Fake Sheikh: the grubbiest hack on Fleet Street (part one)

0:27This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World Cup live in 4K for just$19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multi-view, choose up to three streams, and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays. The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox 1. Offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions. They say you can tell a lot about a person by the contents of their freezer. So what does a bottle of Jägermeister say? It says you have standards. You don't cut corners.

1:05And you like your Jägermeister shots the way they're meant to be enjoyed. Ice cold. As for the frozen taquitos and mystery leftovers, we'll keep that between us. Drink it cold or don't drink it at all. Jägermeister. Damn, that's cold. Drink responsibly. Jägermeister liqueur, 35 % alcohol by volume. Imported by Masked Jägermeister, U.S. White Plains, New York. Dubai, 2006. England manager Sven Goran Eriksson sips Dom Perignon with an Arabian prince on the deck of a 70-foot super yacht. But Sven's white-robed companion is no oil-rich emir. It's the fake shake. For three devious decades, the tabloid hack lived life undercover, exposing everyone from murderous GPs to Mick Jagger.

1:52From Jerry Springer's threesomes to infiltrating the Taliban, And this is the story of the fake shake. Welcome to the Upshot. My name is Jack. How is that? Hi, Jack. Hello. And joining us is our old favourite, Roisin Lanigan. Thanks for having me back. Back from the dead. Yeah, it's nice to be. I mean, usually when I come on the show, not to spoil the magic, but like it's a footballer that I've never heard of. And it's like, is he a bad guy or not? And this is like, I know who this person is. It's your idol. And they are a cunt. this is right up your street really yeah I did I had his autobiography for some reason have read it not gonna win a Pulitzer I would say confession to the fake shake the king of the sting reveals all it's a grip it's a grip like it looks great it's very hard to take it on the tube really difficult you get looks it's like filthy as well yeah he's also spelt shake wrong on the cover of his own book yeah but you say that but it's Arabic so you can just he doesn't speak Arabic I know you can spell an Arabic word how you want can't you in Latin oh sorry I've made this boring you've been saying it I've heard you say it a few times I've been thinking you can spell it but then I was actually wondering is that is he being quite clever and it's like it isn't a real shake I don't think so no I think there's a lot there are multiple ways of spelling it okay that's the boring option see I read this book and look at it and the scummy hack in me thinks this is what they took from us it is really weird because reading it so in the book he's like oh I just went to Andy Coulson and I'm like oh can I have 40k to make this thing work and they're like of course and that just feels completely nowadays in journalism it's just like oh my train was actually 3850 instead of 2350 and they're like I can't really do that so it does feel like a completely like forgotten world but perhaps for the best yeah I mean those stories sold papers right that's how he was making the big bucks yeah I mean for people who don't know who he is four million people read the news of the world every week in the 90s and early noughties so this is peak tabloid news industry and also peak bad behavior from the tabloids they've just progressively over like 30 years just got away with more and more and no one ever stopped them yeah and it sold papers and made them millions and mazza is this undercover journo who most famously is at the news of the world which is biggest biggest newspaper in the world at the time and he's famous for these stings where he dresses up as a shake.

4:15We didn't decide to go for costumes for this episode. Yeah. But yeah, he, who did he sting Zach? He did some big ones. So yeah, he did some biggies. He brought down Mick Jagger, Jerry Springer, Svengore Ericsson, we mentioned as well. Talisa from N-Dubs. Oh yeah. Yeah. Very huge. Some people thinking, I thought this was a sports podcast. Yeah. I mean, there is a fair amount of sport involved. Cause obviously I think, I think once he started doing sports stings, he realized that that, that sells papers because, you know, they're some of the biggest names on the planet. And that is basically his game, isn't it?

4:49It's just like the joy of the scoop and selling papers. Yeah. I don't think they kind of have this like veil of public interest around what they're doing, but it's thin. And he kind of tries to, like in the book, he kind of tries to defend it. He's just like, well, this person was a family man and they were in a hotel with a woman. It's like, I don't really know if that's, yeah, it's a bit strange. But I think it's difficult really to emphasize how much of a big deal he was at his peak. At his peak, he was ranked the 45th most influential person in Britain. He's the Taylor Swift of his time. Exactly, yeah.

5:21Life of a showgirl. For context, Prince Charles was ranked 69th. Right. To be fair, he didn't have much influence by then, did he? Yeah. What about the FHM rankings? Where was he on that? House HM. Yeah. He seems like not that sexy. In or out of costume. Have you seen a picture of him? Because obviously for years you couldn't see one. But if you scroll down, Teddy, we have got a picture of him. There he is. yeah yeah yeah all right well is he top 100 on fhm no fhm's most influential yeah i reckon he did shag some of the people that he stung as well yeah he spent a lot of time with escorts as well as we'll come on to and often like he always says that he was sort of you know i had to i had to pretend that i was entertaining these escorts but you know as soon as soon as the target was gone And then they ushered them out of the room and said, did you?

6:10Yeah. Andy Coulson's pocket money was going far. He doesn't strike me as a scrupulous character. No. But they did, didn't they do some quite like important stuff? There's like a stat on how many people went to jail as a result. Yeah. I think News International, his publishing company, said that 94 people went to jail as a result of his investigation. Including him. Including him eventually. 95 actually. In the end, the final one. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he did a lot of celeb stuff, but then also some more kind of serious undercover journalism, I guess. He infiltrated the Taliban, exposed, like, drug smuggling and people smuggling rings, things like that.

6:52And, yeah, unsurprisingly, this does make him quite a lot of enemies down the years. So he receives death threats, fatwas, gets cursed by an African witch doctor, has a price put on his head by a Russian mafia hitman. so it's a wild ride it's a wild ride again very like Taylor Swift yeah the Taylor Swift of this generation shall we get into it I'll act as the defense in this because I can see you guys are going prosecution yeah I've gone I've gone quite I think that this is the one that I dislike him the most and I've done some we did OJ we've done OJ killed two people but this guy yeah it gets pretty scummy really early some great names popping up as well Should we start?

7:37Yeah, let's go right back to the start because it's a pretty fascinating origin story. So Mazza Mahmood was born in Small Heath in Birmingham in 1963. His parents were both journalists as well, actually, from Pakistan. They'd moved to Britain three years before he was born. Neph-a-bibi. Neph-a, you might say that. I didn't realise he was Neph-a-bibi. Another journalist in Neph-a-bibi. Exactly, yeah. So they set up the first Urdu-language newspaper in Britain, Big Fish. And Mazza's first job was helping to staple the paper together in their kitchen. But very quickly, he spied an opportunity to do something a bit more glamorous than stapling.

8:17So it's 1980, Mazza's age 17, and he's struggling to get into journalism, really. He's been turned down twice for unpaid work experience at the Birmingham Evening Mail. You know, we've all been there. It's a tough, tough industry to crack. So he decides instead to go straight to the source and rings up the news of the world with a story. So at a family dinner, he discovered that some friends of his parents were flogging pirate videos. And he decides to sell that story to the news of the world to get himself two weeks work experience. Scumbag. His parents' friends. His parents' friends. I once read that that was his uncle, but I guess it's like, you know how you call your parents' friends' uncle.

9:01it's not really your uncle they're obviously good friends yeah apparently they were they were sort of pillars of the community as well they were they I think one of them was a GP and it was their son who they were sort of boasting about their son had this little sideline flogging pirate DVDs and they just you know brought up over dinner with friends not knowing that there was this little weasel in their midst I mean little hack hack it yeah was that a story for the biggest newspaper in the world Maybe they just thought it was precocious. He did a broader thing about pirate videos. Oh, how respectable characters are in on it.

9:39And this was one of his scoops. It's a proper annoying crime because everyone likes piracy. Ordinary people. I remember when they used to do it on DVDs and this kid came around our house once and he was just like, I've got some pirate DVDs. And my dad was like, all right, what have you got? And he had all the titles and he was just like, wait there. and he made the guy wait at the door while he like put the DVDs in to test they were good but they were often shit yeah because sometimes people would stand up and then they would walk out of the way so like that's quality control actually watch the whole let me just watch die another day have you got Titanic but like it was it was a proper it was a good sideline yeah it was a big thing yeah yeah it's a noble noble line of work obviously his parents and presumably the friends were pretty furious at Maz for doing this.

10:28They say he's shamed the community and tried to throw him out of the house, actually. Wow. But this sting does prove pretty fruitful for him because he manages to leverage his two weeks work experience at the News of the World to get some freelance work for the People newspaper. And it's there that his fake shake persona is born in 1984. Yeah. So basically they get this tip that the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre there's a hotel there and that it's basically there's a prostitution ring being run by the hotel out of the hotel and mazza and his colleague go to expose this ring and there's a motor show going on at the exhibition center so he decides a good character to win people's trust would be a rich arab who's interested in buying a ferrari so he he thinks i could do this and this will entice the prostitutes.

11:21That's a direct quote. They need enticing. Yeah. It's fairly transactional. Just pay them. Yeah. But I guess maybe what he wants. He thinks that they really are attracted to. He's like, you know, that is part of their job. He's like, yeah, I know I was obviously dressed as a shake, but they loved me. Like, like people in SAGDs who like really, when you go to a strip club and they really talk to like, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. The strippers pick me out. Anyway, he does successfully pass as the sheikh, which is quite impressive. I mean, he's, he's second generation Pakistani. So he's not like, you know, sheikhs are not really his realm.

11:59And, uh, he's, he's got a broad Brummie accent as well, but presumably he was able to put on a sort of Thunderbirds baddie accent. Yeah. Disguise. He says he basically speaks in broken English and that they can. And I think in 1980, early 1980s, people's perception of what a sheikh is. Yeah. It's, you know, pretty. Yeah. I always say, like, at the beginning of reading about him, you're kind of like, I guess this is kind of cool because basically you're profiting off the fact that other people are, like, maybe, like, a little bit racist and they're, like, they don't really know. Yeah, they're, like, stupid.

12:29And you're like, oh, well, yeah, why not? But then it just becomes... I think at this stage, it's a pretty fucking cool job. It's quite, like, fun. Yeah. It's one of these adventures. I think also because 80s, I guess it's the first time that, you know, those golf states became, like, mega wealthy. so people are just like blown away by seeing a sheikh and just this like unimaginable wealth. I also like that he got his costume for a tenner from an Islamic bookshop in Coventry I'm picturing basically a tea towel on his head. I think he basically says that but then he has like he ends up with an array of them like all different types and but I also think like he's what like he's quite young no one knows who he is I think he's quite smart he's just been like okay what can I turn into a strength here in my race like I can use that to trick people so in this one story he basically turns up as a chef he's like I want to buy Ferrari and apparently the hotel owners treat him like a king and are ferrying prostitutes up to his room which leads to a big expose and he doesn't do anything he makes excuses obviously he's part of the character they arrive and then they get the scoop and everyone just went home he does kind of have apparently they do this thing where they have like the same thing that they use to get away from the prostitutes every single time where they're like, I'm saying prostitutes because it was the parlance of the time.

13:48Obviously, I would prefer to call them sex workers. Where they like have the other guy he works with call or come into the room in the middle and say like, your uncle's died. And every single time, he's just like, oh, my uncle's died. I'm sorry. Well, so I have to leave. Yeah, and leaves them the money. So it's like no one gets upset. But that's what they say. My uncle. anyway this routine he's on to a winner here and over the next few years he starts to perfect the fake shake routine and you know to make his his stings a bit more convincing he decides he needs more than just a costume he bought an islamic bookshop so he begins employing this entourage of bodyguards minders drivers uh you know just to make the whole thing a bit more believable and it doesn't always go that smoothly.

14:36So one time he hires a British army ex-soldier to pose as his bodyguard. But what he didn't realise is that this bloke had served in the Middle East for a long time and was fluent in Arabic. And so he says in his book, he walked in and started speaking Arabic to me in front of the target. I didn't understand what the fuck he was saying. I called my sidekick in and said, Bradley, take him out. I never speak Arabic with white man. Which I think is quick thinking. Yeah, conceit. Because I'd be shitting it. Yeah. Because I would have been tempted to just reply in fake Arabic and then take the guy aside and be like...

15:09They do quite a lot of, like, sort of, like, on the fly come up with things. I just... Why would you want this job? What is the... So stressful. I think it's so fun. I think it'd be fun at this stage. If you're doing, like, good stories that aren't really unfair... Well, he's not doing that. He's not doing... He acts like... In the book, he's getting on, like, he works at the Boston Globe. Yeah. Like, he's, like, exposing, like child abuse he does do a bit of that he's not really he's like this is the world's most expensive hooker it's not one of them yeah yeah that's the weirdest story because it's like you get to the end of the chapter and you're like why have you just told me this yeah and she charged you the elite grand a night and you're like that is an interesting story it does seem like public interest journalism that is an interesting story I feel like the newspapers back in the day like I can't imagine opening these and reading them with like my family at the table like they were You know, the thing they always said about the News of the World was people, obviously loads of people bought it, but, you know, sort of posh people, respectable people would buy the Sunday Times and the News of the World and put it inside the Sunday Times.

16:11So they'd be too embarrassed to walk home showing they're reading it. Whenever I'm read it. Yeah. Also, I like that a lot of the time when he did these exposes, part of the story, if they had like really lurid details of like the shagging, then you'd be like there'd be a line in the story saying like there were parts of this that we had to retract. because this is a family newspaper. This is not a family newspaper. She exposed smart. Someone's got their boobs out on the third page. Yeah, so he does. Okay, so around this time, he starts to become a really big deal because the more stories you do, the better.

16:44And he does some public interest stuff. So he exposes counterfeiting passports and British paedophiles in Manila. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even a stock clock. Yeah, that's true. He's not always posing as a sheikh, though. So one time he pretends to be a market trader to infiltrate an illegal tobacco smuggling ring, which to me sounds a bit small potatoes. Yeah, it's not just people who are like, oh, I'll sell you these for two quid. I've got a brick that I've got on duty free. Or the guys that like come to the pub and sell you parcels. Yeah. That also must have been a bit of a come down. He's been like in hotel suites being like fed champagne and suddenly he's just under a tarpaulin in Solid Hill Market.

17:24In like Benson and Hedges for a fiver. But I do quite like that thing of like, sometimes it's glamorous, sometimes it's glamorous. I think it's a fun job. Stressful. I mean, I wonder how much he got paid for it. Ultimately quite a lot, but I don't know, at this stage. You can't quite though. Like, I think it must have been very strange to be a journalist back then and to be like, I wonder, did they all know that he was the fake chick? Yeah. I think they probably did within the News of the World offices. But like at other papers and stuff. Yeah, but it's a bit of a murder of like, you don't fuck over, you're undercover.

17:54and there's so much camaraderie but more back then I guess yeah no that is you would definitely you wouldn't be able to do this now because like you would just see a tweet and like he's this guy yeah he lives here I mean as we'll see that eventually does happen but it takes ages anyway despite all these major coups it's a bit of a shock when he resigns from the Sunday Times under a cloud in 1988 so he will later tell the Leveson inquiry that it was a disagreement but other people involved remember it slightly differently so the guy in charge of the news desk recalls that actually maz had been challenged about this small error he'd made in the story it wasn't a major thing it was sort of thing you just get like a bollocking and move on from but instead he falsely blamed the news agency who had sent the original story in and he then went one step further to try and back up his version of events he broke into the newspaper's mainframe computer hacked it and changed the original copy in there to make it look like the mistake was not made by him.

18:51Oh my God. At which point he was caught and resigned on the spot. Yeah, he's too lost in the sauce. Like not everything needs to be like a Kim Possible style operation. Like you can just be like, I fucked up. Like, sorry. It's too much. But I think it's addictive, isn't it? Yeah. And also he's a fucking nutter, right? He's a bit of a loner, I think. And it's, you know, they think they say that thing about journalism. All you need is a plausible manner, a little literary ability and rat-like cunning. and he's just like obsessed with the cunning thing. He just wants to be like a fucking nutjob. I guess when you've got away with all these things, you think you're just invincible really, don't you?

19:28And he's, you know, doing public interest stories for a family newspaper. So after leaving the Times, he briefly works as a TV producer before joining the News of the World in 1991. And, you know, with his journalistic practices and the News of the World's code of ethics, it's a match made in heaven really but you know for most people their first week starting a new job it's a bit of onboarding learning where the tea bags are kept and making small talk with your new colleagues about the local lunch options for Maz his first assignment is to be smuggled into Britain on the back of a lorry from Belgium along with a load of Turkish legal immigrants so you know it's a baptism of fire Isn't that like a look how easy it is?

20:18Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. That's why he did it. And there was one where like, I don't know, he just actually seems like a dick. I think that's an interesting story. Yeah, but he, so he talks about this too, that at one point they stop in Normandy. And some of the people he's with don't know that it's Normandy. They think that they're in London. And he just tells some people, he just tells this guy, he's just like, yeah, yeah, we're in London. Leaves the guy in the middle of this field in Normandy. Because he's a dick. That's a dick move. there's so many times I was just like you're just a cunt yeah good story I think yeah I mean it's crazy you can't imagine anyone doing this now but also because if you were a newspaper editor and someone was like can I do this you'd be like no obviously not they just let him do what he wanted no such issues like that I didn't see what you'd be glad to hear and with their backing and their extremely questionable practices he's able to conduct some more glamorous things than that over the next few years and some of them lead to pretty high profile arrests, including in 1997, the Grange Hill actor, John Alford, who is sentenced to nine months for supplying Maz with coke and weed.

21:25I mean, those are ridiculous. It's entrapment, basically. So he sort of befriended John Alford, posed as this well-connected prince who'd help him to get some acting roles and then asked him to sort him out coke, which John Alford was like, yeah, sure. and when he did Maz taped it went to the police and then published the story so it's entrapment it's like children's TV star is drug head yeah some of the stories are even more sinister more sinister than that would you believe it so the following year a GP from Birmingham is jailed for seven years for trying to hire Maz as a hitman to murder his mistress pretty good story that's a good story credit to him I do kind of think that anyone who believes in hitmen like you do deserve to go to prison because you're like an idiot.

22:15I've been thinking this for a while. They don't really... They don't exist. Unless you're like organised crime and you're doing that for a gang type thing. But that's your job. Yeah. As Roy Keane would say. But like it was just... No one's doing it. Like you can't just hire a... I just... Every time I read these stories of people trying to hire hitmen I'm like you brought this on yourself. Who's the dark web guy who went to jail who Trump let out? You know what I mean? The original Silk Road. guy red pirate roberts or whatever the guy that was in a wheelchair and he pretended to be no the guy who started the original dark web market so road he apparently ordered three hits on the dark web but none of them worked yeah and he runs the dark web surely he knows the best ones what did the gp do he wanted to kill his mistress he wanted to kill his mistress that's a fucking banging which and potentially he saved the mistress's life if that if it were hit by any of such things are we keeping score I feel like we should have kept score he keeps score he says that he's just like I've saved hundreds of lives like yeah you've ruined another time he exposes this gang uh who've been cloning credit cards and the gang actually find out there was him who did it and they smash the door of his parents house in the middle of the night and destroy their living room with machetes and then leave him a note a warning note about it.

23:35He's already done them. You think they just kill him? Yeah, kill his parents. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. I'll just fuck their cushions up. Yeah. Pathetic. Did he make that up? That's a good question. I mean... That sounds a bit made up. Yeah, I mean... That sounds a bit made up. When you actually think about it. Yeah, I mean, he's one of the most unscrupulous and untrustworthy people on the planet, so it wouldn't surprise me. I believe it. But whether or not it's true, it doesn't deter him from continuing his stings. She does one of my favourites around this time when he catches a retired police constable running an international drug smuggling ring using OAPs as mules.

24:14That's great. That's funny. Yeah, so basically his thing was recruiting these senior citizens at casinos and convincing them to smuggle cocaine for him in exchange for cash and a free holiday to the Caribbean. Because no one's searching the granny. Yeah. And you probably would do it if you're old. it's like you might as well give it a go like what's gonna happen you could just pretend to be like oh sorry yeah be a bit dotty like if sometimes if people try to shoplift and you get caught and then you're like oh I didn't realise some people yeah that's quite a good idea because usually it seems to be young women who do that job right but actually you're not an old person it's genius until the fake shake got on if it happened you're probably wondering where's the sport in all this story well in 1999 Mazza Mahmood makes a real name for himself and finally enters the world of sport so the paper get this tip off that the directors of Newcastle United Freddie Shepard and Douglas Hall have been having these wild parties with escorts in Marbella apparently the tip-off came in because Douglas Hall whose dad is like this sort of spiritual leader of Newcastle United he'd owned the club for a while Douglas had offered a barmaid a grand to shag him And she was so disgusted She went to the papers Who probably gave her a grand Yeah It's also like crazy how much money was just going back and forth Of being like someone's a bit dodgy Like can I have 20k I think Rebecca Luce got a million quid for the Beckham thing Fair enough that was like a huge story But at a low level I think there were just like Fives and ten I sold a story to a tabloid When I was at uni for like 700 quid which you just never get now and it wasn't even that good it was like it was like the condoms the student union handed out had holes in them or something really but yeah no i didn't put the holes it was something like that oh were they um i remember this sort of thing they were stapling them to yeah at freshers week they'd be like here's some condoms and they'd staple them to stuff no it wasn't that although i have that that has happened and then you're like well i can't use them it was um i think the suggestion was that it was like fundamentalist christians or something yeah it was quite a good it was kind of a good story it's quite it's quite news the world actually yeah i don't think it wasn't the news of the world but it was one of one of that lot i think that's basically what got me into journalism we'll save this for patreon tabloid adventures um anyway so they get this tip and mazda's like i know the perfect way to set these guys up i'll dress up as a shake so he gets the old garbs on one more time and he gets in touch with douglas and John Hall and tells them that he's interested in setting up a football team in the Middle East.

26:59And so they invite him to Marbella to have some fun, in their words. So they meet at Mazza's hotel suite and then they head out to the Milady Palace nightclub. Milady. Which you will be shocked to learn is a brothel. To me it sounds kind of Tudor themed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Milady. Like those restaurants that you go to where they joist in front of you. I went to one of those recently in Portugal. It was cool. Yeah, I tried to go to one in Benadour, but that wasn't too bad. Yeah, this one was not a brothel. Yeah. A Tudor-themed brothel. Tudor-themed brothel. They just choose one of the six wives.

27:35Anyway, so Shepparton Hall, they are mid-Bender when they meet up with the fake shake. They've just flown straight from a Newcastle match. They've been boozing during the game on the private jet over. They've just been necking champagne. And they get there and they're just carrying on. They're getting lap dances, going off for private sessions in back rooms. it's fucking sleazy stuff and they're also just totally loose lipped so I don't think he even had to work that hard to persuade them that he was he was one of them so Douglas Hall tells the fake shake that he has 600 to 700 mistresses and flies around the world in his private jet shagging escorts that's a lie I don't think they're mistresses I think they're 700 that's like a cult but that's just that's just escorts he's paid to sleep with yeah it's not mistress he's like it's like Jonestine yeah there's 700 of them they all live in Ecuador 600 to 700 but that's obviously just yeah yeah they are he's been sucked in again by them telling him that he's he's their one he's like no they let me kiss them on the lip he also boasts that he slept with 12 girls at once at a New York penthouse party also prostitutes they do get onto football at some point where this is actually where they do the most damage in the end so firstly this is right after newcastle had sacked kevin keegan and hall and shepherd ridicule him they say he had a halo like a saint no vices like us we sacked him because we gave him 60 million to spend and he won nothing which is a bit harsh famously came second um they call alan shearer mary poppins because he's so boring that's actually valid yeah that's good um they take the piss out the fans for buying official shirts for 50 quid that actually cost five quid to make stupid yeah that's not gonna go down well is it yeah and then most notoriously of all they turn on geordie women and douglas hall says newcastle girls are all dogs england is full of them the girls are ugly and they're dogs i thought you felt the need to say dogs twice i mean for a director of newcastle football club i don't think it's a worse thing you can say i actually looked up ironically so douglas hall's wife divorced him as a result of this story.

29:45Is she from Newcastle? I think so. I think it was more the 600-700 girlfriends around the world that she's... Hang on, your shirts only cost five quid to make? You're joking. Yeah, I think that would get me more if it was just like, hang on, I'm from Newcastle. Yeah. Well, but funnily enough, he has now married Kevin Keegan's old secretary, who is a Geordie. Really? She was secretary at Newcastle United when he said this. Maybe she wasn't entertaining him when he was like, yeah, they're all ugly anyway. Whatever. I think she forgave. As did a lot of people. Freddie Shepard went on to be chairman.

30:15But it was a massive scandal. So the News of the World do a nine-page spread on this. All the gory details. It wiped six and a half million off Newcastle's stock market value, which is probably like 20 % back then. That's crazy. How? Yeah, how has that happened? Because it's bad news. People are like, I thought the girls were hot. No! I was led to believe they were hot. I'm not investing in this football club No I think it's like the fan rebellion People are going to cancel the season tickets They're not going to buy the shirts It's negative publicity Tony Blair brings it up in the House of Commons What year was this?

30:5399 Okay so it wasn't like Iraq years No this is the honeymoon period Yeah He's in Northern Ireland He is the member for Sedgefield isn't he So it's sort of his constituency He's a Newcastle fan as well isn't he Yeah Yeah. A fake or a real? I think it is real, but there have been, there was some like suspect, like I think he said he saw Jackie Milburn play and people looked into it and it didn't really line up. But yeah. I never believed them when they said that they support, like the way that Prince William was supposed to support Aston Villa. David Cameron famously always said he supported Villa and then once did an interview.

31:26Imagine buying your kid a toy only to find the batteries aren't included or buying furniture, but missing the tools to build it. Frustrating, right? Now imagine the exact same feeling, but you're paying way more. That is what buying business software usually feels like. Fragmented, disconnected, and incredibly expensive. Odoo completely changes that. Odoo is a complete, fully integrated business suite where all your apps actually talk to each other. We're talking automated lead routing for your sales team, seamless AI integration, and intuitive point-and-click website builder. It's everything your business needs to scale, saving you time, headaches, and money.

32:08Stop piecing your software together. Go to odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com to learn more. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns up to 70 % off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and stay big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must-haves for summer. Join the Nordiclub to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. By all Lorenzo, the pitch looked good. Yeah, so green. USA Keeper was decent enough. Didn't have much to do. Ugh, 99 minutes. Not a single goal.

32:56Well, Bet365 sure came through, though. I bet$10 and got$150 in bonus bets. just for signing up. At least someone scored. Bet 365. Winning is everything. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 21 plus only. Must be physically located in Illinois. Tees and C supplies. In-app only. He was like, but I prefer it if you supported West Ham. And everyone was like, no, you support Villa. He forgot. Same color. Yeah. I believe Keir Starmer, I think. He's a season ticket holder. Keir Starmer actually does seem quite... Just because you don't like him. You can believe him about this. he put three lions on his Des Island days yeah it's like do you remember Gordon Brown was like sorry this is a real diversion but do you remember when he was asked his favourite album when he said best of the Arctic Monkeys that was actually an Alan Partridge response it makes me so sad this is the Arctic Monkeys yeah I guess Blair's bringing it up as it's his constituency sort of saying my honourable friend will agree the women of Newcastle are not dogs anyway they are forced to resign although So Freddie later returns as chairman.

34:00So a bit of a slap on the wrist. Maz, on the other hand, does very well. So he's named Reporter of the Year at the British Press Awards. For this? Yeah, it's a big scoop. Yeah. I know what you mean. It feels so minor. Yeah, it's just like a horrible bastard is on the board of football club. He says as well in his book that this was the easiest story that he ever did because they were just so loose-lipped. All he did was call them up. He's like, I want to start a club in the Middle East. They were like, yeah, come to Marbella. And just took him out to... I've slept with 600 prostitutes. Literally, the story was just put in his lap by them.

34:33Whereas he spent the last year being smuggled into Britain on the back of a lorry. He's like, can you not get me the British Press Awards journalist of the year for that? I think he's just happy to have the gong. I do, this is going to make me sound implicated, but I'm not. But when you meet these types of characters who are out just constantly taking drugs and going to brothels, they love telling you about it. You know, on a night out, sometimes you get trapped into these, blokes with like a little bit wild-eyed there's something a bit wrong with their brain yeah and they just they're just telling you freely about this stuff yeah there's a pub at the end of my street and it's like it's like ground zero for these guys i remember i went in the other week for like one drink and this guy just came up to me outside i was just like yeah i'm banned from cyprus i was like i literally wasn't in conversation with you and you've just told me this and he was just like yeah i used to be like used to go around a lot with chelsea i was like mate like we weren't i'm not here with you do you think that works as a chat up line i think it does I don't know I was with my boyfriend he was like what's going on yeah he's like yeah you've been from Cyprus I think it works for a certain type of person yeah cynical yeah yeah but I just can't imagine winning reporter of the year for this kind of stuff but I also like I know you guys talk about this all the time but you just can't imagine footballers or football club owners acting like this now they're so like clean yeah and like media trained and anyway after this Maz Maz is feeling very confident and so he that probably explains why in 2001 he goes after a slightly bigger target the Taliban and this is a couple of months after 9-11 the logical next step yeah he decides I'm going to infiltrate the Taliban which pretty brave yeah say what you want about him it's pretty good although there are a lot of TikTok influencers who are currently hanging out with the Taliban I think it's easier now the Taliban are quite welcoming aren't they maybe they were then he basically tells them unless you're trying to go to school it does sound like they were quite welcoming like I know that now he's like oh I'm a hard boiled journalist it kind of just feels like he's hanging out with them yeah like and they get to shoot some guns yeah they don't really do anything yeah they're just wandering about yeah so he basically tells them that him and his photographer are recent converts and that they'll help recruit jihadists in the UK which you know is obviously in the news and he then travels to Afghanistan with his photographer apparently I think he says in the book that his photographer keeps getting hit on by this old Mujahideen fighter who's got an AK-47 but just keeps stroking the guy's leg it's just like you're prepared for a lot when you go into behind the Taliban but probably not that it would be a bit shit to like it seems he never travels on his own when he's doing these things apart from when he's in the back of the jeeps going across the border like he does that but a lot of the stories he's with like another Nepal baby called Conrad or like this group of henchmen and it's like it's fine for him because he's choosing to do it but imagine if you're being dragged along and you're like you've got the hidden camera like at one point they go to a nudist thing for like nonces and it's in France and they're nude so the other guy has to hide the camera in a French dictionary and just carry it around like surely that guy's up for it surely he's in on it as well though yeah I suppose but he's not one of reporters of the year like Maz is it's quite an adventure for a photographer I think it kind of seems like you love him I don't think it's no I don't he's a scumbag obviously And as we'll see later, did some awful shit.