Times columnist Hugo Rifkind has told of the frustrations of being a celebrity journalist around the time that tabloid phone-hacking was taking place.

In his column on Saturday, Rifkind described his covering the world of celebrity as “rubbish” and told how he “just couldn’t figure out how” to get stories like the red-tops.

On his time writing a diary for The Times, Rifkind said: “I just couldn’t do this stuff. And yet, every morning, I’d open the red tops and they’d be positively bursting with exactly the sort of detailed celebrity froth I just couldn’t get. ‘How?’ I’d mutter, headbutting the desk. ‘For the love of God, how?’”