Rebekah Brooks’s meteoric rise to wield vast power from the pinnacle of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire should not be held against her when jurors decide whether she is guilty of phone hacking, her lawyer told a London court yesterday.

Brooks, a close friend of the last three British prime ministers, took the stand for the first time on day 62 of her trial, explaining how she rose from an ordinary background to become one of Murdoch’s leading editors in a matter of years.

The case centres on widespread phone hacking by journalists at the 168-year-old News of the World Sunday tabloid, which Murdoch closed amid huge public anger in July 2011, and on other allegations of crimes by staff on its sister daily paper The Sun, both of which she used to edit.

Brooks was cleared of one of the five charges yesterday on the judge’s instruction – that of authorising a payment to acquire a picture of Prince William in a bikini – but faces four other charges, which she denies.

Six others, including her husband who is accused of trying to conceal evidence, are also on trial. Brooks’s lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw urged the jury to forget the myth that had built up around one of the most famous women in Britain and to focus on the specific charges of a case that has rocked the country’s elite.

During the first few hours of testimony, 45-year-old Brooks detailed the advice she had been given by Murdoch. She said Murdoch would call the editors of his two British Sunday titles every Saturday evening, wherever he was, to find out what was going into their papers.

“He would ask what’s going on, that was always his opening gambit. He was news-obsessed.”

Brooks is still accused of four other offences relating to conspiracy to hack voicemail messages on mobile phones, authorising illegal payments to public officials and then plotting to hinder a subsequent police investigation.