Twelve months ago John Whittingdale had no idea his Culture, Media and Sport committee in the Commons would spend much of 2011 engrossed by phone-hacking. They'd already conducted two inquiries on the matter, and it had been three years since Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire were jailed.
But the revelations which began to emerge at the end of June 2011 triggered the latest investigation, leading to hundreds of millions of people around the world watching his Commons committee hearings, most notably during the appearance of Rupert Murdoch and the attack on him with a foam pie.
Whittingdale says it's made him something of a celebrity, particularly in the Murdochs' native Australia. "It did get an extraordinary audience," he told HuffPost UK in Parliament just before Christmas. "Funnily enough the committee was in Australia looking at gambling not so long ago, and we were told that we were all celebrities," he says, chuckling. "They had tinny parties where they all sat round, had a beer and watched the DCMS committee. It was just extraordinary."
Whittingdale says the committee's report on the News International evidence before Parliament will probably be published sometime around the end of January. He's understandably reluctant to pre-empt the findings of the report, but hints that they have reached some fairly definitive conclusions.
"We did feel very strongly that this specific allegation that Parliament had been lied to was sufficiently serious that we needed to look at it, so the evidence we've taken has been very much along those lines, looking at what we've previously been told and what we've now established to be the truth."
However he's not clear at this stage whether the committee - 11 MPs with strong personalities - can produce a unanimous report. "We will try, but just to get a report that most people will sign up to... will prove a difficult task."
It's been a long and busy year for Whittingdale. Known in public mostly for investigating the phone hacking saga, he's also heavily involved in some other key lines of inquiry - including whether MPs should be able to name celebrities with super-injunctions, as John Hemming did in May 2011. But he'll be remembered for dragging Rupert Murdoch to the Commons to face a grilling, when it was clear the media baron didn't want to come.
"The issue of the summons worked, and they came. Literally we had a 'no' in the morning, and a 'yes' in the afternoon. It was that fast a turnaround," he says, clearly pleased that Parliament flexed its muscles and it paid off.
He was unerringly polite and civilised towards all the key players in News International - despite a postbag which suggested he was both a "toady" of Rupert Murdoch and a weakling, who failed to slap down Tom Watson for calling James Murdoch a mafia boss.
"Tom has been most effective when he's been asking very forensic, detailed questions, based on a huge amount of research," he says. "I think the mafia comment, a number of people felt was over the top and didn't really add to his case."
Whittingdale is also fairly clear on whether Tom Watson should continue to serve on the CMS committee, now he's a member of the Shadow Cabinet: "Select Committees are backbench committees, and when people join the front bench they should stand down. When I heard he'd joined the Shadow Cabinet I assumed he would leave. Tom, I think, is very keen to finish this inquiry and obviously I fully understand why. He's said to me he's going to reach a judgement about whether he's going to continue the committee after that."
And the Conservative MP remains cautiously polite when describing James Murdoch: "He's tried to give us the impression that he's willing to help as much as he possibly can. And he has given answers to questions. The challenge is that some of his answers have contradicted what others have said. We have found it difficult to obtain the key piece of information. It's interesting that perhaps the two most explosive documents were supplied to us by separate lawyers' firms.
"Those were documents which existed at the time of our previous inquiries, we just didn't know they were there. Now they have been revealed; the first being the letter from Clive Goodman to News International saying he wished to appeal against his dismissal. That was given to us by Harbottle and Lewis. It has not been easy to get these documents but we can take some pride that we have advanced the knowledge of what happened considerably."
Whittingdale is clearly conscious of the other two inquiries underway into phone hacking - the broad Leveson inquiry into media ethics and the criminal probe by the Metropolitan Police. It's clear that the committee's findings are being couched with sensitivity to avoid jeopardising any possible criminal proceedings.
"We have backed off, in one or two areas," Whittingdale reveals. "This was at the specific request of the police, we have not pursued lines of inquiry because we have been told they represent key areas which may be used in future prosecutions."
His committee's work has thrown up difficult issues which Parliament is now grappling with. It's fairly obvious that someone has been lying to Parliament, but prosecuting someone for that specifically would be a legal landmark, and complicated by the other inquiries taking place.
"I've had some very interesting discussions with Speakers' Counsel, and with the Clerks of the House of Commons," says Whittingdale. "If you have the courts judging whether someone is guilty of misleading Parliament, you'll inevitably have the courts questioning Members of Parliament on whether their questions were fair.
"That is stepping over the line of the separation of the courts and Parliament, which carries huge implications. I know the House authorities are very worried about it. If Parliament wants to act against people who have misled it, it probably has to be Parliament that does it, rather than the courts."
Whittingdale is keen to stress that for all its headlines and famous-in-Australia implications, hacking has been only one of several inquiries he's undertaken this year, including investigations into gambling laws, Lord Triesman's allegations of corruption among FIFA officials, and the future of the BBC - something Whittingdale is clearly passionate about.
"The BBC will come out well next year with national events, they always do. They have sole broadcast rights to the Olympics, then there's the Jubilee, something the BBC always do very well."
But he's less convinced that the BBC cuts going through are being done properly - "I've always taken the view that the BBC is getting a lot of money and can provide perfectly well the programming under the terms of its remit within that sum" - and he also rejects the notion that the BBC is losing money; "whilst the licence fee is frozen, there is a steady increase in the number of households paying it, so the overall income goes on rising.
"The criticism of the BBC, which I have always shared, is that the BBC has chosen to make cuts in areas I think are very important, core public service areas, whilst at the same time you still see this extraordinary number of managers, vast salaries being paid to so-called talent, huge amounts of waste. They screamed it was the most savage settlement, but the extra savings are not that much worse than the ones they'd already pledged to do."
On wider coalition politics Whittingdale ends the year fairly relieved. He's one of the more eurosceptic Tories and believes Britain will end up with "a different kind of relationship with Europe" eventually - "though I accept that's probably not going to happen while you're in coalition with the Liberal Democrats."
What's he going watch on the TV over Christmas? "Oh, the usual ones, Doctor Who, Downton Abbey... I have a Sky+ box which is so full, because I haven't had a lot of time. I love watching television and have commercial tastes. Downton is less commercial. It's high-quality drama," he claims, adding that he likes to watch the X-Factor, although he does agree that ITV was "pushing their luck" with the number of adverts in the talent show.
He's glad ITV is making money again, but worries about the future for broadcasters and how they cope with the rise of TV on the web. "It's the elephant that's about to enter the room. It's sort-of halfway in the room, but early next year we have the launch of YouView. The extent to which it will change broadcasting, nobody really knows, yet."
Whittingdale is clear that something has to be done about online piracy, and the notion that people can consume creative content without paying for it. "We've passed the Digital Economy Act. It's tried to address the issue at hand, the problem is it's not getting any better. As soon as one site gets taken down, another ten spring up, and the answer is not just using the hammer of legislation."
So what is the answer? "There is no single solution. You firstly try to make the paid-for product more attractive, give people things they will not get for free, try to persuade people they shouldn't seek to take something for nothing, a moral and educational argument. It's going to be all those things. There are interesting new models which are doing very well, but nobody really knows, yet."