FORMER Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft told an inquiry into press standards he believes his phone was hacked — and that press intrusion was linked to his father’s suicide.

The ex-Blackburn Rovers captain took out an injunction in April, 2001, to prevent the Sunday People newspaper running a “kiss and tell”

story about a brief affair.

This was overturned by the Court of Appeal in early 2002, leading to public humiliation for the married father when his name was disclosed.

Mr Flitcroft, who lives in Turton, told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that he “strongly suspected”

that reporters hacked his phone to discover details of a second woman with whom he had an affair.

But he admitted he had no firm evidence that his voicemail messages were illegally intercepted.

He told the inquiry: “I have no evidence at all. It just seems a massive coincidence that the same newspaper gets two girls in the space of a couple of months.”

The inquiry heard his father, John, stopped watching him play following the revelations.

Mr Flitcroft told the inquiry his father had watched him “home and away”, watching every match he had played in since the age of seven.

He said: “Me and dad were very close. He followed me, home and away, from the age of seven. I was his life.

“It definitely changed because of the taunting I was getting on the terraces.

He stopped coming.

It was Leicester away. The chants were so bad he said: ‘I can’t come and watch you again’.”

The inquiry heard Mr Flitcroft’s father had suffered from depression for a number of years but it had worsened following the newspaper stories.

The father of the former England under-21 star committed suicide while he was a psychiatric in-patient at the Royal Bolton Hospital in April, 2008.

Mr Flitcroft was asked he if felt press intrusion into his life was linked to his father’s suicide. He said: “He became housebound and started taking more tablets. He got into a real rut.

“My dad committed suicide in 2008. It was a long time after the injunction, but all I can say is it affected him a lot and it took away something he loved doing. His depression got worse because he stopped coming to watch me.

“There’s been some high profile cases lately.

Mine was a massive case and a historic victory for press freedom, according to (former newspaper editor) Neil Wallis.

“If they got the information illegally, then the injunction shouldn’t have been lifted.”

Earlier this month Mr Flitcroft was ordered to remove a bench created at a Turton churchyard in memory of his father.

A Church of England judge ruled that the memorials on the bench at St Anne’s Church, Turton, were oversentimental.

More than 40 parishioners had written to register their displeasure with the bench.

The family have been told they can install a new bench in keeping with the churchyard, featuring a single metal memorial recording his father’s name and the dates of his birth and death.

● Comedian Steve Coogan later told the inquiry that he has never said he was a “paragon of virtue” and had not sought fame.

Mr Coogan told the Leveson Inquiry he liked to keep himself private.

He added: “I have never wanted to be famous — fame is a by-product.”

On Monday, actor Hugh Grant told the inquiry he suspected the Mail on Sunday had hacked his phone.