1. He retained News Corporation shares worth £40,000 throughout his time at Downing Street but was “never asked about any share or stock holdings”. Coulson claimed this was because he wasn’t involved “in any commercial issues”. In retrospect, he wishes he had “paid more attention” to the issue.
2. In a phone conversation confirming his appointment as the Conservatives’ director of communications, Coulson told David Cameron that he “knew nothing” about the phone-hacking committed by News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
3. Cameron sought no assurances after the Guardian reported in 2009 that phone-hacking was more widespread than News International claimed.
4. He “may” have had access to top-secret state material, despite only having low-level clearance.
5. The Guardian suggested to him that it was “possible” that the paper would endorse the Conservatives at the 2010 general election. Coulson’s witness statement revealed: “At a drinks reception in David Cameron’s office a Guardian executive told me not to ‘write off’ the idea of a Guardian endorsement.”
6. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown offered their “commiserations” when he resigned as editor of the News of the World. Coulson could not recall whether David Cameron did.
7. He was a “little disappointed” by the manner of the Sun’s endorsement of the Conservatives. “I felt it was more a rejection of Labour than a positive endorsement of us. If I’d had half the influence on The Sun that some claim, that front page would have looked very different.” (The tabloid’s headline was “Labour’s lost it“.)
8. Gordon Brown told him in 2006 that he had it “on very good authority” that Rupert Murdoch would appoint Coulson as editor of the Sun when Rebekah Brooks became chief executive of News International (Brooks’s promotion was eventually announced in June 2009, more than two years after Coulson had resigned as editor of the News of the World.) Coulson interpreted this an attempt by Brown to “impress on me his closeness to Rupert Murdoch.”
9. The other frontrunner to become Downing Street director of communications was Guto Harri, who went on to become Boris Johnson’s Director of Communications. Harri has now left Johnson’s administration and is rumoured to have accepted a senior press role at News International.
10. He was not involved in “any way, shape or form” in the handling of News Corp’s bid for full control of BSkyB.
Bonus: He sat between Rupert Murdoch and Whoopi Goldberg at a post-election dinner in New York. “I spent most of my time at the table talking to her.”
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