Heather Mills never authorised former News of the World editor Piers Morgan, or anybody else, to listen to her voicemails, she has told the inquiry into press standards.

Chat show host Piers previously told the inquiry he listened to a voicemail message left to Heather by her former husband Sir Paul McCartney, but refused to say when or where he heard it because he wanted to protect a "source".

Today Heather said she had never authorised anyone to access or listen to her voicemails.

"I couldn't quite believe that he would even try to insinuate, a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years, would relish in telling the court if I had played a voicemail message to him," she said.

Heather told the inquiry that in early 2001 she and Sir Paul had argued about a trip she was planning to Gujurat, and he later left a series of messages on her voicemail.

"In the morning, when I woke up, there were many messages, but they were all saved messages which I did not quite understand, because normally they wouldn't be but I didn't think too much of it.

"There were about 25 messages all asking for forgiveness of what had happened."

She told the hearing she had never recorded the messages and deleted them straight away.

Later in her evidence, Heather said she was told by detectives from Operation Weeting that they had evidence that her voicemails had been hacked. She then showed the court a home video which she had compiled of her interactions with paparazzi photographers.

Heather said that before 1999 press coverage of her had been positive but it became negative when she met Sir Paul. She said: "The second I met my ex-husband I became a one-legged b****, and cow, and every awful word you could think of."