I realise not everyone has access to the Times website so I've c&p'ed this article which, if you had misgivings about our PM's relationship with Brooks, will certainly confirm them. Enjoy
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David Cameron texted Rebekah Brooks in the week she resigned as chief executive of News International over the phone-hacking scandal to tell her to keep her head up.
An updated biography of the Prime Minister discloses that Mr Cameron told Mrs Brooks that she would get through her difficulties, just days before she stood down. Such contact then came to an ?abrupt halt?, although the Prime Minister sent an emissary to apologise for his sudden coldness, explaining that Ed Miliband had him on the run.
The details, coming two days before she is due to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry, provide a new and embarrassing insight into the relationship between Mrs Brooks and the Prime Minister.
No 10 is poring over Mrs Brooks?s evidence to the inquiry after Lord Justice Leveson last week allowed ministers and their aides advance sight of her submission. Mr Cameron?s inner circle was already braced for potentially compromising details to emerge from Friday?s hearing.
The book, Cameron: Practically a Conservative by Francis Elliott of The Times and James Hanning of The Independent on Sunday, details how Mr Cameron and Mrs Brooks would often ?pop round to one another?s houses? in south Oxfordshire.
?The wider public might have liked to know too of the text message that Charlie Brooks told friends Cameron sent to Brooks at the beginning of the week in which she resigned, telling her to keep her head up and she?d get through her difficulties,? the authors add.
?Such contact came to an abrupt halt soon afterwards, with Brooks not wanting to embarrass Cameron and he wanting to be able to say, hand on heart, that they had not been in touch.
?But it was claimed that Cameron did send an emissary to Brooks to mitigate his sudden coldness towards her. The gist of the message was, ?Sorry I couldn?t have been as loyal to you as you have been to me, but Ed Miliband had me on the run?.?
The book includes an astonishingly frank assessment by a Cabinet minister of the relationship between governments and News International in general and Mrs Brooks in particular.
?If you are on the same side as her, you have to see her every week,? said Oliver Letwin. ?This was how it worked.?
Details from the book, to be serialised in The Times, come as Andy Coulson, Mr Cameron?s former communications chief and the former editor of the News of the World, prepares to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry on Thursday. The book describes how:
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Two meetings between Mr Cameron and Mrs Brooks not included on the Downing Street list of such contacts: at the Heythrop point-to-point, ahead of which they texted each other to make sure they were not seen together, and at the Chipping Norton fair
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Mr Cameron is alleged to have asked the Metropolitan Police to open a review into the Madeleine McCann case in May 2011 as a favour for Mrs Brooks. The decision left police chiefs furious
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Royal courtiers told Mr Cameron?s team that Buckingham Palace would think poorly of a decision to take Mr Coulson into Downing Street. They had previously been pacified by the understanding that he would leave Mr Cameron?s side after the election
Those close to Mr Cameron are concerned that Mrs Brooks? testimony on Friday could revive question marks about his judgment in getting close to senior executives from News International, which owns The Times. Mr Cameron, a near neighbour of Mrs Brooks? in south Oxfordshire, heart of the so-called Chipping Norton set, has already suffered humiliation over being forced to admit that he had ridden a horse named Raisa loaned to her by the Metropolitan Police.
Lord Justice Leveson is expected to ask Mrs Brooks about her contacts with Mr Cameron and previous prime ministers. She was close to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during their time in Downing Street.
According to the authors, as Mr Cameron prepared for a meeting with her, Ed Llewellyn, his chief of staff, told him: ?Your turn next, Dave. Wear kid gloves.?
Asked about Mr Cameron?s apparent naivety in allowing himself to get so close to Mrs Brooks a News International source told the authors: ?Yes, but she really moved in on him.?
Mr Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, explained the Tories? approach to Mrs Brooks. ?The realpolitik is that you have to get on with people who run newspapers. Labour did the same.
?If you are on the same side as her, you have to see her every week. This was how it worked. It was what was demanded if you wanted them on your side.
?All of us should have said, ?We?ll have nothing to do with them and we?ll only meet them when we absolutely have to?. But the problem with that is if the other guy is doing it... it?s an arms race.
?I don?t think this was a love affair based on a misjudgment. I think it was a carefully calculated view of what you had to do in order to carry the people onto our side.That game is over, thank God.?
In May 2011, Mr Cameron asked Scotland Yard to open a review into the Madeleine McCann case, a cause supported by The Sun, also owned by News International. The authors suggest that a debt was being repaid for The Sun?s decision to back the Conservatives at the 2010 general election.
?There was definitely a feeling that Rebekah felt the PM owed them,? the authors quote someone intimately involved. Mr Coulson will give evidence to Lord Leveson tomorrow. Amid the warnings Mr Cameron was receiving about taking him into Downing Street after the 2010 election, the authors report: ?Representations were also believed to have been made by senior courtiers at Buckingham Palace, which had always been unhappy at Coulson working by Cameron?s side in opposition, but hitherto had been pacified by Coulson?s intention to find another job after the election, according to an unimpeachable royal source.
?The Palace insists the Queen herself did not initiate an attempt to influence Downing Street staffing, but acknowledged the possibility that Cameron?s circle was sent a message informally about the feelings of the royal Household about the prospect of the former News of the World editor in Downing Street.?