Dan Wootton Outspoken - AXED GB NEWS STAR MARK STEYN REVEALS TRUTH ABOUT HOW STATION SURRENDERED TO OFCOM & NIGEL FARAGE

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Get 25% Off @goPure with code DAN at https://www.gopurebeauty.com/DAN #goPurepod A special edition of the Uncancelled Interview with the great Mark Steyn, Dan’s friend and former colleague in the primetime line-up at GB News, where he would provide him an incredible lead in at 8pm. Mark is a genuinely incredible force of nature. The bravest broadcaster in the world by far. At GB News he was the first to take the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and vaccine injured into the mainstream. Dan was so inspired by his boldness and he made him a better broadcaster every single night. Mark’s treatment by GB News was inhumane and in this special episode he opens up about this for the first time in a world exclusive interview recorded on board the Steyn At Sea cruise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No spin, no bias, no censorship. I'm Dan Woodson. This is Outspoken episode 248, a special edition of the uncancelled interview coming up today before I am back live next week. But I am so excited to share this one with you because I promise you I have had more requests for me to interview him than anyone else since launching Outspoken nearly a year ago. I'm of course talking about the great Mark Stein, my friend and former colleague in the primetime line up at GB News where he would provide me with that incredible, bold and brave and certainly Outspoken lead-in at 8pm. Now Mark is genuinely a force of nature, the bravest broadcaster in the world by far. At GB News he was the first to take the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs and vaccine injured into

the mainstream. I was so inspired by his work every single night and trust me he made me such a better broadcaster as a result. His treatment by GB News was inhumane and he opens up about this for the first time in this very special and rare interview recorded on board the Stein at Sea cruise. I can't wait for you to see it. Just a programming note, there is no uncancelled after show today because we have the special recorded edition of the show. But don't worry, it will return on Tuesday. So please sign up to watch on Substack. Www dot outspoken dot live.

But now let's go. Good morning. Don't worry, Mark is here. But I'm going to start today by turning the tables on the great man. You all want that, right? He's been asking the questions all week, so for one session only, I get to do that, and it's going to be fun. So this is the first time we have spoken at all in an interview format since Mark's departure from GB News, my departure from

GB News. So we'll give you the real story for the first time. But please put your hands together, welcome the great Mark Stein. Hey Dan. So you're here Mark. So Mark, I thought it would be brilliant for us to talk for the first time about what really happened with GB News and the off-communists, because of course that's how we got to know each other and we were building something pretty special actually that I know you thought and I thought and hoped and prayed was going to change British broadcasting, because for

folk who don't know, the ecosystem in the UK is completely different to the rest of the world. We don't have a Fox News. We don't have a Sky News Australia. There's nothing that has provided balance in the broadcasting world. And for a while, it looked as if we were actually going to be able to make real change. And I know for me, hosting that nine o'clock show, because the story of GB News had been pretty horrendous before you came on board. Andrew Neil had hosted that eight o'clock show for literally 10 days before he had walked out the door.

And actually, we were doing pretty brave things. And I used to watch your show every night back in the very, very dodgy, dirty, rat-infested, I'm not even joking, backstage area of TV news, and just feel, God, I can be brave because Mark Stein is getting away with that. So I'm going to be able to say things that previously in an offcom regulated environment would have been unthinkable. But after laughing at us, after mocking us, after treating us like the class us after mocking us, after treating us like the class clowns, what happened is that you were pushing at too many of these really, really touchy subjects, the vaccine, the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs, even Angela Rainer's ginger growler.

And as a result result what happened? Well I love being involved in new media startups and I've been involved in a few in various countries and so I thought that that our Australian boss at GB News might be like a Roger Ailes at Fox News. Roger was a, you know, there were people who don't like him and all the rest of it, but Roger was a kind of genius and he stood by his talent. So for the Americans here, Fox News basically had the same primetime line up for 20. He weighed one mistake with Paul Azam, who used to host, I think, the 10 o'clock show at GB News. And eventually they parted ways. And Roger's famous line was he could get better numbers with a dead ferret

than with Paula's arm. But otherwise, the lineup, Bill O'Reilly and Hannity and Combs stayed the same for 20 years. And it's the complete opposite. The guy at GB News thought in the end that we were all dead ferrets and that any dead ferret would do and so he's got rid of the turnover of presenters there because his whole thing is you can pull anybody off the street and as you know Dan, apart from the presenters, everything at GB News was totally dysfunctional.

You know, you'd throw to a tape and it would never be there. I love the way the opening of the show, the opening of my show, the opening of your show, the opening of Nigel Farage's show, was always the same. You'd hit the top of the hour, and some presenter would come on and start mouthing, saying. And in the control room, everybody would be ordering their sandwiches.

And so it would take like, normally when that happens, when someone goes, people notice within 0.4 of a second and go, tss, and the voice starts. But on GB News, because they were all ordering their sandwiches in the control room, it would take... So the whole thing was... But I thought the line-up was... I always loved throwing to you at nine o'clock, because you're very professional,

and so we'd have like a little bit of banter and whatever. Whereas at the eight o'clock handover, Nigel would go to me and, you know, he'd be, I'd say, I'd ask Nigel a question, and he'd be leaving for the pub, so he'd have ripped off his... And he'd be leaving for the pub, so he'd have ripped off his. And it just became clear to me in the end that they didn't actually want to be Fox News. They didn't want to... I can't remember his real name now, but Flopidopoulos, as I came to call him, the Australian genius, and then Paul Marshall and the big Dubai hedge fund guys. I think they just wanted something that would buy them an in to powerful people in the establishment.

If you're extremely rich, then starting a TV station just so you can get a cabinet minister on the telephone is a good investment. The things I was interested in, and in fact you were, I think I said to you, some guy had accused us of making a fuss about the victims of the COVID vaccines. Yes. And I said, I just noticed it and thought I'd like to talk about it. And I said, you did too.

And I said something like, it doesn't speak well for the London media that it takes two colonial shlubs from New Zealand and Canada to want to talk about this issue. And that's genuinely how I felt. And there just came a point at which they wanted to become a basically, I think, a suck up to people that they thought were influential and important. So I got replaced by the guy who had been Lord President. For the Americans here,

you don't have this job in your government, but he was Lord President of His Majesty's Privy Council. We have one of those in Canada. I think in New Zealand, you call it an Executive Council, but it's basically a Privy Council. And I don't see how you can it an executive council, but it's basically a privy council. And I don't see how you can be the people's. This is GB News, the people's channel, and now it's the Lord President of His Majesty's

privy council hour. I don't think that really works. I think there's a contradiction there. But maintaining an in with the establishment became super important to them. Yes. Well, I look back now and I actually think we were used. So it's very interesting to me because I remember in January 2023, I think it was then, we got the first hint that the management believed that Mark Stein was pushing things a little bit too hard, that he was going to get us in trouble with the off-communists as I

came to brand them. But actually, I've never spoken about this before, but it was the opposite to what happened when myself and Lawrence Fox and Father Calvin Robinson lost our jobs and everyone just ran away thinking we don't wanna lose ours, I was the complete opposite. So I arranged for Neil Oliver, Michelle Joubrey, and myself with your permission to go and speak to management and say,

this will be an absolute disaster if you lose Mark Stein. We've just done Victims of the Vax, which I think was probably the most important broadcast GB News has ever done. It was genuinely daring. I mean, it sounds crazy to say, but no victim of the COVID vaccine had ever appeared on the mainstream media until they were on our shows.

And then you brought them together for what was an incredible broadcast. And I actually think that is what tipped the balance with Ofcom. That's when they realized actually this guy is dangerous. And the management, rather than thinking this is the opportunity to double down and we're going to fight, I think quite despicably used a

health crisis in order to make this change. Right. I think that's true. What was interesting to me was that this all happened. first heart attack in London on Albanian National Day which is now the biggest holiday in the United States. For the Americans it's like the equivalent for the Canadians it's the equivalent of 4th of July and Dominion Day combined. I mean the streets are just full of Albanians celebrating their national holiday. I had a heart attack that day

that I didn't recognize as such. And so fortunately for me, I flew out of Heathrow to France so I didn't have to be, we'd run all these stories where there's like an 87-year-old pensioner who falls down in the street and he's waiting 36 hours for an ambulance Which is what happens with the NHS. So instead I got on a flame plane to France and Had my second worst heart attack there. So I was in the ICU in France for a week and

That's where GB news management for a week and that's when GB News management thought well great this is our chance to kill him which I actually came I came to believe that they thought this is perfect we've been trying to figure out a way to get him off the air and now we've got this great opportunity because he's in the he's in the hospital and he could die and then we can do all it's with deep regret that Mark Stein he was so bold and courageous But don't worry because we're going to replace him with the Lord President of His Majesty's privy council

and you really love that show and I honestly think and he was I there's two things that I absolutely loathe about that time is that Is that flopped opulous or whatever? He's called the the CEO had arranged He called the hospital You know gift shop in the lobby to send up A box of chocolates to me with this rather heartfelt message. So the

guys from the gift shop assumed that Flopidopoulos and I were lovers and so and so they read it out in this simp-er-ingly romantic. This guy who's he's he's determined to kill the show, and as a bonus, kill me. And they read it out as if it's a love letter, and they're doing all this romantic pouting at me from the end of the bed. So I'm, and then the other thing was that Nigel Farage

wanted a medical statement from me that he could read out on his show and I said I don't do that. I said my idea of a medical statement is from King George the fifth, the king's life is drawing peacefully to a close. That's all the medical detail I want. So I didn't want to do that. So Farage then was in a fury. So he basically made up a medical story. If you want your Ofcom investigations, there's one for you right there. You can just invent a medical statement and read it out. And at that point I realized, you know, they are...

People always say, Paul Simon said this to me years ago, they say people always say they wanna be edgy and push the boundaries. But in the end, in the end they never do. Well, of course, because what actually was going on is they had been cucked and powered by this pathetic faceless quango run by a woman who was the worst executive at Sly News ever.

And they knew that they were going to find against you for two broadcasts, one with the brilliant Naomi Wolf, one where you were putting forward statistical facts about COVID, but they thought, okay, we're gonna lose, what we need to do is show to the establishment that we're serious, we're gonna listen to them, so we're actually gonna give you Mark Stein and by giving you the head of Mark Stein, they're going to give you Mark Stein and by giving you the head of Mark Stein they're going to leave us alone and of course the opposite happened. As soon as they had your head they wanted my head, they

wanted Lawrence Fox's head, they wanted Calvin Robinson's head and actually they want GB News' head and that's what GB News never realized. And yeah, absolutely. It was capitulation. And you have to pick, you know, you should always take, you hear this all the time from conservatives and Republicans and so forth, oh, it's not the hill to die on. Well, you don't, in the end, you don't get to choose your hill to die on.

Yeah. I was, just before I. But it choose your hill to die on. Yeah. I was just before I... But it was the hill to die on too, come on. Yeah. The deaths of hundreds of thousands of people was the hill to die on. What I couldn't understand was that a fella called Gareth Eve in the north of England. We tried to get him on the show because his late wife had been a had been killed by the vaccine. Now she's a BBC radio presenter on, you know, a station in Lancashire or whatever and she couldn't get, this is one of the things that I think is so awful. Jules Serkin, who's on the cruise,

had the same thing with Radio Kent. You've been in the media for years, and you get sick. Your life is ruined because of the COVID vaccine, so you think I'll wander into the Radio Kent newsroom or the Radio Lancashire newsroom or whatever. And these people who are friends of yours and whom you've worked with for, you know, 20 years or whatever, they don't want to know about it. That's the story about Ofcom, that they basically impose a national lie on the entire country.

So it doesn't matter whether you're in Belfast or Bogna, you're not allowed to tell the truth about what's happening. And during COVID, remember, they had taken on all of these extra powers, special powers, which meant you were not even able to question these regulations in the World Health Organisation, which we know now would complete baloney. Oh, you know, plastic masks, paper masks were... Yeah, no, they... I mean, it's incredible what happened in 2020, 2021. There was... Yeah, I said it was a national lie.

It was basically an international lie across the entire Western world where every country except Sweden mysteriously adopts the same idea. So for people who believe in global government, this was a great pilot program and it totally didn't work. At a time when you need actually dozens and dozens of different views on things, there's this uniformity. And it was bad enough in America, but in a country like Britain, where a media regulator is basically given extraordinary powers to control what can and cannot be said on air. I think it proved a disaster. And I feel incredibly sorry for people like Jules and for Gareth Eve and for our other vaccine widows and vaccine injured.

But I think they're not ever going to give real justice. And I certainly think that guys like Anthony Fauci, who knew on day one that this was one of his programs that had somehow managed to fly the coop that he was dealing with in Wuhan. But we had the story of those years is not the shows you did or the shows I did. The story is all the people who were just happy to parrot and again I you, I go back to David Frost, who was as big as they get in television for most of his life. But I remember him saying to me in the 1990s

when they started so-called independent television production in Britain. He said to me we don't have an Independent sector in this country. He goes we have a dependent sector Because all these people are dependent on that lady at offcom Otherwise you just don't get on the air. And that's totally unlike any real media environment in a truly free society. Indeed. And so all credit to you, despite these two heart attacks, despite GB News saying, no, no, no, we're going to capitulate,

we're just going to accept this ruling. In fact, they released a statement saying, oh, we take what the off communists say very, very seriously. Terrible, Mark. Oh, actually, we're now going to try and get Mark to pay any fines that the off communists might put on our channel in the future, despite the fact that we're funded by billionaires. We're actually going to put it down But first, if you're anything like me, you've spent so much time trying to find the perfect

skincare treatments for your face, only to realise you've been neglecting the skin on your neck. But as I've got older, I've noticed that's a massive oversight because of course the neck is on display all the time, yet so many folk treat it as an afterthought in their routine Now so many women and our outspoken audience will know that the skin on your neck is thinner more delicate and less oily than facial skin But what that means is it requires specialized care I have to say I was totally blown away by this brilliant product Go Pure Titan and Lift Neck Cream absolutely beautiful product transforming the necks of women and some men I can say some men too

me included all across the globe it is such a gorgeous product and I saw noticeable difference actually within wigs and I know it can become a game changer for you too. Check this out as well, outspoken viewers and listeners get 25% off GoPure using the code DAN at checkout. Just head to gopurebeauty.com slash Dan, use the code DAN, that's D-A-N and you're all set. Now GoPure is a proprietary firming complex designed to visibly firm and smooth the skin on your neck and chest in as little as two months. And in a consumer study, 100% of users said their skin looked more supple, 97% noticed a firmer appearance, which is obviously incredible. It's also dermatologist recommended and cruelty free, which I know is very, very important for many other animal lovers out there. Plus with over 1 million jars sold, I think we can say that this beauty secret is no longer really a secret anymore. So tighten, lift and restore elasticity in your

neck because your skincare routine shouldn't stop at your jawline. Let me remind you of this incredible deal for outspoken viewers and listeners today. 25% off Go Pure using the code Dan at checkout. So just head to gopurebeauty.com slash Dan, use the code Dan, Dan and you're all set. And after you buy, do us a favor when they ask you what you heard about Go Pure, tell them it was after watching outspoken. But now back to the show. Despite all of that, you say, bring it on, off com, I'm taking you to court. Yeah, because I just don't believe, in fact I said it on air just before the end of one show

and you agreed, you came on 90 seconds later and you agreed with me. I don't think, and I go back quite a long way with media regulators, back to, I think, it was the Independent Broadcasting Authority before Ofcom and I remember the lady, somebody called Lady Plowdom. By the way, you know, when people talk about demographics that can threaten the stability of your nation. It's one thing to talk about lots of Hispanics or lots of Muslims, but the one thing no society wants is lots of

baronesses because these baronesses, one minute, I don't know how they do it, but they breed like rabbits. One minute there's just like three or four baronesses. There's thousands of them chairing pointless inquiries into COVID, pointless inquiries into the grooming gangs and all the rest of it. But one of the first baronesses, somebody called Lady Plowden, came up and berated me in a restaurant

once years ago for something I'd said on air and that's all you had to worry about you know you'd be having your shrimp cocktail and some Baroness would come over and chew you out in a restaurant. But they weren't micro-regulating selected content to programs. And again, for the Americans, it's a totally bizarre concept. You imagine like Rush, who was on the air for three hours a day every day for decades. You imagine if he's just sort of out one

night at Palm Beach and some rogue Baroness gets past the Maitre D and starts chewing him out for you know for something he said on his show. There would be no rush, there would be no Bill O'Reilly, there would be no Tucker. The idea of just picking out, you know, it's a three-hour show and there's two minutes of this, and you use that to destroy... And it didn't used to be true in Britain, it's not even true in that sense in Canada

or most other Commonwealth countries, but it is true. They've just given them more and more powers over every aspect of media in the UK. The irony, of course, is that for people who have followed along with the story, is that GB News never reclaimed the sort of ratings, the sort of social change, the real army that we were building that ended after your departure. But GB News did quite belatedly decide, oh

shit, Ofcom really do want to shut us down. We need to take them to court now. Yeah, I mean, that was what was it. It would have been quite a good thing for a media organization to push back against Ofcom over what it did to honest coverage during the COVID years. And instead they find themselves, you know, they then find themselves dragged into court because of something, Jacob Rees

Mogg did some breaking news about a Trump, one of the 147 court cases against Trump. And they didn't like, they, they, they did, he was, he was not supposed when he's doing, when he's acting as a newsreader to then add an editorial comment on it or something. And so they get basically every, it's the same people, it's just like the same people making these complaints about shows that you do, and then you get dragged in by Ofcom. So their whole thing, by the way, they had an Ofcom guy in the building, whatever his name was, the guy who was... He used to run Sly News, just so everyone knows where he stands. And he'd been like, he was the guy the BBC called in to investigate why Jimmy Savile,

who was a disc jockey at the BBC for half a century in return for a week. I mean, he just went after everything. He went after boys, girls, he went over dead people. He went, I'm getting close to being Jimmy Savile's cup of tea. I'm basically another heart attack away from being Jimmy's. And yet nothing was ever done about it. Jimmy's and yet nothing was ever done about it and and so they until this guy who became off coms guy inside the bill yeah and he didn't like me no he didn't like me he actually after about the first two weeks he just stopped talking

to me yeah because he he couldn couldn't understand that I said, I'm never going to play devil's advocate for the sake of it. That's not what I do. I'm not going to sit here and say, oh, but the COVID vaccine is safe, or oh, but the authorities actually did really try to stop the Pakistani Muslim from grooming dogs. It's not just that it's safe, Dan.

You have to say, oh, but we should emphasize that the COVID vaccine is 99.9999999999% safe and efficacious, which isn't true. But he was very, no, the thing that did for me with him was you start to realize it's just sabotage. We'd had a clip one day. I'd just put in a clip. I can't remember what it was for now.

But it was from a Roger Moore era Bond film. So he's just cocking his eyebrow at Moneypenny and doing some du-blanc-tondre about. I think it was the, was the spy who loved me where he was M says oh Bon's in Austria tell him to pull out immediately and Bon says I'm sorry I'm late something came up and and Ofcom guy oh, you can't show this before the watershed in the UK. Which you were. Yeah, I wasn't.

So, and I go, what do you want to? So I was like furious about this. And I said, they showed it at 3.30 in the afternoon, this film, at 3.30 in the afternoon on ITV. But eventually you realise that as with you and as with me, not with Nigel really, but with you and me, that the entire production and management of the station are just interested in sabotaging. Well, yes, and it's interesting

what's happened with Nigel though, because since our departures, because that's obviously the rest of the prime time gone, he has become all powerful at GBUs because they know they need him. At the same time, he is now a political party leader who tries to influence the coverage on GB News of issues like, for example,

the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs. Nigel had promised an inquiry which is now not going ahead, but Rupert Lowe, the extra form MP, will be hosting that inquiry. But you have going ahead, but Rupert Lowe, the extra form MP, will be hosting that inquiry, but you have a situation where Nigel says, but you can't interview Rupert Lowe on GB News because this is my channel. So GB News has effectively now allowed a senior politician to take control of the editorial agenda of the station, which I would argue is equally as dangerous as anything that we ever did.

No, I think so too. You know, Flopidopoulos or whatever, I can't remember his real name. But just before I joined, he said, what do you make of Nigel who just started I think doing that show? And he goes, Nigel's very Marmite-y. And I'd been in America so long, I didn't know what, because you can't get Marmite in America. I should give you a heads up for UK and other Commonwealth cruises. So just remember that.

You've got to take your Marmite and smuggle it in if you're going to America. But so you couldn't get any, he said very Marmite and I didn't really, I just sort of went uh-huh or something because I didn't know what it was. And my, it was my youngest kid who goes, oh, dad, are you a total idiot? Marmite means, because Marmite is like the UK version of Vegemite in Australia. It's like people either like it or they really hate it. And so they were concerned that they couldn't build

a network on Nigel alone. You had to have other people. And now it is basically Nigel alone. That's what it's come down to. And so just finally, Mark, when we now look at where the broadcasting landscape sits in the United Kingdom, most people, and I would say for good reason after our experience, have given up on GB News. The off communists now seem to want

to regulate the internet. They want to stop independent broadcasters like us with lawfare, with potential regulation of big tech platforms so that they decide, so that YouTube decides, oh well, Mark Stein's too dangerous to allow on because we might get a billion pound fine. How do you think this is going to play out?

I think it's going to play out very badly for the internet because the internet has become a sort of cartel of so-called platforms. And the trouble is there's like 200 countries in the world. So if you're one of these platforms, you simply can't, you know, customize your content for, you know, the United States and for Slovenia and for Uzbekistan and for Bhutan. So if you have a medium player like Ofcom presuming to regulate the internet, it becomes like a kind of... It's much easier for somebody, wherever they happen to be sitting, in Los Angeles or Toronto

or Berlin or whatever, to say, oh, let's just take this guy off the air worldwide. And I think that's the world where effectively, Ofcom will be able to make the internet worldwide increasingly as it is in China. That's my real fair. So in other words, a medium of liberation, which is what the Internet was when it came up 25 years ago, where all these different voices just got out there in the world, has now been taken back and become just another instrument of control. And that's, I think, where all this stuff is headed.

It's chilling. It's chilling. And it's why GB News should have fought. But this has been very exciting. Thank you for letting me ask the questions. Thank you for making me a much braver broadcaster because we had that sweet spot. I think we'll always have that 12 months.

You know what I mean? Dan was a great guy. Just around the time I joined GB News, Tim Rice wrote to me, the great lyricist of The Lion King and Evita and all the rest of it. Because Tim had been invited to go on your show, and he was astounded. He just sort of casually mentioned it to people in the pub or whatever. And all his pals had said, don't go on Dan Woodson's show. And Dan hosted a great show and it was a privilege to be your warmer pack every night for that

golden time. That's great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dan. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. But now I am going to hand back. I'm going to scuttle off. Okay, so the professional broadcaster is leaving the room and it's amateur hour again. Thank you so much for watching. That's very special interview with Mark Stein. Honestly,

I've tried for such a long time for him to sit down with me. He really doesn't do interviews these days. He's focusing on his health. But boy, oh boy, isn't he inspirational. What an incredible man. There's no Outspoken uncancelled after show today, but it does return on Tuesday. So I would encourage you all to sign up to my sub stack www.outspoken.live But we are back! 5pm UK time on Monday, 9am Pacific, midday Eastern. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Do hit subscribe right now if you're watching on YouTube or Rumble and most importantly I promise to keep fighting for you.