British singer Charlotte Church has told a media inquiry in London that she was asked to waive her fee for performing at Rupert Murdoch's wedding in return for favourable stories in his newspapers.

Church, who shot to stardom as an angelic child with a golden voice after being discovered in a television talent show at 11, fronted the second week of hearings at the Leveson inquiry into media ethics in the UK.

When she was 13 she found herself on Mr Murdoch's private jet bound for New York, where she was asked to perform at the media mogul's wedding to Wendi Deng.

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The Welsh singer, now 25, told the media inquiry into press ethics that she was thrilled to be offered almost $160,000 (100,000 pounds), or favourable press coverage, in return for the performance.

"I remember being told that, you know, the offer of money or the offer of the favour in order to basically to get good press, to be looked upon favourably," she told the inquiry.

"And I also remember being 13 and thinking, who, why on earth would anybody take a favour over 100,000 pounds; but being advised by management and by certain members of the record company that he was a very, very powerful man, I was in the early stages of my career and could absolutely do with a favour of this magnitude."

Mr Murdoch's News International says Church's appearance at the wedding was arranged as a surprise and the media tycoon did not know that she was going to appear.

Church told the inquiry that negative press coverage about her started when she was 14, and she said she believed her phone had been hacked when she was 17 as tabloids fixated on her private life.

She said she suspected that newspapers had used phone hacking to obtain details about her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter.

And she said she had cut ties with friends she thought had leaked the information to reporters.

Church said airport staff and hotel concierges had been selling information about her to reporters since she was 16.

And she told the inquiry that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks containing details about herself and her close friends that could only have been gathered by hacking phones.

The former child star revealed that she was forced to hire security staff in the United States after a Sunday Times article provoked a backlash against her.

The article, she explained, had totally misquoted her as criticising firefighters who had risked their lives on September 11.

'Countdown' to age of consent

But her most damning evidence was reserved for News International's Sun newspaper, which published a countdown clock to her 16th birthday. She said the innuendo was that she would then be at the legal age for sex.

"With it, the innuendo of the age of my passing of consent, where basically I could have sex, and it was a kind of a countdown until that date, which was a little bizarre," she said.

"After seeing this, and after my whole family seeing this, just being totally appalled and, you know, I was really, really, severely uncomfortable with any kind of innuendo like that."

Church also said she believed the media intrusion even played a role in driving her mother to attempt suicide.

She said her father's affair was revealed in the now defunct News of the World under the headline "Church three in a bed cocaine shock" which had had a massive impact on her mother's health.

Asked whether the story had played a part in her mother's attempted suicide shortly beforehand, Church said: "At least in part. I can't think of any justification for printing a story like that."

Earlier, British TV personality Anne Diamond told the inquiry how the Sun splashed a photo of her baby son's funeral on its front page despite her and her husband begging them not to.

The market-leading paper then pressured her to front its campaign to raise money for research into cot deaths, she said, adding that she felt "emotionally blackmailed".

The media inquiry was launched by prime minister David Cameron in July amid the furore over the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World.

During the dramatic first week of testimony, Harry Potter author JK Rowling and actors Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller launched an onslaught against the newspapers they accused of ruining their lives.

ABC/wires