The SCANDAL Mongers Podcast

Prince Harry’s court room victory has reignited his feud with the British tabloids, and especially former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan. Andrew and Phil react and wonder what’s coming next. The bulk of this episode is then dedicated to one of the most tragic - and controversial - criminal cases in British history: the unsolved disappearance of there year old Madeleine McCann from a Portuguese h...

With total silence from both the ‘firm’ and Team Harry and Meghan, the allegation that King Charles and Kate, Princess of Wales, both expressed 'concerns’ about the colour of a future royal baby linger poisonously in the air. What to make of it? After that Phil and Andrew meet Dan Davies to discuss one of the greatest scandals in British public life since the Second World War - a scandal that...

In this second special episode about the royal racism scandal, Clive Irving joins Phil and Andrew from America. His perspective is very different to that of our last guest, Lady Colin Campbell, since he views racism allegations made against Britain’s King Charles (and future Queen Kate) in the context of a bigger story - that of a dynasty trying to come to terms with the darker sides of its own, a...

Details ‘accidentally’ revealed in the latest royal ’tell-all’ book by Omid Scobie have thrown Britains’ royal family into a new crisis. Did the current King and the future Queen expression 'concern’ about the colour of Meghan and Harry’ children? Do they harbour prejudices against their non white subjects and commonwealth members? Or is this an exaggerated account of a normal and friendly convers...

On the 60th anniversary of the most scrutinised and mythologised political assassination of all time writer Gerald Posner returns to the podcast to tell Andrew and Phil why he is more convinced than ever that Oswald was the lone killer and that there was no wider conspiracy. In 1993 Gerald’s book CASE CLOSED went through all of the details of the case in forensic detail and was judged by many to b...

It’s our first birthday! And to help us celebrate we’re talking to the Daily Mail’s legendary royal correspondent and author, Richard Kay. No journalist ever got closer to Diana, Princess of Wales, and in the final years of her life they spoke many times a day. At that time, and in the years since, Richard has broken dozens of royal stories and knows more about the goings-on behind closed palace d...

In another ‘double-bill’ episode we first hear back from former Chief Royal Protection Officer Dai Davies. He has a few things to say about the episode we made recently on the alleged assassination of Diana, Princess of Wales. Then we speak to the author Adam Sisman, who has recently published a ‘warts and all’ biography of acclaimed British spy writer John Le Carre. In a life and career char...

Few royal writers merit the description ‘insider’ as much as much as the super well connected Lady Colin Campbell. Moving through aristocratic and upper-class circles, she has been attuned to whispers of scandal for decades. One of the first writers - perhaps THE first - to reveal the true state of the Charles-Diana marriage, she has gone on to write numerous outspoken, controversial but also wild...

Ever since Dodi Al Fayed’s father, Mohamed, claimed that his son and Diana, Princess of Wales, were killed on the orders of ‘the royal family’, the events of 31st August 1997 have been meticulously analysed and debated. Nobody spent more time on that than Australian writer John Morgan, and his startling conclusion was that the crash in Paris' Alma tunnel was no accident, but an assassination. He w...

Dai Davies is one of the World's foremost experts in Security and Investigations, a Former Head of Royal Protection and a Chief Superintendent (Divisional Commander) in London’s famous Metropolitan Police. Dai shares some of the secrets of his shadowy line of work with Andrew and Phil, and gives some forthright opinions about how royal security has changed over the years. He also casts some new li...

Few royal biographers have ever had such deep access to their subject as Andrew Morton obtained with Diana, Princess of Wales when preparing his sensational bestseller ‘Diana: Her True Story’. In the years that followed he’s written many other very well-sourced royal books, with a special emphasis on royal women. In this episode he joins Andrew and Phil to compare and contrast three of the most fa...

Gerald Posner is one of the most successful investigative writers in the world. He joins Andrew and Phil to discuss his personal history and beliefs and discusses bestselling books on subjects as varied as the assassination of President Kennedy (he wrote the definitive anti-conspiracy theory account, ‘Case Closed’) and the evil experiments of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Our focus is the dark h...

Forever remembered as the smart and stylish First Lady to President John F Kennedy, whose shocking death in Dallas she witnessed first hand, Jackie Kennedy is an enduring icon of the 20th Century. But much about her turbulent life in the public gaze - before, during and after her marriage to Kennedy - has remained a closely guarded secret. One of the world’s most successful biographers, J Randy Ta...

It seems likely that the Presidential election of 2024 will be a re-run of 2020. Donald Trump faces multiple court cases and could, potentially, run for the most powerful office in the world whilst being a convicted felon. Joe Biden is facing his own growing scandal, with political and legal investigations into his son Hunter gathering pace amid attempts by the President's opponents to link him to...

In the days before this episode was recorded Andrew discovered that he has been, and maybe still is, the subject of extensive official data collection, including private information that might one day be used against him. The spooks are probably listening into these podcasts too! He believes this government surveillance is directly connected to his long pursuit of the facts about Lord Mo...

Six girls and one boy, raised in aristocratic luxury in the years before World War Two, became the most famous - and most scandalous - family in Britain. Their lives were captured in a much loved book - The Pursuit of Love - by eldest sister Nancy Mitford, the subject of a recent glossy TV adaptation.  They first became household names because of their beauty and self confidence, so...

In the early days of the pandemic a lot of attention was paid to the fact that the Chinese city of Wuhan, from which the virus emerged, contained a biological research laboratory that had been experimenting with coronaviruses. But this was met by political and scientific reassurance that the virus was more likely the result of an evolutionary leap and had spread via a food market. Those who persis...

The Duke and Duchess of York have been in the public eye for decades. Once widely admired for their freshness and sense of fun (and his record in the Falklands War) their lives became tangled in a series of scandals, both financial and sexual. Today he lives in a form of internal exile, banished from royal duties after settling a court case with Virginia Giuffrie, who alleged she was traffick...

The Times royal correspondent returns to the podcast for a second interview. This time we’re highlighting the new work he has done for the latest edition of his widely acclaimed book COURTIERS, which first lifted the lid on simmering tensions behind palace walls and gave a voice to staff members who claimed to have been bullied and belittled by the Duchess of Sussex. What’s the real divide that dr...

A once popular British Prime Minister brought down by scandals, after a career in politics with more than its fair share of controversy. Is it too soon to write Boris Johnson off? What can we learn from his turbulent career? And what will his long term legacy be for British politics and the wider world? Our guest Tom McTague is one of the most respected political writers in Britain and he has spen...

After winning the Victoria Cross and numerous other medals, Australian SAS veteran Ben Roberts Smith became a national hero. But then allegations started to circulate - of bullying within his unit and, more seriously, of prisoners mistreated and executed in Afghanistan.  Chris Masters, one of Australia’s best known journalists, had been trusted by the military to write a book about the w...

Andrew and Phil discuss the remarkable - and remarkably shocking - story of the East India Company. How did a handful of men in a small office in London come to rule India, transforming the histories of both nations? William Dalrymple, author of the much acclaimed book 'The Anarchy’ joins them to tell a hair raising story of plunder, conquest, scandal and death. You can buy’s The Anarchy - and tho...

The global financial system almost collapsed in 2008. Afterwards there was understandable anger at the behaviour of major private and national banks. A series of investigations resulted in many traders going to prison as a result of the alleged manipulation of the key interbank LIBOR rate. But were the right people punished? Award winning reporter Andy Verity thinks not and in his book RIGGED he m...

In our first episode Andrew raised shocking sexual abuse allegations about Lord Louis Mountbattten - one of the most famous and most powerful royal celebrities of all time. This week Andrew and Phil reveal new evidence from named witnesses about Mountbatten. They also explore the famously ‘open marriage’ he enjoyed with his wife Edwina. Shining a light on the sexual politics (and many hypocrisies)...

From nowhere East Germany came to dominate international swimming and athletics in the 1970s and 80s - an astonishing sequence of sporting success based upon a secret state-run doping programme that involved the notorious STASI secret police and the most senior political leaders. Many of the East German sporting starts of that time suffered sever health consequences, especially the young...