Notting Hill and Four weddings actor Hugh Grant has renewed his privacy battle with Kensington-based Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail, conceding he was not a "good church-going" person. 

"I'm the guy caught with a hooker," he said referring to his infamous brush with the law having been caught in a 'lewd' act with prostitute Divine Brown.

Speaking to BBC's Today programme he maintained his allegations to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ethics that the paper obtained information about his private life through phone-hacking.

The Daily Mail editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, has continued to deny the allegations, describing them as "mendacious smears". The Fulham-based actor disagreed: "I can see why they're cross because for once, someone has had the courage to question their probity and their honesty and, generally speaking, if anyone does that with a paper like the Daily Mail, however much they may go on about freedom of speech, no one is allowed the freedom of speech to question the Daily Mail.

"If you do, you will be trashed and that's what's happened again and again and again to me and to anyone else who has dared to question the Daily Mail. " The actor added that his case was the "lowest priority", adding that he was much more interested in the corruption of the police and the "cowardice" of parliamentarians unable to speak out against the press.