The SCANDAL Mongers Podcast

Mok O'Keefe - aka 'The Gay Aristo' - returns to the podcast this week as a guest host. Mok - who lives in an actual castle - is a great fan of all things Gothic and so he's the perfect person to help Phil explore the scandalous life of Lord Byron and his circle of friends, and the creation of classic gothic tales during a memorable summer in a small villa near Lake Geneva. It was here that Bryon,...

When BBC reporter Rory Cellan Jones uncovered a pile of old love letters under his mother Sylvia's bed after she died, he unearthed the secret story of his own life. The result was a bestselling book of real power and intelligence, in which he reconstructs the scandalous relationship that created him - but that also limited his mother’s life choices and ensured that he would not know who his fathe...

Phil has the latest on the semi-public tug of war over Prince Andrew’s living arrangements. How much longer can he cling on to Royal Lodge? And why do key figures in the British establishment find it so easy to cling onto power and position for so long, despite the most shocking scandals? The story of the Archbishop of Canterbury this week may help us understand. Historian Adrian Phillips then joi...

This week we dip into the remarkable - and often scandalous - world of military intelligence with historian Helen Fry. Her widely acclaimed new book Women in Intelligence reveals a huge number of fascinating stories of the critical - and often deadly - work done by British and American women throughout the 20th Century. Some of these stories - and these brave womens’ lives - have been kept deeply...

Phil considers the feedback from last week’s remarkable interview with David Hooper and asks what Diana, Princess of Wales might have been told when she first agreed to go on holiday with Mohamed Al Fayed.  Then this week’s guest - our friend Clive Irving - joins Phil to reveal the story behind perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of the aviation business - the fall of the house of Bo...

Top British lawyer David Hooper has made a career out of standing up to the powerful and the wealthy, and so when Vanity Fair magazine needed someone to defend its groundbreaking 1995 expose of Mohamed Al Fayed - the first time sexual allegations about him were ever published - David was the natural choice. What happened next was extraordinary, as revealed by David to Phil in this special and excl...

Britain’s new government is caught in a series of scandals about freebies, cronyism and ‘cash for access’. And now we have allegations surrounding the recent Taylor Swift concerts in London which might - or might not - be responsible for the downfall of a key Downing street aide. Phil wonders whether any of this really matters, and what it tells us about the state of politics today - and...

Britain’s new Labour government has been shaken by stories of ‘gifted’ suits, penthouse flats and tickets for Taylor Swift concerts. Phil explains why this matters - and what it tells us about the problems of governing in the internet age. Distinguished historian Simon Heffer then joins Phil to talk about his new book on Britain in the Interwar years, and gives us his very well-informed view about...

Phil has spoken before about how he’d love to see Harry back in the royal fold. Are we seeing the first signs of this now, with a series of solo appointments that look a lot like old traditional royal visits? Meanwhile Meghan appears to have removed herself - or has been removed - from Harry's public life while she concentrates on her own new solo ventures - and selling jam. What’s really going on...

The revelation of many sexual allegations against Mohamed Al-Fayed has shocked the UK. The former owner of Harrods, confidante of Princess Diana and friend of British high society has been accused of a litany of crimes and a decades-long career of harassment and abuse. Given that Princess Diana died whilst under the care of the Fayed family, many have asked if she knew about this aspect of his per...

Former BBC correspondent Nick Bryant joins Phil to discuss his many years working in the USA, and reveals how and why his love for that country turned into something closer to despair about its future. But first our friend Clive Irving - a legendary investigative journalist and now star writer at  The Daily Beast  - returns to give us his update on the royal family as Charles approaches...

Bestselling author Giles Milton joins Phil to discuss his incredible book THE STALIN AFFAIR about the ‘Big Three’ of the Second World War, and how this turbulent three way relationship shaped the world we live in today. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin were very different men with often clashing personalities and agendas. Behind their famous wartime summits lay a series of larger than life cha...

Anne de Courcy returns to the podcast by popular demand to talk about her astonishing book on Coco Chanel, and the glamorous but dangerous society that she dominated.  From the most deprived of backgrounds Chanel conquered the worlds of fashion and perfume. With her fast friends, wealthy and titled lovers and her appetite for the best things in life she basically ran the ’scene’ in Paris and...

With their non-royal but actually quite royal 'anti colonialism' tour of Colombia seen as a success by many media commentators, what message was Harry and Meghan trying to send to the world, to Britain and - especially - to their royal siblings and siblings in law in London? And why did a curiously timed but well sourced profile appear on the front page of the London Times, pointing out that Princ...

We’re exploring a completely new era this week, so buckle up your sword belts, pour yourself a jug of mead and grab that armour! Phil’s guest today is Steve Tibble, author of a brand new book on the dark (and VERY dark) side of the Crusades, which he describes as being like a two hundred year pub fight! Steve is a great storyteller and his book is full of incredible insights into a time...

Our friend Gerald Posner returns to the podcast this week to discuss the recent attempt to kill former President Donald Trump. As the author of the definitive book on the JFK assassination - Case Closed - and many other books and articles on political violence in the USA, Gerald knows a huge amount about how Presidents are meant to be protected, and the conspiracy theories that soon spread when th...

This week - in the first of his summer solo specials - Phil speaks to writer Mary Dearborn about her biography of the remarkable Peggy Guggenheim.   Peggy was probably the most significant collector of - and advocate for - the visual art of the 20th Century and she helped launch the careers of numerous internationally famous artists. She was also as renowned for her sexual...

Andrew and Phil go where many royal reporters fear to tread, to reveal the shocking sexual allegations and dirty financial dealings that are alleged to lie behind the tangled and scandalous lives of numerous famous royal names. What has Andrew found our about the secret lives of the royals as he researched his numerous books? Improving access to information about the rich and powerful - especially...

Award winning reporter and investigator Stephen Davis joins us to explore the world of fake news, conspiracy theory and the weapons used by the rich and powerful to prevent truth from coming out. In an extraordinary career Stephen has investigated some major scandals, including the sinking of the ferry ESTONIA and BA Flight 149 and the Gulf War. ***We now have a Thank You button (next to the ’thre...

This week author and broadcaster Martin Bright joins Andrew and Phil to discuss what he believe is a little known but massive wartime cover up. As a new official report is due on the extent of Nazi crimes in the occupied Channel Islands during WW2, Martin believes that the suffering of Jewish and other prisoners on the islands has been hidden for many decades - partly because of official embarrass...

The human dynamo that is Anne de Courcy returns to the podcast by popular demand after her brilliant interview about Princess Margaret and Tony Snowdon. This week she is speaking about one of her most successful books ‘The Viceroy’s Daughters’, the saga of Lord Curzon and his three talented, beautiful but often wayward daughters at the pinnacle of British and imperial high society in the first hal...

This week we are lucky enough to speak with one of the most celebrated political writers of our age - Peter Pomerantsev, a former TV colleague of our Phil Craig. Peter had a ring side seat in Moscow for the rise of Putin and now advises leading politicians in Europe and the USA. Born in the Soviet Union, and now a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics,...

In this special episode Andrew and Phil speak with Shauna Kay, whose family of Australian based podcasts, The Vintage Read, has been a huge success in the last year or so. We have many friends and ideas in common, along with a shared fascination for all things literary, scandalous...and very often royal! We don't promise to agree all the time but if our audiences find these conversations entertain...

Team Sussex has pulled off its first overseas tour with a super high profile visit to Nigeria, where Harry attended numerous events linked to the Invictus games and Meghan met with business and media leaders, hosted female entrepreneurs and generally looked and behaved like a Princess on the road! Is this a model for what 'non royal royalty’ looks like for the future - a refreshing multi racial al...

Phil's sympathetic comments on Prince Harry's reasons for fighting the press didn't persuade all of our audience last week, and the comments were lively! Andrew and Phil react to that and discuss the latest evidence of the deep rift in the British royal family - Harry's visit to London and the non-meeting between him and his sick father King Charles. Then historian Emma Southon joins us for a huge...