You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. And come on on and today's guest we get Dan Whitton. Dan how are we? Yeah I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm happy to be in Scotland and it's obviously been crazy few months but I'm sort of coming back slowly but surely I hope. You've been in this different nearly 20 years. Yeah. You've broke some world headlines, massive stories, contacts. You've been very controversial as well let's be honest.  You spoke a lot of positivity. You've done a lot of good work as well but you've tasted the brunt of it when you see what it's like when they come after you which will touch on obviously but first and foremost how are you? Yeah I think I'm doing okay now. I cannot tell you how brutal the past eight months has been. It was Jordan Peterson.   But if they want you they'll get you. Oh yeah and they want to control the world and especially with the names you're going up against. Yeah. If I'm honest it was only a matter of time for people who know the ins and outs of how this operates but before we get into all that though I always like to go back to the start of my guess.  Yeah well it's interesting. My parents were what was known as ten pound poms so people often wonder what's my accent about because I was born in New Zealand but I am a British New Zealander so my mum was actually born in Essex. My dad was born on a British Army base in Malta but all of his family are Jordies so my heritage is British but I spent the first 20 years of my life in New Zealand. So I've always had this dual citizenship and that was awesome because it meant that I knew that I would be able to move to the UK. But my upbringing was really idyllic. New Zealand is a wonderful country to grow up in. I mean it's literally on the other side of the world.  So I think it made me you know I was badly bullied and had to deal with it with a lot of flak at school. And so I think you either go one of two ways. It either breaks you or for me it made me almost maybe almost too determined to succeed. What were you like at school? I mean I was a nightmare as well. The teachers hated me. Yeah so I've never been good with authority and as you've seen with my latest trails. Nothing's changed. Yeah nothing's changed there. So the teachers hated me.  So that does something to you. It makes you strong and steely. So I've always been someone that words cannot hurt me. You know no one ever physically touched me. I've never been in a fight in my life. Never been beaten up. I'm a big guy. So it was never a physical thing with me. It was always mental and emotional but yeah I always challenged authority and then I was really precocious actually and probably really annoying for the teachers because I was like a TV presenter when I was 15 years old on this cable show in New Zealand. I was interviewing the Prime Minister and doing things that were very annoying and precocious but I think for me it's because I just wanted to escape school. You know that was hellish for me. I just wanted to be out of school. I wanted to be living. I wanted to be working. Did you know because obviously when you come out is I think it was 2011, 2013 on Twitter. I think it was then but how was did you know your sexuality back then? Did you know you weren't a man straight away? Oh yeah. And I mean to be honest that is what maybe the first time I had tweeted about it but to be honest something I'm really proud about is that the entire time that I've been in the industry in a very masculine world Fleet Street and people always said it was very hypophobic. I remember when I entered Fleet Street which was around 2007. My first job was at the News of the World. Lots of people told me to hide my sexuality.  Now by this point all my friends, my family knew I was gay and I made a conscious decision not to do that and I'm proud of that. So I sort of hid who I was until I was about 21. You know I had a girlfriend and but everyone knew. Everyone knew. Yeah you know if something just an energy about it is not you just know if somebody's calm or somebody's just but again it's down to everybody even 2024 if we're honest and it must all be hard for people to come out especially with social media back then obviously it was more ruthless. Obviously I think things have changed a little but it must be difficult for people to then no matter who they are. Loads of straight men are still closeted today. I mean I know lots of married guys you know guys married to women who have relationships with men. What it actually is is not necessarily about wider society. It's that you feel like you've been living a lie and that all of the people who love you are going to think well what was our relationship like before that now of course they don't do that. You know nine times out of ten people are incredibly accepting and we'll say oh yeah we knew that anyway Dan or whatever we just didn't ask. But remember I was 21 so I was pretty young and actually I told my parents when I was 15. Oh that good. It wasn't great. It wasn't great. Especially if your dad been in the army. Yeah well it was my grandfather who was in the army but my dad is like a proper bloke you know he's a rugby player. He was a top rugby player for Wellington in New Zealand and he trialed for the all blacks you know but they were incredible.  I was like of course you have of course you have but it was just a different it was a different time but no they took it well but the thing is I was still in my experimental phase not knowing what I was going to be and actually that's one of the reasons now I'm really concerned about all of this crazy gender trans stuff that's going on with kids now. It's like kids can't make a decision about their sexuality when you're still going through puberty. Do you know what I mean?  Same as kids listen everybody's confused me you every human is confused and the reason being is because we don't really know what's going on in life in my own opinion and I've interviewed enough people to understand no matter who I interview nobody's ever get concrete clear vision of what why we're here on this planet now for giving kids puberty blockers and like I don't care if you're straight by gay trans be who you want to be I've got friends and all around the world all different races all different ages and I love them for who they are.  I don't tell them they don't do that job this and that because it's their life they everybody goes through different levels of trauma different levels of pain to then mold them into who they are. I don't judge people for what they've done in the past I judge people from what I do now and me too but with the trans debate to me it's child abuse and I have a really personal take on this right because I am convinced absolutely convinced that if I was at school now I would have some woke teacher in my parents ear saying oh we think he might want to be a little girl because when you're a little gay kid right and only gay kids know this you go through loads of stages so you go through the stage where you want to dress up as a girl you go through the stage where you play with Barbie dolls because you you're so confused about your sexuality you don't understand it you're like well I'm not like the other boys so maybe I'm like a girl now I never wanted to be a woman never in in a million years but I honestly believe that at that five six seven year old age now I would have had some teachers pushing my parents down that path and that makes me so angry and so concerned and I do believe this stuff that's going on you know I've interviewed people who have um detransition carabelle who was the one who blew the whistle on the tavern stock clinic um which was doing terrible things to basically lesbian young women convincing them that they actually should be boys now in her case she um had her breasts cut off she went through puberty blockers her voice is deep you know she'll never get any of that back and she's realized now actually she was just a lesbian woman so so yeah so I guess I think I probably have quite a unique take on it as a gay guy knowing that probably I could have been pushed down that path and it would have been so wrong but I can respect that because it's an understanding just because someone doesn't agree with what you is up with you or what how you feel it doesn't mean it's wrong everybody sees the world differently and I don't care who you are like leave the kids alone if you're going to schools at 10 11 12 as a father myself my job is to protect and I could be wrong maybe everybody should be going to schools and dresses and drag queens and reading story times maybe it should be but for me as a father I just let my kids enjoy life even the school systems backwards if the question that as well that why are we studying fucking mathematics and other shit and history that's irrelevant we don't even know if it's true or false anyway so kids should be out in nature they should be loving life they should know about loving they should know about money management they should know about love understanding she even talked about death as well at me but I think when people lose someone they can spiral oh yeah they can lose their whole life just from a day from 10 to 20 years ago seriously you are so right there is so much that we learn at school that is totally irrelevant and I look back and I think what should I have been taught at school taxes how you pay your taxes how you how you budget how you cook healthily how you count calories do you know what I mean like practical things that actually like still as an adult I need to know about and you just do not learn at school but yes certainly not pumping your kids with information about why they might be the wrong gender I mean I'm very traditional on this anyway I think there are two genders you know I think you're either a man or a woman but if someone wants to say that they're a woman I don't have a big problem with that but you can't tell people that they should be denying a scientific reality I think it's really disturbing yeah science biology chromosomes everything's there for a reason but again if listen if you want to identify as a panda batman superman I don't care generally I don't care I go okay fair enough but if somebody comes into me if I go to a mental institute and I see someone pretending to be batman or superman I ain't going to be there long walk yeah that's well done I yeah yeah there's there's something not that these aren't that these are mental health issues and people are too scared to say that but I mean I'm sorry when we have teachers actually bringing in bowls of food so that students in their class can pretend to be dogs I'm sorry this has gone too far this is insane now we've got to stand up against it why are you pushing it so much though because the woke agenda is so powerful isn't it so powerful it's connected to a much bigger picture in what's going on in the world you know it's all about the big globalist organizations the united nations the world health organization the world economic forum I genuinely believe that these bodies want to effectively take control of governments all around the world and so that's why I think it's really important that governments stand up to sovereignty it's why I was such a big supporter of brexit for example because I don't trust these globalist bodies I mean they're completely unelected I mean the United Nations is pushing mad ideology about things so I think I think the woke agenda is a dangerous agenda actually and it's not just connected to social issues although of course that is part of it but I actually think it's much more connected to being controlled but we are controlled as soon as we're born we're controlled we're labeled we're given names religions sports teams to support we cut the umbilical cord straight away which is full of stem cells and nutrients women aren't breastfeeding which causes abandonment issues that's difficult and then you're going through the schooling system with your program to condition to think this is the way the world operates people aren't standing back going wait a minute question everything because you know yourself there's always three tails sides to the tail there's two sides and then there's the truth hundred percent and I mean I didn't used to question things and I think what's really powerful is when you have that moment when you wake up and more and more people are having that moment now but I mean good as me if you told me 10 years ago that I would be questioning the United Nations I probably would have said well you've gone mad but actually for me I had two big moments of realization and the first was Brexit uh in the UK because what happened is um you basically had international bodies working with the UK parliament to try and overturn the democratic will of the British people you know the biggest democratic mandate that they've been in British history I mean to me I'm still not over that that's crazy and it nearly happened you know it came so close to happening it was only Boris Johnson and that 2019 election that stopped it so that was the first one and then the second one was of course um Covid where we saw the true dark forces that have the power to quite literally stop the world if they want to but the good thing is is I think they overplayed their hand and so a lot of people now have started to wake up to this. It's scary though how the world can get locked down now people are standing and pubs two meters apart and it's it's silly from I ain't a scientist or a doctor and I still question what if I was wrong an 89.9% survival rate of something that again is just a normal flu again but people listen the world is controlled with fear so because people ain't bad for following what they're seen on the news because people genuinely believe the government have got the best interest yeah of course so it's nothing to do with oh you're wrong I'm right it's just a step back question oh yeah because we could be wrong as well yeah by the way I've never denied the existence of Covid I had Covid in March 2020 really early and it was nasty right at that point it was a nasty virus uh what I always questioned was the need to lock down the world there were loads of other things that could be done and also unfortunately viruses are gonna virus and that's what happened and the only way to actually open back up is to get to herd immunity point but it was just so disturbing how quickly uh governments loved the idea of completely controlling a population it shows you how easy it can be done so I think that's why now we always have to be questioning authority questioning the establishment questioning the blob and obviously for me um the biggest thing that I'm passionate about because it's my area of expertise is the media you know I remember I was in the mainstream media for 20 years but I believe the mainstream media is completely corrupt and uh doesn't always tell the truth and actually very often doesn't tell the truth these days yeah but who does and that's why it's important for people listening and watching to question everything yeah now we just a couple of conspiracy nuts get your tin foil hat on people saying that's fair but people jump on a trend whether it's Russia Ukraine whether it's Palestine Israel people jump on a trend of what's trendy then and it's but I'm telling you I think you'll see of it though but it has to repeats itself consistently every 100 years we've got we've got plagues we've got fucking viruses we've got wars we've got fucking deprived people homelessness is on the rise there's over two billion people on this planet without water how can people without water this day and age 2024 with the food that we waste it's unbelievable how corrupt and poisonous the world can be for me keep yourself at stay open minded try and not watch as much tv come off your phone as well because me and you are in the system down even doing these sort of shows we still crave views we still crave attention we still crave to clear our name and stuff like that but the bottom line is if you get canceled or whatever it is who fucking cares what life goes on people get canceled it's not the end of the world who genuinely gives a fuck it just feels as if your whole world's come crushing down you've lost everything and you kind of want it back but again that's still ego that's still great because I've worked so hard to create a level of understanding and give people a platform and then to feel as if you've lost at all it's damaging towards this now 100 and I've had to realize over the past year that I have no right to a platform I didn't have a god-given right to to be on tv to write for the biggest news website in the world I didn't have that right but I guess what I feel heartened by is that where I see the media moving obviously looked at this really closely and you're an example of this is people want people are much more likely to trust an individual now than they are an organization and I think they're right to do that because it's easier to see inside one human being than it is a big organization that is probably being funded by billionaires has money coming from potentially corrupt states and I'm heartened by that but you're right no one has a right to a platform and one of the things that has been quite exciting for me actually now with launching my own platform is I'm going to have to earn this I mean I'm going to have to earn it there is a total democratization of the media now if people don't trust me they're not going to follow me thus certainly not going to help fund me and I'm not funded by anyone now apart from my audience so I think you're completely right a lot of it is down to ego in the mainstream media and believe me when you go through the sort of brutal cancellation like I've gone through you have no ego left no there is no there is yeah I'm not saying I didn't have an ego I mean I most certainly did but uh but yeah when you've gone through a cancellation like that your ego goes so humbles you oh yeah but then you become a better journalist and understand people now it's not just all one-way traffic because information that you've been fed for the last 20 years the majority that could be bullshit yeah you've just tasted that and now it's to make amends and then go okay listen I fucked up I need to apologize to a lot of people but there's only so many times you can say sorry without flipping my chapter and moving on what was it like having a girlfriend well it was it was odd it was odd but you know I was very much in love with her but I then learned it was something that does happen with quite a lot of gay men so I was I was 21 and she was 40 so often a gay man is attracted to an older woman when they are working out their sexuality is that a mother figure they're looking for what is that no I don't think it's a mother figure thing I think it's just someone who's experienced and who is quite worldly wise um but yeah my situation was quite crazy and I've never spoken about it before but she was actually the TV presenter of the show that I was working on as like a young researcher and she then so we were together about 10 months or something like that she then left me for a very famous actor a guy called John Rhys Davies who played Gimli in Lord of the Rings and he was 60 so it actually became like a bit of a story in New Zealand because I was 20 she was 40 she leaves the 20 year old for the 60 year old and that's when you know you're gay me and if somebody leaves you for a 60 year old I know I'm mortified but look it's it feels odd now um it feels odd now but I don't really have any regrets because I think you have to sometimes go through these experiences to know who you are because people struggle people struggle to talk how they're feeling and what they are even people with addiction gambling addiction drug addiction as for me back in the day it was too much pride I couldn't admit that was a fuck up or a failure because I thought how would people judge and now I know that everybody's the exact same we're all fucked up people relate to you more when you actually become honest so you coming out people are actually respecting more because that takes strength people speaking about it takes strength so when you avenge why do you think it is so difficult for men because every industry acting out any industry even the footballers there's only one or two men in the UK ever came out was gay come on man I must be one in every team I'm not I'm just making up these numbers but it must be so hard for them especially my manly environment yeah I do have mixed views on this being honest though because I mean I was very young when I was in that relationship and I knew it was never gonna last and I knew that that I was gay and what I do struggle with is for example you know Philip Schofields with his wife for decades talks to the public about how he's in you know this commission relationship with the woman then he comes out and he's hero worshiped by the gay community so the gay community hate me because they consider that I'm on the rise even though I've always been open about my sexuality for the whole time I've been in the industry you know from 21 onwards but all of a sudden Philip Schofield was a hero and I struggled with that because I thought well what about his wife what about his kids I mean there are you know look I don't judge people it's difficult and also I'm a different generation so I was lucky and I think the next generation like my boyfriend's generation was even easier to come out but I think you've got to be conscious of the people who you hurt you know so with my ex I was very young she was old or older my age now actually but you know I wasn't hurting her she left me for an older guy no damage was done you know you've you've got to think about sometimes who who you're hurting so yeah it's a tough one it's a tough one but no it's still very difficult to come out obviously there's loads of gay footballers we know that we know well I'm pretty certain who some of them are and there is still a stigma but I think some of it comes down to a bit of personal strength and a bit of personal bravery too because as I say and I'm not trying to big myself up but it was also really hard entering the Fleet Street officers in 2007 as a gay man I mean there was no one out and gay working on Fleet Street in any senior positions and I proved that you could do it do you see what I mean so we need a bit of personal bravery from people too yeah but again it must be hard for people to love that line once it goes too far there's no turning back that's the problem a lot of scorefield come on like how can you be a hero if you've lied and cheated on your way for over 20 years that was my issue and also you know because a lot of people you know it was one of the things that actually ended up leading to my cancellation because people have thought I've been a hypocrite over Phillips Gopher and it's like hang on a moment no I've I've never lied about who I am the whole time I've been in in the public eye you know once I knew that I was definitely going to be gay and I'd had the relationship with the woman and you know I'd had my little experimentation as I say I told my parents when I was 15 but that was like from the 21 years old and over you know I was always open about it always I mean but it's certainly not I think the other thing that's a big thing for me is I have the ever talk about being gay I mean this is actually quite odd because for me it's such a tiny part of who I am I hate people I hate them but I dislike people whose entire identity is about what their sexuality is I find that sort of quite dull do you know what I mean I'm in a monogamous happy relationship with the most amazing guy you've met today actually yeah Alan and he's you know we've been together for four years we are totally boring do you know what I mean like and I don't it's not a big part of me but I do struggle with that thing of oh you're a hero for coming out and I always used to find it really weird that there are sort of rules when you're working in the British media about you're not allowed to out someone which obviously like makes sense but sometimes there were guys who were like everyone knew they were gay and that and I was like well why can't we say that they're dating someone do you see what I mean it's sort of if there's not a stigma around it but everybody in Schofield was gay for years oh yeah it's the women of the T-boy I don't understand because even the kid Jack Jones had done a video with the balloons and it was like there's a lot of dark up there and these people no matter how dark it goes they'll keep their job because of organizations losing money losing views and it's just too much business oh no that that was the thing for me because again with Philip Schofield people thought that I had some sort of personal issue against Philip I mean he had tried to get me sat a few times right so I didn't love the bloke but it was never about that it was about the fact that ITV had covered up this relationship and the guy you know who remember I know pretty well was in a really dark place mentally and all of the loose women ladies were absolutely horrified because they were basically dealing with this guy having a breakdown on their show and I was working for the son at the time I was the executive editor of the son and we believed it was a legitimate story not because it was about Alteen Philip Schofield but because there was this cover-up with an ITV do you see what I mean but you know powerful forces you know ITV investigate themselves and clear themselves you know it's a loop ITV BBC listen people these are powerful forces and like we said earlier if they want you they'll get you well of course they do on the media but the thing about these platforms now this is a new media there's an understanding of the guest it's a longer format not to judge the person but to understand the person anybody can come on here and talk shit that's okay with them the thing about the UK public damn we can see through bullshit we can see through a lot of bullshit we're quite clued up on who's real and who's fake and the media now so do you remember like the son used to be considered the voice of the British public because this was before or like the working class British public this was before social media and I think that's why the son was such a big force because very often it would represent the public in a way the rest of the media wouldn't but actually that's really changed over the past decade because actually no we're not going to allow the son to tell us what we think about things because obviously the son went down the narrative of Phillips gofields a hero he's so brave he's come out I mean that's just one example that happens all the time and you're right the British public called it out and said no this is bullshit we don't support him and eventually Holly Willoughby sort of got the message and she turned but but I think the media or the mainstream media at least has lost its power and that's because of social media but they got it things were starting to build up with them especially the Queen's death when they were queuing up and Beckham was there 13, 14 hours in the queue if anybody should jump in the queue it should be Beck's do you know what I mean they need to queue jump zero Fox given you just he's just kind of and then people ain't daft people don't like that shit why should I mean I would not have even considered applying to skip the queue to see the Queen's coffin you know I could have I was doing the prime time broadcast on GB news that whole week I could have said oh there's no way that I could possibly line up for 13 hours so you've got it I just would not have even considered it so I do think it was a moment about entitlement and the thing is remember I for loads of reasons I've always been an outsider um but these sort of insiders and Westminster stuff they do believe they're entitled and they do believe that they should be treated differently because remember it wasn't just Holly and Phil that skipped the queue you know about it was loads yeah hundreds yeah yeah it was loads but hundreds of media figures they're the golden chiles are fucking they're the golden couple are day time TV man they were yeah and they'll had jobs everywhere and like I say things change people yeah no matter if it's 10 years 20 years things always come to the surface when did you come to the UK Dan where was the first it was the end of 2004 and I was 21 years old this relationship with the woman had broken up and it had sort of got into the newspapers so I wanted to escape but to be honest I'd always I mean as I said I was a weird teenager like my auntie who lived over in London she used to send like copies of NME or the Sun you know like because obviously it was pre internet or the internet was really young at that point I'm 40 and I'd read these magazines I'd be like yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna move to the UK I'm gonna make it in Fleet Street um it was my dream to do it um and you know I came from you know my from a working class background my parents were both teachers um you know did not go to to public school you know went to you know a normal school in New Zealand and um in some ways it was really unlikely but I as I say I sort of had this determination so when I moved over in the end of 2004 for the first um three months I literally had no money nothing so I had to keep getting little loans from my parents but I was so determined that I wasn't gonna work in a bar because that's what lots of Kiwis and Aussies come over and do and I was like no I'm not gonna do that really really want to get a job as a journalist so I was getting really desperate but I finally got a job and it was as an editorial assistant on I mean I hated it on like a financial publication called futures and options week which was about derivatives trading and I knew absolutely nothing about it right and was speaking to like hedge fund managers and stuff who knew I knew nothing about it but the point is like I had a job in journalism and it was an incredible moment I was being paid £18,000 a year I was actually living in this flat in Acton um it was a really famous flat that had been written about in the Australian newspapers right because what they've done is that divided up the attic into like 10 different partitions and literally like people would just sleep on the mattresses for like £5 a night so there were basically 20 people living in this house like it was insane but I put up with it all because I just believed that if I could enter journalism I thought that I would be able to make it but I didn't know anyone I had no contacts um you know because it is an industry where most not most but a lot of people get in through some sort of connection you know there's a lot of journalism nepo babies where did you get that belief from I think it was that upbringing well firstly my I mean my parents always instilled such a belief in me that I could succeed never in an overly ambitious way but as I say they were teachers they they really believed in me so then I believed in myself but I think the other thing was that it was because of how badly bullied in everything that I was I mean there's this amazing book called The Velvet Rage and actually speaking of Phillips Gopher when he came out I actually recommended that he read it because The Velvet Rage is all about why people have been closeted when they're growing up can be really angry about a lot of stuff because it changes your personality but the other thing in The Velvet Rage is that you'll see like people say why are so many gay men so successful professionally because actually you think about it there are lots of gay men right especially in like the world of entertainment media and it is because when you're growing up and you're having to hide who you are and you're often being bullied for it it gives you this sort of added determination to succeed but what you learn and what I certainly learned the hard way is that professional success does not equal happiness well we in percent this is a material world and I've got the nice car I've got nice watches but people need to understand being rich is a scam it's the biggest scam on the planet money's an illusion everything yeah it's a bullshit actually I craved that because I thought that would fill the pieces I thought that's where I would find my completion I thought that's where I would strive and be happy and the more I got it the more miserable because I realized wait a minute this don't make me happy because money we give it so much meaning and value for something it doesn't really exist we kill for it we die for it and for what the world is controlled by power you take away the currency you take away the money people need to interact wars wouldn't happen if people had a conversation it's not the young kids who are killing the people with the ones in suits pulling the strings and making the moves to make them rich again and make bullying so for me being rich is a scam and I can only see that because I'm doing well now so people need to it's good to experience new things I remember I got a Range Rover in a cringe because I thought that's sitting on post bottles and people think I'm doing well I remember driving down the motorway and I was fucking unhappy yeah because I realized soon that because I've built my platform slowly I've not just let these kids in love Ireland I've not just jumped in and I've got this overnight fame I've kind of worked at it now I can understand people that it's all bullshit because we all struggle so and I'm not saying listen it's good but who the fuck wants to be a billionaire in hundreds of mullies because the level of sacrifice and no life that these people have that's not the way I live in it because if you're putting food on the table for your family you're winning you're a winner you're a successful man or woman who it is who you want to and also you know who the genuine people around you are because let me tell you if you're a billionaire or if you're very famous hardly anyone around you is there for genuine reasons and I know that through my cancellation of over the past year you know the vast majority of people when you lose everything run away and so you realize who the genuine people are so for me obviously my family obviously my partner but then who is it well it's the people who really know me so the people who are at school with me the people who are at university with me you know my my friends from my childhood they were the ones who didn't care once I was cancelled because they know the real me and so I think you're completely right I don't mean again this might be a cliche but it is so true and remember I spent years and years and years covering all the biggest celebrities in the UK and the world the vast vast majority of celebrities are deeply unhappy quite twisted people and I don't blame them in a lot of ways you know it's a twisted world but yeah their heads are gone yeah people in reality show stuff and I'm friends with a majority of them because they seek help from me I don't have all the answers I can only speak because I don't drink don't take drugs anymore I'm on a good path I understand life but people need to stop buying into the fakery of social media because as long as you've got food on the table your kids are healthy your partners healthy you're winning everybody defines success and levels of how much money they've got differently but as long as you're getting up in the morning and doing something with a purpose of putting food on the table you're already winning now you can go and achieve whatever you want in life I'm all for that but just don't try and achieve what you think's going to fill the pieces because it's not as real as it's made out to be and that's where I get the good understanding of trying to promote a good message and it's hard for me to say this shit as well because like I say I've got a fucking Rolex on I'm driving a Range Rover but I just know that's not what wakes me up in the morning to go look what I'm doing in life I don't really show off I'm not I do my own thing I just love interviewing people spending time with my family family's difficult as well the other ones who are always there no matter what happens but it's still fucking hard to try and please everyone and do the right things but just people need to realize it's not what it's made out to be your life's not an adequate a shit because somebody's getting a private plane to Dubai because it's all fake don't buy into that bullshit yeah I mean it was interesting with me because I've never been driven by money ever money was just something that came but I absolutely was driven by success and obviously with the success that came in my world the fame that came was more notoriety if you know what I mean I'd say I was more infamous than famous because I was reporting on other famous people so it was never the money and the fame that drove me but it was success I wanted to be successful and you're so right that actually and again it's probably only over the last year that I've really understood this success is having a good family having a supportive partner being able to put food on the table and yeah maybe once a year getting to go on a lovely holiday together you know that actually is success so I was chasing I guess I was chasing the wrong type of success but we do because I could have fame I thought fame I would have made that I thought fame would have gave me and I'm only a very small where I'm going to go in life I'm very confident where I'm going but it's not where you're going to find your completion it's not where you're going to get your answers you'll soon realize that these people in that industry are so fucked in the head you can't even have a conversational majority of them are coped up majority of them are suicidal the majority of them are just pretending instead of being honest and going to work this is all fucked up because yeah every superstar out there the Elvis movie he was the most popular he was the most popular man on the planet but yet it was suicidal because he thought people would forget him Michael Jackson Whitney Houston there's just something that's not normal well no and also for every Taylor Swift there is a one direction and if you look at one direction you know four out of the five members and remember I covered them very closely at the time are really unhappy because they're never going to get that fame that they had so I mean it's hard especially for young people who who become famous but I do understand my people chase it and crave it but it doesn't provide the solutions yes you'll see these 90s stars still trying to hang on and all trying to get new groups together and boy bands I do love that and yeah that's what I'm saying but there's something and that they must crave where I know because if people are screaming outside your hotel and then that goes the fear is if nobody cares anymore but that's just all part parcel of that industry when I was growing up I would have done anything to be a member of blue right I thought they were literally and they still are don't be wrong I know a couple of boys are really good guys I thought they were the coolest guys on the planet and they are and I'm not taking that away from them but I got to know them really well right when I was doing the show but circuit and you know they have been through the mill every single one of them they've all been bankrupt they've all lost it all they have been betrayed by managers they've been betrayed by the media you know it's it's tough that's what I'm saying it's it's tough so you should always follow so for me and I actually did do this I never went into journalism because or broadcast because I wanted to be famous I went into it because I loved the pursuit of it and I just that's what I encourage people to do you know don't try and become a makeup artist because you you want to be an influencer become a makeup artist because you really love makeup and then let the other stuff build you see these people on x-factor and they say they love singing and love music they can sing in a karaoke bar with the same passion they're craving something because they think again and that's what the magazines and newspapers sell you that's a fucking wonderful life but it's not my life well no and I mean that world because again you know that was when I was at the height of my sort of I guess powers as a showbiz journalist was around the x-factor and I really got to know and like a lot of those contestants but you speak to them now and so many of them are totally damaged and traumatized by what happened to them even though at the time all they wanted was success on that show and remember they made a lot of money but the problem is they were all promised an unrealistic dream and as I say for every harry styles there's 10 000 who didn't make it and then have to go back and do a day job and that's really difficult what was the first big story you'd done probably the first really big one was my first weekend news of the world and I don't know if you remember there was a growing scandal about all of the TV big tv shows faking competitions and it actually became like a huge story and do you know james marson who hosts um saturday kitchen or he used to host saturday kitchen on the bbc so quite a famous chef and i'd got this tip off that the bbc which is obviously really bad was faking these competitions so what they would do is they would pretend that the show was live but still encourage people to ring in and into the competition and pay money right for a competition that they literally couldn't win because the show had been pre-recorded but why i was so proud of it is the way that we basically totally rumbled him is that he had his watch on and his watch had the wrong time on so it proved that the show wasn't live if you see what i mean so i had to go outside james marson's office and i think he yelled at me he swore at me but that was like my first big scoop and i'd sort of made it um and that was in 2007 when does it consume you though from try to get that big story for me and you and it's how it seems you try to get the big guess it becomes when i remember having a thousand viewers i remember having one thousand viewers and it's the halfest i've ever been since been on this johnny no we have mullions i think yeah so something must the wires must something must happen so yeah it's all consuming and it becomes quite addictive and that is not a good thing but obviously if you're a journalist there's something in you and there's always been something in me like people would say it's gossip and of course a lot of it is gossip but i love telling people things right but that can be quite toxic too so i loved breaking big stories i do think though and this is not to say that i've always been perfect in any way and i have admitted when i got things wrong but what i never ever set out to do is destroy anyone ever you know my sort of journalism was always about breaking good stories but usually with the cooperation of the people who you were working with right because there's a real i mean this has changed obviously with social media but before social media you know the sun's bizarre column and the news of the world show was column i mean they were the places to be if you wanted to sell an album so there was sort of a quid pro quo relationship going on however i would say over recent years you know i've learned that actually quite a lot of these celebrities who treated you like your best friend were doing it because they were probably terrified that you were going to write a negative story about them but my goal was never to destroy celebrities to bring celebrities down that was never the goal it was to write good stories about people but actually my favorite thing was interviewing people you know i love interviewing people and i loved trying to get big revelations out of celebrities you know and i interviewed all of the biggest stars many of the multiple times you know i was the first journalist who championed Taylor Swift in the UK for example when she was just a young country singer so i got to know her and her family really well you know Rihanna back in the the early days lady gargar before she she was famous Katy Perry you know so for me because i loved pop music so much i guess i never yeah i always saw it as yes sometimes we would have to write difficult stories but on the whole these celebrities would want someone who could present their side of the story but also promote their latest album or their latest because they say in all such things bad press was as true to a degree but the negative stories do come at a cost now you've tasted it now you understand it back then it's cutthroat people don't really question it because people got every bit of information from the world from the newspapers oh yeah and there was certainly people who so if we're talking about regrets and remember i was at this point a relatively small part of the system i became much bigger as my career went on but there's some i look back on and i was like no no no we took it too far one of them is a person who you know very well Kerry Katona and uh katie price too who i who i know you've interviewed recently and i knew both of those women and clearly in some ways that they're flawed individuals but they're also pretty nice people actually who were totally chewed up and spat out by fame and certainly there are times when i look back i think oh god no we we took it too far with them but they were selling papers and um they they knew they needed that do you do you see what i mean so because so i always preferred i guess my relationships with the a-list the sort of the a-list crowd because they didn't really need the newspapers and it was a different sort of relationship that you had you know if you're talking about i don't know pink or shinaya twain or people like that whereas Kerry and katie it was a different sort of world there aren't any papers over the day there was two of them and it must be damaging to the main that must be struggling because do you think as it comes our team when they just accept it as well because of who they are but they must come our team it must be detrimental to the i was really good friends with nikki graham uh who was the big star of big brother in the uk and she was anorexic before she went on big brother and she died of anorexia not too long ago which was absolutely heartbreaking to me now you look at that and it's a really difficult one should nikki graham ever have been allowed to go on big brother as an anorexic maybe not but at the same time um would she have had all of these amazing experiences in her life if she didn't it's you know it's it's really really difficult um and obviously the one who i get the most criticism of which is entirely unfair is caroline caroline flat because i worked incredibly closely with her and was friendly with her and friends with her for years for years and years and years and years i always had caroline's back always looked after her she was a really vulnerable person um but a narrative a completely untrue narrative around that has developed um because of some stories that the sun wrote about caroline flat that had absolutely nothing to do with me yeah the media did push that girl over there do you think but like i say i know people and she did struggle prior to that anyway i don't know the engine out of our relationship the thing is the thing is though it wasn't the me like so i was speaking to caroline through all of that time right i've still got the messages between us in all of those weeks before she died and caroline had actually said to me i want to do the interview with you i want to talk about what happened she was being advised not to the thing that pushed caroline over the edge was the fact that the police decided to overrule the cps and and charged her you know she could have just got a caution she should have just got a caution and it was the trial by media and it was also the fact that she lost her job on on love island too so yeah a really untrue narrative has developed around caroline and i and that's really difficult for me because how how can you you know i know what the truth is people close to her know what the truth is but sometimes when a when a media narrative develops it can be impossible to change how is that when you lose people that you know from shirts eight oh it's the worst it's the absolute worst um i mean that was yeah that was an utterly devastating time uh but i was also friends with mike thalassitis who was the love island contestant who had committed suicide or i don't think you meant to say that now but you know i i don't do the pc thing but had taken his own life a couple of weeks before caroline and i was actually at the funeral at his funeral with caroline so that and spoke to her there and then obviously just a couple of weeks she was in the same spot so yeah it's i think it posed big questions about reality tv i'd always thought for a long time because remember like there was that error of the x-factor where contestants were and i mean by the way i loved the x-factor it was my favorite show in the world i loved it i loved it when the judges were mean i loved it i can't deny that i loved that show but i always thought god what if one of these you know what if one of these contestants does something to themselves that could shut the whole thing down but of course it didn't shut down love island you know itv pushed on and it probably shouldn't i mean you can't ever blame someone else for taking their own life and i have experienced suicide in my personal world and it's a very devastating complicated thing where no one is to blame so i think yeah i think it's it's really hard when these media narratives develop around it which are very often unfair but suicide's always going to be a touchy subject for people to speak about but people struggle in battling and decide to end that day it's probably a bigger strength to take your own life that's how when you think about it that people would rather take their own life than actually speak about their problems because we're judged too much pride and we get judged of because bottom line is for any person on this planet nobody really fucking cares dan nobody genuinely really cares you you've felt it more so now when you realize the wait a minute it's different when you're working for all these big newspapers you feel as if you're the big i am yeah you're interviewing the biggest names on the planet like it must be a tasty thing of because my job is to interview the biggest people get the biggest story because it feels good certain interview in a day kind of exclusive and you kind of feels good of okay i must be doing something right but in 10 minutes later the fizzles who's next and obviously i'm not as dark in that industry of trying to get that story and it's very everybody's out for themselves always fought like the news of the world the sunday meal the mirror i thought everybody worked together but it all seemed as if everybody was out to get each other yeah i mean there was lots of competition for big stories but as i say i did it differently because the news of the world had been in this big phone hacking scandal right um which happened before 2007 and actually the royal editor of the news of the world a guy called clive goodman actually went to jail for hacking into foams so i joined the news of the world in 2007 which was at a completely different point where they had decided we're gonna do things legitimately and that was really good for me because i've been working for this this newspaper called broadcast magazine which was all about the tv industry so i never used the dark arts of tabloid journalism which had gone on for about sort of 10 years or maybe even longer 20 years before that so they were like private investigators and these things called blaggers which is when someone would like call up i mean stuff now you think god i can't believe that this is going on you know they'd call up and i don't know maybe your insurance company and i'd pretend to be you in order to get personal information and the hackers so that had all gone on right in fleet street but by the time i joined it had completely changed because no journalist is going to risk going to jail for a story right why are you going to do that the only thing that i would risk going to jail for and i've always said this is to protect a source so if i was ever in court and a judge told me to reveal a source of a story i would go to jail if i had to because to me that is the fundamental principle of journalism that you protect your sources and it was a disgrace that over the time of the phone hacking scandal lots of these companies actually handed over their sources to the police i just i find that absolutely abhorrent but that's a slight aside the point that i was making is that when i came into this in 2007 it's like if i break the law i will go to jail right and when the news of the world shut in 2011 do you know news uk the company that was at the time news international handed over all of their staff's emails to the police so lots of people were arrested lots of people ended up on trial if i had done anything illegal i would have been arrested you know the police were literally doing dawn raids of journalists homes to arrest them so the great thing was i always knew i was completely clean i did a different sort of journalism i did like the old school journalism which was all about talking to people meeting people offering people opportunities with payments do you know what i mean i'm very honest about that we did checkbook journalism you know katie price you tell us about your new boyfriend here's a hundred thousand pounds do you know i mean that's what was going on but i never tried to invade someone's privacy by breaking the law or like reading their emails or the phone hacking stuff was crazy and the gaza i had gaza on and i laughed because i had gaza on and i laughed because it is fucked up remember he was drinking back then yes and he he loved the people who surrounded themselves with stories kept getting into the papers he ended up falling out with everyone around them family members relationships the trust goes and it turns out they were hacking a poor bastard phone and that was the terrible thing about hacking and obviously like i've asked myself lots of times don't get me wrong what if i'd been there earlier right and all of you're getting involved yeah and all of it but but but genuinely though i wouldn't have because princess dayana had the bodyguard on then they were getting one million pound for an exclusive for i know i know but the thing is right you know as a journalist right and wrong yeah and reading someone's that's cheating do you know basically it's the equivalent of a bodybuilder taking steroids to win a competition it's cheating where where's the satisfaction in that journalism is all about using contacts or official means to get the true story do you see what i mean so if you're just hacking into someone's phone yeah you're getting the true story but it's grim so i look i just know i would never have done the juicy the difference in celebrities at the start of their journey to them when they make it oh god yeah god yeah they all change i mean taylor swift is a great example of that right i mean and can you blame her probably not but she was just a truly genuinely lovely human being so i remember the first time we met you know her mom's there she went down to pink berry and got us the frozen yogurts and i'm literally in her hotel room and we're talking for hours she's got the Grammys the next day but she's not the big star of the Grammys at that point you know i mean she's doing a duet with with miley cyrus on stage and every time i'd see her to begin with she'd treat me like a friend you know she'd call me a friend um she'd actually say hello friend you know that's how that was her thing and then by the last time i had interviewed her which was in cologne germany and this is around the time of um after 1989 but before reputation you could just see there was a big big change and there was so much control so i was there with a different crew from itv news and taylor's team actually took their tapes because they had control of the cameras and like edited out certain answers and gave them the tapes back so they refused to to run the interview i wasn't doing an interview with her like that i was um working for the lorraine show on itv at the time i was the show was presented so we weren't trying to trick her out but she was just different she had changed obviously by that point the canyé west thing had happened and she turned on the media and she viewed the media as her tormentors yeah and so then i i sort of fell out with her um which i think was a shame because no one had been more supportive of her in the uk right from the start but again it's one of those things now with hindsight i look back on and i think yeah but she felt like all the media had turned on her do you see what i mean she couldn't see anything positive anymore about giving interviews or having these relationships with the media because she'd been so bad badly burned by that experience with kim and canyé i would say though taylor knew how to give it out too yeah you know she attacked her enemies she seems to be the time and again the biggest name on the planet oh she is she is and you know what she deserves it because her music is good and i i think that's what it comes down to in the end i've always believed in that in pop it's like if your music is good enough you will prevail how did this stay relevant do you see them when they had a number one album other yeah they're super powerful and then it's slap slap do you see that change also when they go from the top to the bottom and it's actually really sad to see it's really sad to see because so many celebrities at the peak of their fame right they regret that they didn't make the most of it and you see them years later and they're desperate they're desperate to have the opportunities that they had at the time but at the time and one direction is a great example of this they were just under too much pressure to actually enjoy these incredible experiences they were having and you know i felt like saying guys you should be enjoying this because you're never going to get this again and believe me you're going to want it and of course that's what happened they go solo there's only one big success story that's harry styles and the rest of them are going to spend the rest of their lives trying to achieve the success that they had in one direction they'll probably never get it again but there are a few genuine legends i think left and they were always the people i was most interested in and you know what's interesting they are always the ones who are the kindest so clearly i would see the likes of little mix you know who i adored and i knew them when they were little girls and then they become divas and nightmares that happens right that's sort of the process but the people who i had the biggest respect for were paul mccartney dolly parton um probably i'd say rihanna to sort of the the the true the true big stars know how to treat people right know what they have to do in interviews you know they've got to give enough of themselves and they treat people well but i guess it's easy for them to do that who's your most interviewer do you know what i do really like her now but it was definitely kim kardashian uh because she just didn't give a damn honestly i've never seen anything like it she had a blanket over her she was on her black brie the whole time she was nearly like falling asleep um yeah she but again i think she's learned a lot of lessons though over the years too because i don't think she would ever do that now actually i think she treats people with lots of lots of respect but you know i love crazy celebrities do you know what i mean like i was on the road with like kanye west and mariah kerry and justin beaver right all three of them now you can't say that the three of them are nice people but i love them i mean total divas absolute nightmares but come on isn't that what you want a celebrity to be i mean i don't want my celebrities to be down to earth i mean mariah kept me waiting eight hours but then she allowed me to like just be part of her entourage and just follow around i found it absolutely fascinating justin is like um the rudest little kid do you know what i mean like the most precocious difficult nightmare of a guy but of course of course he is you know he he's been in that world since he was really really really young kanye clearly a genius but really troubled and i got to know him just after his mum had died so clearly that was like a really tough time for him and actually britney too you know really really lovely woman um but someone who has been so hit hard by fame and used by so many people um so yeah so i i think look you don't want your celebrities to be normal do you i mean i don't i found it fascinating yeah totally and for a journalist it's the perfect story yeah because it sells papers it makes you money it keeps you keeps everybody relevant if you're creating all stories but they like i say those names it shows you how and you can't even know all the shit you went through you've still got to give credit for credit steward those names are the biggest names in the world that's you at the peak of your power how was that feeling for you well i think for me i had i love music i love the world of celebrity i wanted to interview the biggest names in the world but for me it was about actually getting people to talk about things that they wouldn't talk about in normal interviews it's very much what you do you know i had my podcast when i was at the sun and it was my goal to get madonna on that podcast and i'd interviewed her previously um a couple of times and she's the most difficult interview you can ever have you know she's not i you know um by the way again i love her but she's not kind she's terrifying do you know what i mean she questions your questions and she's tough but i built up the trust with her enough to have her on the podcast and she talked really really openly about difficult things in her life being raped um about controversial subjects like why she thinks instagram is really evil and i don't want her to be easy so yeah i mean i would say i interviewed or got to know the biggest stars on the planet in a particular period of time and that was amazing i think we're losing a lot of stars now they're in many ledges you're not a star from yeah people can be a bigger star on social media and tiktok than actually someone who's got a talent like it like your freddy mercaries and just people who you would i would have loved to have interviewed them i watched that movie and i thought wow that was fucking unbelievable michael jackson i watched that was it we are the world i think on netflix oh yes yes and just go and for me that was stars that they were probably that's who i see celebrities steve wonders ray charles michael jackson well think of who we've lost as well whitney houston prince you know they are the true definition of stars but of course the star system has changed because as you say now celebrities hold the power so i was there during the transition towards social media and i understand it i mean why if you were a young celebrity so ed sharon's a good example of this i mean again i got to know him very very well and i think he's a really decent normal person but by the end of the time that i was interviewing him because i was moving off to do politics and different things he said to me dan why would any celebrity choose to be interviewed by a newspaper or magazine anymore because he's like even if you give me a fair interview what's going to happen and it's completely true still happens today is that there's going to be one line one quote buried within the interview you may have contextualized the quote but every media source in the world usually led by the mail online but followed by all the other websites is going to pull out that quote twist it put some sort of tabloid framing on it and so i sort of understood where he was coming from because i would be writing you know the full 2000 word piece or having the 45-minute podcast or whatever but but the world now works in sound bites so i understand i mean he does very few interviews adal very very few interviews but you don't need to do them at that level they're not even anything they're already they're multi-millionaires oh they've got too much money anyway but the adal seems and it's the ones who don't give the most social media that yeah that's what Ed Sheeran does he only puts his music on social media which is a good thing how does it work then dan so if you've got a story Ed Sheeran for instance do you need to give it to the editor or someone higher up to ring tick it off yeah and how could why does human beings gravitate towards the negativity that one headline because nobody wants to hear that i'm doing well and i'm staring Barbados that why do we gravitate towards the shit headlines i mean it's so funny like if you work at a place and this happened when i was working at gb news you know they'll do market research and the audience will say oh we want to have positive stories right you want to have positive stories you write a positive story you do a positive show you'll see the ratings or the viewing numbers plummet you know people are interested on the whole in in negative news but yeah at newspapers there's a whole system that creates the news and that was something i mean when i got quite senior by the end of my time i could usually control it but that is something that can be very frustrating as a journalist because you can present your story in an accurate way but then it goes through the sausage factory of the newspaper production process which means you take your list into a conference when you're sitting around a table with about 15 executives they decide whether they're interested in the story or not they're listening to all of the different stories you know so you'll have the news editor who's doing the news of the day the politics editor who's going through all the politics of the day the sports editor doing the sports today so they then decide which stories from each list they're interested in using and then what page of the paper they wanted to appear on but of course during that process what they also sometimes decide is what angle they want so so often of course with a story it will be about the headline or the picture selection and as the journalist you're not necessarily in control of that so that's something like i'm so excited about now with my new platform because it is completely independent so a new platform for people to check it out yeah so it's dan outspoken uh which is either at dan outspoken.com or on youtube as well uh which is because i'm gonna have a daily news and opinion show starting soon but i'm putting up video content in the meantime but it's the first time in my entire career where i don't have an editor who can potentially manipulate what i'm trying to say so that's obviously really empowering also quite terrifying yeah because i don't have the big media lawyers who have my back but you know johnny depths are really an interesting example of that because you know he ended up suing me and the son in the uk courts and amber heard gave evidence on our behalf so that was the uk case now we won that case right and then he won in in the us when it was directly against amber heard but the whole reason that court case happened was because of an online headline that called johnny depth a wife beta now i had never written the words wife beta ever i'm not lying and saying that the column wasn't critical of johnny depth it was but i'd never called him a wife beta so you can imagine my frustration around that right and that's what i mean by the newspaper sausage factory production process someone on what they call the back bench it's newspaper terminology right in the uk for the person who writes the headlines and don't get me wrong these people at the sun they are geniuses like they're so clever like they come up with some of the best headlines in the world like meg sit was created for my story at the sun by one of those genius people on the back bench they're great but in that case they caused huge huge issues for me because it's on my story do you know i mean it's got my name on the story but i never called johnny depth a wife beta how is that then like you say interview and all these people because that last few years all kind of got messy like the johnny depth thing was that court case because of that headline was that all through that headline yeah so basically he i think he wanted i mean look loads of things had been written about him all around the world but he chose my story to make his line in the sand and i do believe it was because of the headline that called him a wife beta um but as i say the story was tough and i've admitted my regret now and ever getting involved in johnny depth versus amberhead and by the way like that isn't me turning on amber it's really really not um because i was your friend aren't you i wouldn't say she's a friend i mean i literally never met her but obviously she then gave evidence in court on my behalf so i got to know her our politics are completely different right we're on the other ends of the political spectrum she's very woke she's very lefty but yeah i liked her i liked her i got to know her really liked her and i think she's had a really unfair time genuinely and i think we're all going to look back in 20 years time and think whoa we treated amberhead like we treated britney spares you know it's tough and how would people have felt if amberhead had committed suicide over the coverage that she received you know so the sad reality is because of that court case and it was shown on tv i don't think people would have been asked because it all went against her i know and the thing is i didn't even know it was 2011 they met she was only 22 and he was 50 i only thought it was a couple of years ago because of the court case that that was just kind of coming to her head then like she was and i'm not sticking up for her taking sides because i love johnny the the guy did lose 40 50 million whatever it is i don't know the ends and outs but i did see a lot of stuff on line in the court case and it made it was a very toxic relationship yes both of them they blame to a certain degree million percent from what i've seen but she was only 22 and he was in his fifties i think she was to go to an edition and he was the producer and they kind of met her and that's where the relationship stemmed from and it was that movie um god what was it called something about rum i saw it actually and look what my issue is is that and this was the bad side of me as a tabloid columnist right is i chose to insert myself into that story completely unnecessarily like why am i getting involved i don't know what happened i don't have any particular insight i call it a carnival of commentary you know i got involved in that carnival of commentary loads of journalists did but johnny chose me as the line in the sand as the person who he wanted to take to court at the time i thought that was a crazy decision right i'm like what are you doing why are you doing this all of your dirty laundry is going to be aired in court and it was and come on that case was not good for either of them the text messages were awful it was just awful the whole thing but and this is the big but i have now seen how an ex can try and destroy you with completely untrue allegations just because they hate you so much because they want to bring you down because they cannot stand that you have had success after them and it's just made me so much more wary about ever getting involved in something like that i think it has to follow due process you know so my view is that amber had legal recourse she had the option to go to the police she didn't want to at the time it should have been dealt with that way then the media should have backed off because there was nothing criminal against johnny we didn't i didn't my column was actually about jk rolling and that that gets lost in all of this it was it actually wasn't even about johnny dip basically i was accusing jk rolling of being a hypocrite because do you remember johnny dip was in the fantastic beasts franchise and jk rolling had stood by johnny dip but at the time jk rolling was big in the me too movement and saying we should believe all women now i don't believe that i don't believe we should believe all women i don't believe we should believe all men it's like it's got to be case by case and it's got to be based on evidence and and fat but i was wrong on i i was wrong to get involved that's my point i was wrong to get involved it was very different to other stories that i'd reported on so for example if you look at the other big stories i've been involved in the controversial ones which are like meg sis and harry and megan or the philip scofield story i was i knew everything about those stories i was involved in those stories do you know what i mean i was talking to the people who were involved i had actual journalism you know i revealed all of the big things about harry and megan and the royal family and scofield at this morning so that was different because i knew stuff that added to the story with johnny and amber i didn't know enough do you see what i'm saying i i i just made a judgment and i should not have got involved in it and i think johnny felt like and obviously at the time i thought he was idiotic for doing this and i wrote about it and his fans will never forgive me they will never ever forgive me the debt pads but now i understand that he basically felt like this was the only way for him to clear his his name and you can understand the depths that he went through like you say but they didn't do anybody favors but it did favor him most he did lose pirates in the caribbean i think deor stood by him deor survived me i gotta appreciate that but but none of the studios did none of the colleagues get rid of him and how damaging that is to him i think he's 60 and he's 60s now so one of the same things happened to gavin spicy yeah right so he was cleared was enough toxic well he's he compared to johnny he's actually been cleared in america and the uk right both so he won both his cases and he's still being cancelled to this day the big studios will not hire him so the mission of my life now james is to try and and some people call me a hypocrite right but i would argue actually because i know both sides i may be the best person to do this the mission of my life is to bring due process back to reporting we have to believe in innocent before proven guilty we have to allow both people to tell their sides of the story because i went through trial by social media and it was hell it was absolute hell and there is no due process in that whatsoever does that make you question the articles you've written it past to how people what they actually went through with some of the stuff that was written yeah so that's why for example i issued the public apology to johnny um and that's why for example with people like katie and kerry i would say yeah we went too far but not on harry and megan not on philips goford you know i'm not saying that there isn't a place for strong journalism and actually i think i was very very moralist journalists really interesting right so so when the whole world was coming down on me right and i was trending number one in the uk for i think three days in a row and you know that's a lot that's a lot you know you'll be the most talked about most googled person and it's all bad it's all bad there's nothing you know it's not for anything positive it's all bad but and i think this is pretty telling james right so so this was the opportunity for any celebrity who had an issue with me to speak out publicly like everyone was coming out against me right and only one did only one celebrity spoke out against me publicly and that was lily ellen and we have a long history right lily ellen and i and i'd say we both gave as good as we got to be honest she was no shrinking violet i think we do the same age do you know what i mean and i actually loved her music but she was really difficult and we had a few public rows and she called me out for a very nasty tweet that i'd sent and it was really horrible actually it was when she was having i think she'd collapsed at glaston brie after some sort of binge and i wrote a horrible tweet right but think of how many celebrities i've covered and interviewed over the years like hundreds and one spoke out against me publicly so i'd like to think that that shows that on the whole i tried to get things right and even like with katie and kerry for example like i'm friends with them both today i talked to them both i've interviewed them both do you know what i mean i think there's an understanding that i didn't always get it right but i wasn't trying to hurt you i wasn't trying to damage you i like you why was a johnny depp court case televised in america yeah so they just have different rules state by state and obviously it was a disaster for amber that it was televised because the uk case was not televised so did amber won the uk court case well what was it because i know yeah one one but a lot of people don't know that so this is so this is what the depp fans basically say that johnny only won because in the uk and this is what people have missed the uk case was actually johnny depp versus dan wotan and the son in america it was johnny depp versus amber heard but amber heard gave evidence on my behalf and the judge sided with her so in the uk it was a judge-led trial in the us it was a jury-led trial you know but if you speak to people in the us who i have huge respect for like my friend megan kelly who's like the top one of the top legal commentators in the uk as well as being a brilliant broadcaster and you know her view is that johnny won that case fair and square but in the uk the judge came to a different decision yeah that's a messy thing and amber did not look good than that at all everybody was siding for johnny and even for women that stops women from coming actually forward the majority of people don't come forward the cause of things like that can happen and it stops actual victims from coming forward and it shows that listen the majority of sexual crimes come from men but the majority of false accusations come from women so it's i know and the thing is we cannot forget that there is a high number of false accusations so for example we now have care starmer who's you know probably going to be the next prime minister of the uk i call him slippery starmer and he basically says all women should be believed you know if an accusation is made against a member of parliament they should lose their job immediately how terrifying is that you know about one in ten complaints about high-profile celebrity investigations for example in the uk there was the utri investigation which was sparked after the jimmy savel case which was a terrible cover-up right he was like the most prolific pedophile in the country and was allowed to get away with it for decades covered up by the bbc so then there was a big investigation lots of other celebrities went down well one in ten that the detective in charge of utri said that one in ten of sexual assault allegations were untrue i mean that is a really high number and so when people are going around saying believe all women that is really crazy and i just ask people to think especially people like slippery starmer how would you feel if some woman came out and claimed that you sexually assaulted her at university and you had to stand down and lose your job was well potentially prime minister of the uk no we have to allow due process to play out so what i'm campaigning for is that you should not be named until you have been charged by the police so that means that the police and the cps this is talking in a uk context and i know it works differently in other parts of the world but that means that the police and the cps believe that there is pretty much like an over 50 chance that you could be found guilty of this crime before that why on earth should should you be named because what this is encouraging people to do is weaponize the justice system and it happened with me the allegations were completely untrue but the police were pressured into an investigation and then it's like oh the police are investigating there must be something in it no no the police investigate to see if there's anything in it yeah men need more protection because i interviewed that man just a few weeks ago called brine banks he was an nfl rising star and then you never even slept with this girl he met behind like a library or whatever it was she accused him of rape he went to um so no evidence no nothing but he went to prison and then that his lawyer was telling him look just plead to no contest you about soon the kid gets six years lost his life six years had done in prison lost his livelihood his mother ended up homeless sold her house in her car for lawyer fees and then what happened is 12 years later the girl admitted that she was lying the girl get 1.5 million compensation as well that guy only got 200 grand after 12 years so men need more protection but again a lot majority of sexual crimes come from men and a lot of women are scared to speak out so it's understandable but for printing names and destroying lives beforehand that needs to stop and remember James especially when you're talking about high-profile people because the difference is right if you're i don't know a builder or a lawyer or something like that probably you can keep doing your job if there's just an investigation into you obviously it's different if you're a teacher or or something like that but if you're a high-profile person you can work 20 years to build up your reputation and it can be destroyed in 20 minutes all you literally need is one tweet saying that you're being investigated for something people say there's no smoke without fire and that lack of protection is despicable given that we know we know that loads of these allegations now are being made for political reasons or to destroy someone specifically to destroy someone and you know what's terrible is that it's it's actually a crime to falsely report a sexual assault but very rarely do those people end up in prison. One who did was a guy called Carl Beach who was a notorious pedophile and he invented this whole fantasy around Operation Midland where he claimed loads of high-profile political figures in the UK including the former prime minister had been molesting him all completely made up but the left-wing media in the UK and this guy called James O'Brien who works for the biggest radio station in the UK called LBC just parroted it all. Carl Beach is now in jail as a pedophile and one of my false accusers is being investigated now by the police. He actually has the most despicable track record James he went to jail in Scotland for four years for extorting over a hundred thousand pounds out of gay men right the judge described him as a compulsive danger to society he gets out of jail he then does exactly the same thing to me where's my protection there and also what i'm thinking about most now is not me what about the next person who he does this to it's so disturbing and he's not named. So how did all this start then like you say probably the most dark times of your life when you've done an interview with Lauren Fox i think he said something about nobody would shag or something like that listen you never in your defense as well when i'm trying to look at every angle and understand that women may have been hurting we're living a day in age where you've got to be careful certain things that you've says but you never really interacted with what he says i think you had a little giggle but why was this the start of cancel Dan Wooten was this the start was this the start of it how did it work well it was sort of the end of it so what happened there is there's a journalist in the UK she's like i call her a leftist flamethrower she's called Ava Santina young beautiful woman seems to be very anti men she had done a debate on the BBC basically belittling the idea that there should be a minister for men even though there's a minister for women and even though male suicide is one of the biggest crises facing us right as a western society not just in the UK but all around the west because men are under so much pressure and being attacked in so many ways and she was really belittling about the idea of having a minister for men so Lawrence Fox you know famous actor very controversial figure he comes on my show and says that he would never want to shag this woman now as it turned out i didn't know this at the time but Ava Santina has used the word shag in a pejorative way about men time and time again on social media but she feigned absolute outrage and it turned into like this huge beat up of myself and gb news where i was presenting the number one show in prime time at the time now what the issue was is that i was accused of not sort of taking down Lawrence enough do you know what i mean so so so the view was that i should have stepped in and said Lawrence you're completely disgusting for saying that apologize now you know that's what the broadcasting regulator in the UK called the off-communist who sort of control free speech on tv in the UK but i called off combo i called in the off-communist um that's what they think i should have done now actually what i did is i stopped Lawrence look through my ipad to try and provide some balance because someone in my air had said i should try and provide some balance so i read out Ava's tweet which responded to this controversy and then i said but Lawrence she's a very beautiful woman so i thought i was doing the right thing right i mean as we've discussed i'm a gay man most of my best friends are women i'm like the least misogynistic bloke in the world i don't you know i absolutely love women um but off-com said that i had actually made it worse by describing her as beautiful so basically Lawrence is getting in trouble for saying that he didn't want to shag her i'm getting in trouble for saying that she's beautiful and we both effectively lost our jobs i mean he was suspended then sacked i was suspended for months and months on air as this huge investigation went on the whole thing was a chronic overreaction i mean Megan Callie who she appeared on my show each week as well so she was waiting in the wings on zoom watching all of this whole thing she couldn't believe it turned into what it turned into and she said i'm the first broadcaster in the world who was who was canceled for not being offended enough by something and i thought about that i'm like oh my goodness you're right and what i never wanted to do James is be that person who just played devil's advocate for the sake of it that i hate that i didn't want to do that i didn't i wanted viewers to know that i would be genuine so like i wasn't offended by what Lawrence said right i wasn't offended by it so i wasn't going to speak out against it for the sake of it then anyway turned into this massive scandal everyone's talking about it's leading the BBC so i'm told and this is probably what ended up finishing me off i was told you've got to apologize and again Megan who went through a very similar thing in America where she had to apologize for something she said as well described it as the hostage video apology so i basically issued this statement that wasn't written by me you know it's what your so in this situation you know the crisis managers come in and they say post this this will save your job you've got to do this and at that point i'd been through a lot because there'd been all of these false allegations made against me i was not in a good place mentally right at all i probably should have just taken a bit of time off but i didn't i pressed on i went on and i did my show every night and so i issued this apology on x and Lawrence who i'd actually spoken to that morning i thought he was cool with it but he hadn't seen the apology so he reads the apology thinks i'm throwing him under the bus so he then throws me under the bus by posting a private message exchange that we had had direct message exchange that we had had on x which made it look as if i was laughing about the whole thing to be honest i wasn't i was talking to him about a previous segment of the show it was just a stupid look you know like i was on air Lawrence had sent me a funny message i sent him a quick message but it made me look really bad so then i was suspended and look Lawrence and i are fine but i did think that was a terrible terrible thing to do i mean as i said i've told you during this interview i would go to jail to protect one of my sources like if you were to ever come to me to reveal something or be the source of a story that would go to my grave with me that you were the source of that story no matter what happened down the track so the idea that i would ever post someone's messages to me publicly to try and damage them no i just wouldn't do that and you know for Lawrence it's cost him a lot of friends actually and a lot of trust so Lawrence and i are still friends but there's a lot of people who really liked Lawrence and had defended him a lot who thought that was a step too far but fundamentally i don't actually think it was this incident which is why it became such a big thing it's because there had been this witch hunt against me going on for the eight weeks or 12 weeks prior to that and all of the mainstream media were looking for a way to get rid of me effectively because just before all that happened as well everybody knows with the harry and megan thing you're very outspoken you broke the story of them leaving yes how did you get that story because that was world headlines yeah one of the biggest cup celebrity well celebrities whatever you want to call them but one of the most known couples on the planet and americans love the royalties they love megan and harry as far as i know but how did you how did you get that information so basically i had been working i'd basically been breaking stories about megan and harry since a few months after they got married because you know became the biggest story in the world but what was frustrating me is that all of this stuff was going on behind the scenes so there's huge fallout between harry and megan and the rest of the royal family including the late queen by the way and no one was writing about it because there's this weird system in the uk called the royal rotor where the royal reporters are like officially sanctioned to cover the royal family and i actually described the more like stenographers or like prs for the royal family they don't really want to rock the boat because the other people who you know with um i don't know king charles goes to a trip to india the royal rotor they're all on the plane they go to all the events with him they see him every day so they don't really want to go against the narrative right and i'm a journalist that believes in exposing the truth especially if the truth isn't being told so i believed it was a story actually of constitutional significance and it turned out to be that way given they left the family in such dramatic circumstances or left the firm in such dramatic circumstances but actually the first story that i broke became quite famous it was known as tiara gate and it was basically about the fact that the late queen and megan had had a big row over what tiara she was going to wear at the wedding now there's been much said about this at the time but since the time sorry and megan and harry have put their version of events and you know there's disagreement about the exact details but the fundamentals of the story were true right which is that the late queen really didn't like megan and the way she was acting and had told harry off about the way that she was acting and within that story i also revealed that kate or catherine the princess of wales had had a fallout with megan so this was the start it was the first time it was the first time any mainstream media outlet in the world had reported on any issues between megan and the royal family of course we know things were actually a lot worse than that you know prince william and harry were physically going at each other against indian palace you know it was bad but it's really hard to be the first because it was all denied you know everyone said it was untrue no no no they all get on great what are you talking about oh this is just this you know tabloid hack dan wooden making stuff up again but i knew it was true right so i kept working on the story and i broke lots of stories over the months and months and actually people started realizing that i was the person with the ball to break the true stories so i got more contacts more royal contacts as i went on and it culminated in megsett and i was actually on holiday in new zealand it was just after christmas 2019 and i got a text message saying you're not going to believe it um they're leaving for good and i worked on the story for about 10 days while i was on holiday in new zealand it was nerve-wracking because they and harry has actually since revealed this in his book where he described me as the sad little man and you know i'm not little that's mad that he's put you in his book though well yeah because because i mean he really dislikes me but um can you understand why though i actually can't because i was not none of this was about me disliking harry or megan right i dislike them now but none of my reporting was about disliking them it was just the truth it's like he's admitted all of these things happened in his book do you see what i mean it's like he did fall out with everyone he did fall out with william they did want to leave the royal family so i don't really understand it to be honest because the other thing is that i was talking to all of his team as well who were briefing me and giving me information um i didn't want to destroy them or anything like that that was that was not my goal it's just this was a big story i mean i'm you know fifth in line to the throne the son of the queen sorry the son of the uh now king quitting the royal family i mean it's a huge story totally legitimate completely in the public interest and they wanted to scupper me breaking the story so they wanted to announce it themselves but luckily i beat them to it and it obviously became known as meg said and then all hell broke loose because of course we had the opera interview the claims that megan was suicidal and the royal family didn't help her which is just i mean it's bullshit it's just bullshit it's just not true and the problem is that compulsive liars about both of them see i love the idea because of princess diana like i actually loved her i didn't know her but i seen the way she operated the move she seemed like a kind hearty person i don't know her but i always wanted the idea he was i seen his mum and him i seen okay he's trying to protect his misses and i could understand that but then he says they want peace but then i started questioning what wait a minute you've done a netflix documentary you've written a book because he always seemed a good kid when you see his mum and stuff like it must have been hard for the questions obviously they'll know the answers what happened to their mum and people can go down the conspiracy and question marks everywhere and it's understandable the way it happened but well of course it is i mean diana wrote a letter saying she was going to be killed in a car accident i mean look i'm not saying that we should not be asking questions about the death of his mother but the problem is that he sees everything through that prism so he sees himself as a victim now look the way that he lost his mother was terrible right but he is one of the most privileged men in the world james i mean come on he has wealth and opportunities that we or anyone listening to this could only dream of so he went through a terrible thing but he had an opportunity to do whatever he wanted to do real good and for example with the Invictus games it's very difficult to criticize that isn't it i mean what a great initiative you know something for injured service people to give them hope that's the point of the royal family and instead what he did is allow himself to be captured by this woman megan who's not a nice character you know who's a very fame hungry and you know because remember i've done lots of reporting on megan and what she was like before she was in the royal family and you know she was trying to like i mean she was just desperate to date a british guy like she tried to date ashley coal uh the footballer ex of sheryl tried to date matt cardell the guy who won the x factor tried to date max george who was a member of the wanted she just wanted a famous british guy that's for whatever reason she'd broken up with her husband she wanted that i mean she hit the jackpot prince harry i mean come on and she never wanted it to work within the royal family that was that was too hard for her so they they concocted this narrative of like racism and it's just not true it's not true they were given so much support so i thought the story was really legitimate and yes now i am i guess on the side of the royal family that comes to this but i still think the royal family deserves scrutiny too and as a reporter i've broken lots of stories about william and kathryn and prince andrew which is obviously a big scandal too so i think the harry and meghan thing was completely legitimate public interest journalism and i think the public had a right to know and i'm proud that i did it because no other journalist was telling the truth about what went on it takes guts but like i say i like the fact of his mother try to protect the family but then i did see the netflix documenting it does raise question marks she is an actress again i don't know but something does it do you think he's on on your go on your go on i was just gonna say diana because i love diana right growing up my young closeted gay guy she was like the ultimate i thought i think she i honestly think diana is princess diana the most incredible celebrity of my lifetime she's like a true icon like if you look back the last hundred years who do we have jfk martin luther king jr mariland munro and princess diana i honestly think she's at that level of celebrity and she did so much good as she changed the royal family forever do you honestly think princess diana would want her youngest son literally going to war with prince william her elder son who she adored and she knew was going to find it so hard to become the king she would be disgusted with what harry had done on that front and harry attacked kathryn in the book and camilla it's like surely there's like there's got to be like because the problem is how can charles and william ever forgive him because they are trying to protect camilla and kathryn so he says he's trying to protect megan right okay fine but then harry is turning on their wives do you see what i mean it's it's nasty when did it all start turning is that a case of him being naive how manipulate the situation and being an actors or is he get apart to play in it because it may be things that happen to mama what's the whole and he was vulnerable wasn't he i mean he was clearly a vulnerable guy sort of flapping around in life not knowing which direction he was going to go in and i think megan massively took advantage of that but at the end of the day james look i know everyone has their own family issues but to me family is everything family is blood you know i stick by my family through everything they stick by me through everything and if you have an issue you deal with it privately so for him to publicly attack his father his brother his mother-in-law his sister-in-law in the most brutal manner well they're not going to forgive him for that now once you've done that you can't take it back do you see what i mean because he's saying reassurance was involved yeah and then saying oh no we didn't say that it's like no no no you literally did you literally said that there was a royal racist who commented on the color of unborn archie's skin which by the way i mean like my sister is um in a relationship with her baby daddy samon right so that's pacific island country different skin tone like you are interested you're just interested about what babies are gonna look like it's so not racist and actually here's the thing william and kate are really modern couple they're a really modern couple i mean actually they're quite woke on a lot of issues the idea that they are racist is ludicrous and what about charles and the queen like their absolute passion has been strengthening the commonwealth you know the the the the late queen i'm not talking about camilla talking about queen Elizabeth the second her absolute passion was the commonwealth right when you look at the commonwealth what are the most deprived areas of the commonwealth africa parts of the caribbean india it's just ludicrous to suggest the royal family is racist now the royal family is white yes that actress from bridgeton described it as terribly white or horribly white whatever on the day of the coronation no it's just white they're a white family we are a majority white country i think 85 white here in scotland it's about 95 percent white you know that does not make them racist they are not racist but the royal family it seems to be wouldn't say fizzling but it seems to be messy they know with the hardest situation kathryn as you you say but it doesn't seem to look good for the royal family trying to say kathryn people get people tell me off for this james because i naturally call her kate because that's what we knew her as but people say now you should be respectful which is the future queen she wants to be called kathryn so i'm trying but i've got to be respectful but again things it seems to be a mess and it's never the royal family always seem to have things under control it doesn't seem so now especially with books and netflix documentaries that how who's giving that the green light i mean i always thought the royal family had the most powerful family in the world i wonder the most powerful family obviously you've got families that people will never hear about but why is it these stuff been given a green light and it makes it look weak it's been oh god what it's been the worst 18 months hasn't it for the royal family but the thing is james the late queen was probably i would argue this is at least my personal opinion i'd say she's the greatest ever monarch certainly the greatest ever monarch in modern times i mean i could not have imagined a world without the queen and so it was always going to be really difficult right the queen dying because you lose that connection to history there were very few people who remembered life before the late queen and on the whole in this country in the uk and around the world you know on the whole people like the monarchy i'm a big royalist doesn't mean that i don't think they should be scrutinized but i'm a big royalist so that was always going to be hard then you have massive scandal with prince andrew you have massive scandal with harry and megan so lots is riding on charles and william charles gets cancer badly he's he's waited his whole life for this but he's in his late 70s he's aged overnight i mean that's pretty heartbreaking because all of a sudden his reign is completely derailed and we don't know where that's going to go we hope that he can recover but we don't know where it's going to go and then of course that heaps the pressure on william who has to deal with all of the issues that kate is going through medically and william's thing and remember i've covered william very very closely over many years and some people judge him for this but i think most people won't is he puts his family first and he's always said that he will put his family even before the crown now who didn't do that the late queen and charles they put the crown before their family to at to what cost will william knows the cost so william knows for example that after diana died charles just wasn't around much he wasn't there to see him and harry after school or you know he was working all the time they didn't have that close relationship and and charles did not have a close relationship with the late queen because i mean she went on royal tours for months on end when the kids were young so william wanted to do things differently he wanted to be a modern dad so for him that meant that he was with the kids before they went to school and he's with the kids after school most days which actually only provides quite a small window where he's fully working as the prince of wales that's controversial in in some quarters but he would say no his most important job is to be a dad he's obviously raising the future king prince george but all of a sudden you've got charles off the scene andrew can't work harry and meghan are causing trouble in america kate's got her own health issue so she's not appearing in public for three months and william is starting to pull out of public engagements that's a pr disaster yeah because the air didn't have the foals that way is that such a big thing that's such a big thing because the whole world wanted to know that kate was okay because those rumors that apparently she wasn't she wasn't she wasn't even alive yeah which is obviously where this outcome from totally ridiculous but but again where this comes from now and it's what we were talking about before you can't control the internet so so if you just leave a big vacuum right conspiracy theories are going to thrive now by the way i'm not someone who a lot of conspiracy theories end up being true so i'm not someone who ought to i mean look at covid virtually every conspiracy theory about covid became true this one's a bit different though because you're actually dealing with a vulnerable woman who's a good person right i don't think many people think kate is not a good person who puts her country in her family first she's asked for this time james she's going through difficult health issues the problem with the photo is that it actually added to all of the rumors or the conspiracy theories however you want to put it maybe i'll put it call them rumors it added to them rather than taking them away because lots of people do not believe that that photo was taken at the time that they say that it was taken so i really stole his foals who and that you can tell those fingers missing there was just just look weird why was that on purpose to create more attention so why would somebody not prefer that with a magnifying glass it was like amateur hour and this is what people don't realize right so so i'd reckon most people assume that the royal family have like an army of hundreds or thousands of staff working on these sorts of things now they do have hundreds and thousands of staff who work at like the palaces and do the crowds and all of that but actually they have a tiny team like compared to politicians they have a tiny team like literally a handful of people who work on their PR and their communication strategy well this made them look like rank amateurs it was embarrassing and sometimes the job of a courtier is to say no sorry future king you know you can't release that that's ridiculous it looks photoshopped everyone's just gonna well it was photoshopped you know katharine's now admitted it was photoshopped but i think what the problem is is sometimes there's almost too much respect and deference to members of the royal family because you know like with a celebrity an agent or a PR sure they can be sacked so they do often bow down to the celebrity but they're on the same level to a degree whereas the problem is if you're working for a member of the royal family you know you have to call them sir and mom or her majesty and i don't think that always works you know i sometimes think they need real people around them and william and kate used to have that they used to have a really good team and i've lost that team and i think it it showed yeah because as a big debate people support harry and megan people support katharine and william so there is a mass divide the young people i think support harry and megan but mouse even in america now even americans don't like harry and megan anymore how much pressure are on these women's heads though like obviously harry and william know they've been brought up in that life no doubt they'll still be that's hard to really explain to have that level of fame and people like mullians that mullians hit the streets when it's a wedding or a funeral that they've got so much support all around the world people are devastated when a family member dies and but how much pressure are actually on these women's head even megan doesn't matter what people say that the pressure of not having a life anymore like how does it must affect them yeah although my take on this is maybe going to be surprising because i actually think it's harry and william who are most uncomfortable with their roles i think they have ended up with two wives who in very different ways right actually really want to do these jobs so kate knew exactly what she was getting into she was with william fiers you know they even broke up at one point because william he really wanted to almost like pressure test her like are you really ready for this because he saw what his mum went through he didn't want her to go through the same thing and megan look i mean that's a woman who wants to be famous more than anything i mean more than anything she has literally chucked every single person in her life under the bus other than her mum right so i know her dad really well i know her sister really well i think they are a really good honest american family but she was embarrassed by them you know she was embarrassed by them they were too working class they were too normal for megan she didn't want them to be part of it so she just flicked them got rid of them embarrassed so for me i would actually say it is william and harry who struggle most with the limelight and their wives in different ways carry them through it william was a very reluctant king he's taken more to his role now and harry just has so many issues he can't cope with the fact that he's the spare not the air he can't cope with what happened to his mum so it's yeah it's really like i think they struggle with it more honestly i do i think kate and megan thank god in a way that they are keen for the limelight in a way i'd say megan's a lot more keen for it than them because there's so much stuff like you see with william and harry and the women king charles being with cancer but then prince andrew stuff that why was that interview allowed that made him look bad well again amateur hour again right who kept thinking late for that i spoke to someone who worked with the royal family and he says he actually thinks he's smarter than what it is where he can speak out and talk his way out of the situation but it it just made couldn't he couldn't yeah why who kept thinking like that he actually had this court here who had been working for him forever this woman called amanda and she thought this was going to be a great idea i mean that is the worst interview in history now again this might surprise you i don't sign up anymore to a lot of the narrative around prince andrew i was very negative about him for a long time that interview was a disaster right a total disaster but i've looked into things much more there's nothing to do with my own experience it was well before i had my own experience i've spoken to a number of his close friends number of people who have really done huge research into what happened with andrew and epstein and his accusers especially virginia du fray and there is a growing sense that andrew was set up and that while he may have been unwise to ever have a relationship with epstein i mean what was he thinking i mean this guy's a pedophile what was he thinking that's unquestionable right but when it comes to the claims of du fray for example they just don't stack up they do not stack up and it seems like very much um she was driven by money but the problem is while all of the royal family believe him so so you know like um the late queen and king charles and even william they actually support andrew privately they believe him publicly after that interview it became just impossible to imagine him coming back into the royal family and i mean what a disaster they actually need him at the moment but it's impossible yeah how can he come back because like you see just maybe he was just that party guy he loved the party naive stupid again stupid guy it's the fact that epstein was a known pedophile he was charred he was convicted from a maths teacher to this mysterious billionaire to then own an epstein island one of the biggest pedophile rings where the flight logs have never been really out there in the open but but but why are they only talking about prince andrew though this is my point why are they not talking about bill clinton and bill gates who are on that island far far more than prince andrew ever was steven hotkin fucking old pervert he was and he was an other now he used to go to struck joints everything is it's nuts to think that he's in the list is long by the way and listen same as when you look at the jimmy savo stuff the celebrity's got photos with jimmy savo doesn't mean they're pedophiles either the guy was a high profile name you're just probably happy to get a photo with someone same as epstein island maybe people's went there once yes and realized wait a minute they're saying right but if you're getting back multiple times like the clinton's like all the high profile names something's not right no exactly and there should be equity and fairness around it and remember there's a growing feeling especially in america that the radical left in america found it much much easier to pin it all on prince andrew and gelane maxwell both brits rather than having to target the likes of clinton and gates now of course i believe everyone should be subject to due process but i mean come on do we really think that epstein committed suicide when he was meant to be on 24 hour watch and a isolation unit where it was impossible to commit suicide i mean there is a lot more to that story than meets the eye so i think andrew to an extent and don't get me wrong and i don't want this to be taken out of context i'm not defending him he's made huge errors of judgment but i think to some extent he was he was the easy target put it that way he was the easy target yeah because later says it's in the meeting of the epstein it's that that interview i don't think there's ever been evidence on being with kids i think it's been the video about not sweating and there was that pizza express it just i mean that makes them look stupid that was ludicrous and people are going to then think yeah what you're covering up yeah but virginia due fray has changed her story remember mold was one of the four was edited that four was well lady victoria harvey who's a good friend of mine um really good person actually should be great great to come on here i think i actually spoke to her a couple years ago you should she's fascinating i'll i'll i'll i'll tell her she should do it because i mean she is convinced you know she would bet her life on the fact that that photo is edited she's an ex of prince andrew she's still friends with him does she have skin in the game yes but as i say i've done a lot of my own research into this and it's not as straightforward there's a lot of murky dealings involving due fray some of the other accusers remember they've become very very rich as a result of this and who did they know was the person who they could most easily damage will prince andrew and one thing i do know for a fact by the way is the reason that prince andrew settled with virginia due fray because do you remember there was that payout and the only reason he did that is because otherwise the court case was going to overshadow the platinum dive did the sorry the platinum jubilee of the queen it was timed at this at around the same time and and the queen she was dying at that point and they all knew she was dying of blood cancer so for andrew to have pressed ahead with that you know everyone in the family was just saying settle settle settle do this for your mother do you see what it means so the apstein thing as well did you think apstein had something over him well he definitely had something over him but but andrew chose to go to new york to stay at his apartment knowing that he was a convicted pedophile that's wrong just to paint a little bit of context to it though loads of high-profile people were going around to epstein's house he was he was still the toast of new york society at that point and not all men by the way i mean katie kurrick who was one of the top you know mainstream media journalists in the us i've interviewed her for my podcast before you know host the today's show i'm not involved at all in anything sexual was at the dinner party with prince andrew so it wasn't all to do with sex if you if you see what i mean but look why did he go to that meeting he claimed in the car crash news night interview that he just sort of stood by his friends but it was an odd one so did he have something over andrew possibly did glane possibly but of course she hasn't turned on andrew even now so maybe there was nothing to turn on him over and as i say i know look there's a lot of people who i respect hugely who are absolutely convinced that prince andrew is totally innocent of any crime might be guilty of making some pr errors and doing a terrible interview but personally i think there is more to come on the epstein story both in terms of andrew and glane but also what else was covered up what about the jimmy savill stuff why was that covered up by the bbc and how ruthless was he i know people you see he just looks like a fucking creepy bastard if i'm honest again people might argue he never had any convictions but why was there such a massive cover-up with him and why we see it why we see a loud and i think johnny rotton exposed them many many years ago but yeah how that was jimmy savill oh i mean the darkest and i think it's the most shameful error of the bbc but unfortunately the bbc has a big habit of this you know so it's meant to be the public broadcaster in the uk but they contributed to the death of princess diana with that terrible martin basher interview i mean i'm not saying the interview itself was terrible but the circumstances of how he procured the interview um was all about bribing effectively princess diana with lies oh sorry not bribing her convincing her to do the interview based on lies bribing would be the wrong word because i guess she did make the decision to do it but she made the decision to do it based on false information that he had presented to her you've got and that was covered up for two decades and then you've got the biggest cover-up of them all which is the country's most prolific pedophile operating behind the scenes at your broadcaster and he dies and then you cover it up again and don't allow your own journalists to tell the story of it so i think the bbc is a very corrupt organization actually i really really do and personally i think it should be defunded um again that's not a common view people always say oh but it's done so much good for britain no it hasn't you know it's responsible for some of the biggest scandals in british history uh obviously there was also um allister cambell and you know the dodgy dossier and and all of that and i don't i don't think it does any good for britain actually for example over the covid pandemic it was responsible for spreading fear propaganda on a daily basis it's the home of fake news uh yeah and so i think look you look at those all i'm saying you look at those scandals several being the main one but no private organization would survive that just wouldn't survive it just like news of the world didn't survive the phone hacking scandal yet the bbc we're still forced to pay this nearly 200 pounds a year for something that we don't want to watch just because we want to watch another tv channel i i think it's absolutely outrageous and i think the bbc is a corrupt organization um that's bad for britain but again i know that maybe some people think that's an extreme view but i i don't believe it is it certainly doesn't represent so i i think of my viewers at gb news the bbc did not represent them it would attack them as being far right and racist and no you can care about protecting the borders of your country without being far right and racist so back to your own stuff so you've you've had laurence fox you're suspended and then your accusations the dark stuff the was it people saying that you were sent asking for photos you were catfishing and then other accusations that winded is that because everything came out about you and then other people jumped on it or were these accusations on the pipeline no so basically the accusations were all funneled and i would argue created by one media organization a hard left blog i'll name them if you want but i'm also more than happy not to because part of me thinks they want the publicity do you know i mean they went on the switch hunt to gain this publicity and this is an organization literally staffed by phone hackers so it's quite a bizarre thing and they were determined to destroy my rep is reputation and bring me down now the background to this is that in may 2023 my show on gb news which ran from 9 p.m to 11 p.m in prime time overtook Nigel Farage good friend of mine but it overtook him as the number one show on the channel so we were making real progress right gb news had like it's sort of like had started off as a bit of a laughing stock it's like the worst launch on british tv like you know none of the technology worked and it was it was hard going and then people tried to say oh you're the fox news of the uk which personally i actually never found offensive i think fox news is brilliant but gb news became a big success story and so they wanted to bring the people down who were making it a big success story and this organization is on the hard left right an activist organization they don't believe in reporting the truth but what they did with me which was so disturbing and made it so difficult to ever properly defend is they before they reported the story they went to the metropolitan police with all of these false allegations against me in order for them to launch an investigation into me so that once they reported the story my hands were completely tied because i knew that the police were looking into their allegations and it was all smoke and there was no fire let me tell you because believe me james if there had been any evidence of this the police would have handed it to the cps the police did not even pass this case on not only was there no evidence right i was able to present corroborative counter evidence proving that i had been set up and that these claims were complete lies so i've mentioned briefly earlier in the show one of the people was a convicted extortionist another person was a convicted violent criminal who had just been released from prison and i have recordings of him trying to extort me out of a hundred thousand pounds in order to stop him going to the police and the other was an ex-boyfriend with a massive axe to grind who had been trying to destroy me for five years and so what my issue is is that the process is now the punishment right because i always knew that these were lies and i said right from the start this is a witch hunt these are dark forces but the problem is it didn't matter because the damage to my reputation was done because as soon as the mainstream media report the metropolitan police have launched an investigation into accusations of sexual offenses well you're done you are done how bad does that sound right now i have since been completely exonerated in two separate police investigations so one was by the metropolitan police one was by the scottish police they never even handed the information on to the cps so that happened and then i've also received two apologies from the two biggest newspaper two biggest left-wing newspapers in the uk the guardian and the daily mirror and they've paid me significant damages right but the original organization that pursued all of these lies with these false accusers they are never going to stop they are never going to stop until i am destroyed what they did was not journalism and you know i've admitted that some of my journalism maybe i might not agree with it all looking back johnny depp for example but never have i tried to destroy someone never have i gone to the police with false information from criminals to try and bring down one of my enemies and honestly some of the things they did were just so sick over that period like they um called the police to say that they thought i was going to kill myself so the police did a welfare check because they wanted to be able to say if i ever did anything to myself that oh they were caring about my welfare like it was just you know over that time i was hacked multiple times like my tv's were hacked into my emails were hacked into all of my accounts were hacked into like these were dark and dirty people and it was grim it was really grim but but my big issue was that the process is the punishment because the problem is you know we haven't spoken about them but i was the number one columnist for the Daily Mail right around the world so i was the most read columnist you know Daily Mail website absolutely massive all around the world and they suspended me the moment the allegations dropped i wasn't even allowed to defend myself no process whatsoever just dropped and i was listening to your interview with no clark and i found it so powerful because he went through the exact same thing that i did really the accusations were made by people who were actuated by malice and who were purposefully trying to destroy my career and actually very much like noal too who always viewed himself as an outsider right in the action industry i was always a bit of an outsider in the world of