phone call from the hotel room was intercepted and the story found its way to another rival newspaper.

Instead, he phoned in his exclusive from his hotel room and was delighted the next day to see that his paper gave his story front-page billing under the headline "Five Australians seized with mystery illness."

But his joy was short-lived because, on turning to the Daily Mirror, he found it leading page three with the same story (plus an additional casualty), headlined "Test sensation: six Australians ill."