Listen Now: Foul Play

0:00Hi, I'm Gabriel Gatehouse. And I'm Ed Jervis. And we're about to play you a clip from Foul Play. A new podcast series in which we investigate whether the CIA poisoned my grandad. And possibly laid a curse on English football. It's an unbelievable tale of sport, spies and family secrets. And here's a taster.

0:31Put here the name of your grandfather, please. My name's Ed, and I feel like I'm having a sort of out-of-body experience right now. Banks Gordon? Yes, sir. Let me check.

0:48I'm an ordinary dad of two small kids from Stoke-on-Trent in the English Midlands. I don't travel much. They have a little secret repository. Nobody knows. We missed this. So it feels pretty surreal right now to be in Mexico, in an old prison, digging through the archives of the Mexican secret police. Maybe we can find something. You're putting Gordon Banks' name into a secret database. I'm here with Gabriel Gatehouse, an investigative journalist, and we're looking for evidence that more than 50 years ago, in the summer of 1970, spies were surveilling my granddad. Yes, they have photos of your grandfather.

1:38What? Yeah. Can we see? Yeah. My granddad wasn't a secret agent. He had no links to Mexico. His name has got no business being in this archive. My granddad was a football player. Maybe you call it soccer. He was quite famous actually. He almost made it and if it hadn't been Gordon Banks in that goal he would have done it. Gordon Banks, the world's number one goalkeeper.

2:07Gordon Banks, my granddad, was the man in goal in 1966. The one and only time England have ever won the World Cup. Well done Gordon Banks, the hero of England. He's got some people around the pitch. They think it's all over. It is down. It's gone.

2:28Some argue my grandad was the greatest goalkeeper to have ever played the game.

2:37So what the hell is his photo doing in the archives of the Mexican secret police? They have more information. Oh, my God. I know.

2:55Yeah, so that other voice you hear is me. And yes, I am a serious journalist. At least, I think I am. I've covered wars and revolutions, stories about Russian spies. For two days in 2011, a contact of mine had the body of the Libyan dictator, Colonel Gaddafi, hidden in his fridge. I've reported some crazy stories in my time. But this one, I've been dragged into against my better judgement. Because at first sight, it seems absurd. Couldn't have happened. Unless, it did. In which case, it might just be the craziest story I've ever heard. It all started three years ago, when a stranger comes up to me.

3:43You're Gabriel Gatehouse, aren't you? He says, I loved your podcast. This happens to me from time to time, ever since I did a series about conspiracy theories in America. Thanks, I say. Who are you? It's me, Ed. I tell Gabriel I've got a story for him about football. Let me stop you right there, I say. I'm not into football. I don't know anything about it. But Ed won't let it go. Have you heard of Gordon Banks? He asks. Gordon Banks. Another trophy for his sideboard. John Mahoney, the substitute. Er, goalkeeper, right? National hero from a bygone age, when the England men's football team still won things.

4:25Yeah, even I've heard of Gordon Banks. So Ed starts telling me this story about his famous grandad in the World Cup. But not 1966, the one we won. No, the next one, in Mexico, in 1970. England were the defending champions, Ed says One of the favourites to win But Grandad fell ill Food poisoning apparently Gordon Banks was too sick to play He recovered a few days later But England crashed out And English football was never the same again

5:04We didn't even qualify for another World Cup For another 12 years And even then it seemed like a curse had been laid on the national team. We're talking about the men's team here. The women are doing just fine. Anyway, Ed says his granddad always suspected his illness was no accident. I was nobbled, he'd say. He thought someone had got to him all those years ago, though who or how, to his dying day, he never knew. Ed never really took it seriously. We would just sort of laugh it off and kind of, oh yeah, all right, Grandad, want too many tacos for some dodgy street vendor or whatever it was. But after Gordon Banks's death, Ed says, someone tells him your Grandad was poisoned to sabotage England and the plot was masterminded by the CIA.

6:01The CIA? I may not know much about football, but I do know about conspiracy theories, and this looks like a classic. I mean, why would the CIA want to poison an English footballer? Something about the Cold War and supporting a military dictatorship in Brazil, Ed said. It sounded kind of ridiculous. I told him I'd look into it, thinking, I'll debunk this straight away. Well, three years later, here I am. And the deeper I dig, the stranger it gets.

6:59Thank you.