The email

Mr Justice Mann's full judgement in the Sir Cliff v The BBC attaches "significance" to a private email written by BBC UK News Editor Gary Smith to BBC North of England bureau boss Declan Wilson and Entertainment News Editor Matthew Shaw the weekend after the police raid.

"Thursday and Friday were very full on with Cliff. Fantastic world exclusive from Dan. But… there are some issues about exactly how his relationship with SYP developed. Things got VERY heated on Thursday evening when they took exception to a Danny Shaw 1800 piece (that arse [individual named] mixing it as ever) which accused them of seeking maximum publicity, and said they'd have to answer for their actions. (a piece partly motivated by Danny's continuing bitterness about not being allowed by his bosses to be first to name Rolf Harris, but that's another story). In a series of angry conversations with Matthew [Shaw] on Thursday evening SYP ended up accusing Dan of blackmail. (Yes they used the word blackmail). They said he came to them with loads of detail on their investigation and they felt their only course of action to protect their enquiry was to cooperate totally with him. This suggests to me extreme naivete on their part. But it also suggests (and Dan doesn't entirely deny this) a rather heavy-handed approach by him. He seems to have been nailing them to a wall, saying if they didn't give him a guarantee of an exclusive tip off on the search operation, he’d broadcast a story in advance. (Which of course we would never have done). One part of me is hugely impressed with his tactics. But it wouldn't look pretty if it came out – and it nearly did yesterday.

Anyway, the point of this long email is to warn you that Dan's had both a very successful and very bruising time, and we will need to talk to him further about his part in the bigger BBC. He just didn't get that – annoying and strange as it might be – BBC News has to report on itself in stories like this. And we'll need to talk through with him what's okay and what's not in getting exclusives.

I suggest we take him out for dinner on our Thursday night in Newcastle at the end of September. Either that or lunch on the friday.

In the short term, it's worth you repeating to him the message I tried to hammer home on thursday and friday – he should talk to nobody (apart from us) inside or outside the BBC about the genesis of this story.

There may be fallout this coming week (e.g. if cliff richard directly accuses the BBC of invading his privacy which he hasn't done yet.) So Dan may be called on by fran (who knows about some but not all of this) to explain the sequence of events. If this happens, he'll need a lot of guidance and support.…"

Any help with [individual named] much appreciated !