Brooks on Gordon Brown:

At first their relationship was good. She was particularly friendly with Sarah Brown. The Browns held a 40th birthday party for her and attended her wedding.

But relations broke down after The Sun switched to supporting David Cameron on the eve of Mr Brown's keynote conference speech.

He became "incredibly aggressive and angry" after The Sun criticised his scrawled letter to a bereaved mother of a soldier.

She said the former Prime Minister, given the breakdown in their relationship, would have "hung out the bunting" when the news broke she had quit her job over the hacking scandal.

She also denied hacking into medical records to discover that Mr Brown's son Fraser had cystic fibrosis; instead, the information came from a source connected to a charity for the condition. She made clear she would not have published the story if the Browns had asked her not to.

On Tony Blair:

She met the ex-Prime Minister in 1995 after he became Labour leader and became "friendly". They had many meetings, including dinner 30 times between 1998 and 2007, three of which were between them alone.

There were no texts or emails because Mr Blair "did not have a mobile phone or in fact use a computer when he was Prime Minister".

Asked if a story about Mr Blair's plan to lead Labour for another five years in 2005 had been "planted" by the former PM, she said: "I can't tell you that at all."

On David Cameron:

She regarded him as a "friend". The Prime Minister apologised for cutting her loose, saying in an "indirect" message: "Sorry I couldn't have been as loyal to you as you have been to me but Ed Miliband has me on the run."

He texted her, telling her to "keep her head up" as the phone hacking scandal erupted.

She dismissed as "preposterous" the notion Mr Cameron would text her 12 times a day; they would text each other once a week on average but twice a week ahead of the 2010 General Election.

The PM signed off some text messages "LOL", meaning lots of love, before she pointed out it meant 'laugh out loud'.

She recorded one lunch and four dinners with Mr Cameron in 2010 after he had taken power. One was the widely reported Christmas dinner party at the Brooks's Oxfordshire home on December 23.

On News Corp's Sky bid:

She said the bid came up at the December 2010 dinner with the Prime Minister and suggested at least Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt would be "fair" as opposed to Business Secretary Vince Cable, who had promised to "declare war" on the Murdoch empire.

She stressed Mr Cameron always made it very clear it was a quasi-judicial decision but noted how George Osborne was "interested in our arguments" about job creation.

She had a "three-minute conversation" on the topic with the Chancellor at the December 2010 dinner.

"It was an entirely appropriate conversation," she insisted. "They were all saying the same thing – 'it is not my decision.'"

On the phone-hacking scandal:

She said she had discussed it with the Prime Minister occasionally but not very often.

"So maybe once or twice because the phone-hacking story was sort of a constant or it kept coming up.

"We would bring it up but in the most general terms - maybe in 2010 we had a more specific conversation about it."

On the Michel email about how Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt wanted News Corp to "guide his and No 10's positioning" on phone hacking, she said: "It speaks for itself."