Tea at Four - My Life Undercover With Criminals

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

What is the reality of going undercover with some of the world's most dangerous gangs? In this episode of Tea At Four, hosts Lauren and Christie sit down with award-winning investigative journalist and documentary presenter Tir Dhondy to uncover the shocking, behind-the-scenes truth of criminal organisations.From surviving death threats and having a SWAT team kick her door down, to sitting in a car with a machete-wielding Rolex thief, Tir shares the heavy, unfiltered realities of her career. We dive into her undercover work in Ayia Napa exposing modern slavery and sexual harassment, the dangerous logistics of British drug mules smuggling weed out of Thailand, and how her team traced a high-stakes sextortion scam all the way to Lagos, Nigeria.We also discuss what it is genuinely like to navigate a high-risk, male-dominated industry as a female journalist, how criminals are disarmed by women, and why the future of investigative journalism is shifting directly to digital spaces like YouTube.

I underestimated how dangerous these people really were. This is what being undercover entails. Hey guys, talking about to Teeth Four. I'm Christy. And I'm Lauren, and this is a podcast where we talk all things that normally stay in the group chats. Now, today we're joined by a guest with a very cool and intriguing job. We're joined by Tier.

Thanks for coming on the board. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. So we cover people with some quite unconventional careers. So, Tier, you are an. investigative journalist. And you've done an undercover documentary, right? Yeah.

What kind of documentaries are you producing? So I produce and present most documentaries that I work on. A lot of the sort of themes and topics are to do with crime, youth culture, fringes of society, anything sort of in that lane, really. Have you always been this fearless? Because I feel like that there's traditional reporting, then there's putting yourself in the streets of Ayanapa where your safety is potentially compromised? To be honest, in answer to that, I think yes, I have. I actually don't think about it

too much and a lot of my friends and family are always like, are you not scared? But I think in a way, you become immune to it, the more stuff you do and the more people you meet. And there's only ever been a few hairy situations that I've been stuck in. How do you choose your stories? So I pitch most of my own stories. It takes me quite a long time to find them and I find them in different kind of ways. So one of the ways that I research stories is I just read the news all the time and if there's something that interests me I can dig deeper into it. Another way is just speaking to people on the ground. You know, a lot of stories come from word of mouth and over my years at Vice I was there about five, six years, I built up a list of underworld contacts, I call them. So people who can get

me access to these places that people can't usually access. So that's criminals, people operating on the fringes of society. A lot of the time, they give me tips. And that's kind of where I get a lot of my stories from. And sometimes even it can be people sending me DMs. I'm just like, okay, so you're getting in contact with the undercover in the world. And for me, it's like, how do you build trust with these people? How do you know if the story's actually worth being investigated? How do you know that a story is actually true? Yeah, it's a good question. Sometimes there are people who aren't who they say they are and that has happened to me maybe once or twice and you can sniff it very easily and we just ended up pulling the shoot or the production or whatever it was and then

finding people to replace them that were legitimate. Yeah. But it is the age old question. Everyone's always liked to me, how do you get these criminals to speak to you and how do you know that they are who they say they are? Literally. Yeah. And the first thing is that so in my world, we have someone who we call a fixer. Now a fixer is someone that you hire and they get you access to that world. Part of my strength is that I can find fixes that I build relationships with for a really long time and I really trust them. And when I'm pitching a documentary, I can call some of my fixes up and say, you know,

can you get me access to this place or this person? And they usually are able to do it. but finding a good fixer is the hard thing. And some fixes are very well known to other productions and some fixes are just my fixes that I keep very close to my chest. And they kind of just work for me really. Do you pay them?

Yeah, do you hire them as part of the production and the channel do checks on them and they are legitimate. So even if they have a criminal record and they're now reformed, that's fine. You know, some of them have their own charities. Some of them have written books and served their time.

They've come out of prison. Some of them are journalists in their field. You know, it really changes from case to case. But you pay them. I guess, because it's, like you say, it's gold dust. Do they like negotiate a higher price very often? All the time. Yeah.

All the time. But they work like any other kind of freelancer, you know. Sometimes, you know, there is a bit of a to and fro. They work almost as a producer, you know. That is their role. It's so mad. I don't know why my ride went there, but I'm just like, so a fixer. In my head, I was thinking, it's that basically a snitch?

but it's not. Do you know what? It is a really fine line and a lot of my fixers they are like oh you know my friends aren't going to like this because they're going to think that I'm being a snitch. That is something that comes up all the time and back to your sort of question

about legitimacy as well I'll use the example of the Thailand film that we just did so we did a documentary on British criminals who are in Thailand taking advantage of the weed industry which has recently been legalised and they're using mules to ship the weed back to the UK in suitcases. One of my long-term fixes was in Thailand, luckily, and was able to get me access to these gangs who were operating. Now, when he put me in touch with the criminals who were doing it,

there were a lot of checks that we had to go through when the cameras aren't rolling. And that is everything from seeing pictures of what they're doing, hearing voice. notes. They show us things on their phone. Yeah. So all of those checks are done essentially before the cameras start rolling. Do you ever feel out of your depth? Like when these like when these things are coming through to your phone it's like how or maybe a story is bigger than you anticipated. I don't ever feel out of my depth. I mean sometimes you know the access kind of keeps rolling and then you end up in a situation that you never thought you would end up in. But that is part of documentary filmmaking. and that's what I love about it.

With these sort of things, you can't be like, okay, at this time, I want this person to turn up and tell me this. It never works like that when you're working in crime because they don't stick to a production schedule, you know? You have to be a bit more free-flowers. There is one particular time where I did get completely out of my depth and it is quite a crazy story. Do you want me tell you it?

Please. I'm sad. I'm sorry. I'm here for it. Drum roll. Essentially, I was working on a documentary which was about, let's just say, a criminal gang. I underestimated and the channel underestimated how dangerous these people really were. It got into a few weeks of us filming and I'd filmed with a few people already and I started

getting messages on my phone, death threats and threat saying that if you don't stop this documentary, I'm going to kill you. there was also a sort of telegram group with a lot of the criminals which I had infiltrated and they put my address in it. No. Yeah. And my family's names in it. So my sisters, my mom, my dad.

Obviously I was freaking out. But I tried not to think too much of it and I thought, you know, they're probably just threatening me. They're not going to do anything. It's going to be fine. I went back home that evening and I was sitting with my flatmate and we were watching Maid in Chelsea. This is the duality of my life.

And as we're sitting watching Maiden Chelsea, these messages start to come through. Because I wasn't replying to them. It has to go through checks. You know, I was working for a channel at the time. And I was saying, you know, I'm getting these messages. So they advise me to not respond. So I'm getting these messages through from this unknown person.

And he's saying, do you hear me? You're not replying to me. I'm going to send a gang to run through your house right now if you don't respond. As he's sending me this message, my front door goes, boom, bum, mom, mom, ma, no, no, no. And me and my flatmate both jump up. We run to the door and we look through the keyhole. And all I can see is 12 men in balaclavas with machine guns and a bollard kicking my door down. Done, done, done.

See, I immediately burst into tears. Oh my God. And my flatmate, she is a, honestly, a trooper. She is just there. I'm, and in my head, I'm kind of, you know, the whole thing, we're in a fluster, we're both panicked. And in my head, I'm just thinking, thinking, thinking, and I'm thinking, I think that's the police. And they're going, oh, I'm police, put your hands in the air, put your hands in the air. And I'm going to, I think it's the police.

And she's going, that's not the police. They've got, they're in balaclavas. They look like ninjas, like, honestly like ninjas. So we're going back and forth. And for some reason, I don't know why I just opened the door. And, but they were, they were going to knock it down anyway. and I didn't really know what else to do. Okay.

So they point the guns on their face. They're like, put your hands in the air. We put our hands in the air. It's like a film. I'm still crying. She starts going, show me your ID. You're like, layering off. I'm like, okay.

I was ever in trouble. I would want her beside me. Wow. And they said, it turns out it was the police. What? They got a call from someone saying that I had shot my mom in my house. Oh my God. Yeah, layers to this story.

The SWAT police. And so in the UK, when the police get called, if a gun is used, a lot of the time they have to send the SWAT police. And the SWAT police come in full force and they don't wear police uniform. They wear these balaclavas. They have these machine guns and they look like ninjas. But the way that the criminal timed it was at the time, we really thought that it was them that were coming.

They knew exactly what they were doing by making that call. They know exactly what they were doing. And then as soon as the police, I know I kind of explained to the police, you know, I'm a journalist, I'm working on this story, etc, etc. They looked at me like I was crazy.

But when they left, again, got another message. That will teach you next, you can do a documentary on harassment because I'm not going to leave you alone because of that. And for multiple reasons, the documentary ended up getting pulled. Yeah.

I do think I will make the story eventually. But that is a moment where, you know, things went a bit up in the air and I had to move out of my flat for a while. Had my phone and laptop and stuff taken off me. Yeah, it was all a bit, it was all a bit mad. How did they find your address? It's so scary.

I know. I'm still, yeah. And then with all of that, you're still like, yep, I still love my job. I still want to continue. Yeah, I'm still like, I need to make that documentary. It's really frustrating me. Why did they do that? So, yeah.

I love what I do, honestly. And something like that wouldn't deter me. Were you particularly interested in your undercover party permit of work in Annapal? What made you dive into that story? So what was it for you? It was like, yep, I want to touch on that. When I was 18, I did a season in Ibiza. So I was always really interested in seasons and working abroad for those party islands.

And I was speaking to the production company who made it acclaimed content. I was speaking to them for a while. always wanted to work together. And it was actually a pitch that they put forward. Did you have a negative experience in Ibiza? Yes. You did. In hindsight, though.

Right. I think that when you're 18, you don't really realize a lot of the stuff that's going on around you or see it as that negative. And you kind of just brush it off. And I think as you get older, you become a bit more strict on that kind of thing. I'm just speaking about myself here,

not everybody else. But there were so many things that happened. and I think I was just so young and excited to be away from home that I was just having a good time and chose to ignore a lot of those things and didn't necessarily realize, you know, that a lot of the stuff that was happening was quite dark. Of course, yeah.

Being an Ionapa kind of reminded me of that. I went undercover and I wore a blonde wig, which is quite fun. And we went in September, which was actually out of season. I think it was at the end of the season. So I think if we had went, you know, in the middle of the season, maybe more stuff would have happened.

Yeah. The season was almost wrapping up. And I got a job at a bar as a rep. So I was on the street late at night, probably from about nine o'clock till three in the morning, getting people to come into the bar, giving them free shots, etc. The documentary was just about,

if you're a young person, what kind of things happen to you when you do a season abroad. But the main focus was a company called Workers Family. And Workers' Family are a business that packaged themselves as a holiday rep company. So they give you accommodation and they also find you a job. And the investigation was looking at them initially. They got me a job. I was staying in the accommodation. It was about, you know, unsafe and quite.

awful accommodation it was also about being paid you know 30 euros for hours and hours and hours of work and then when I was there the sort of sexual harassment stuff started happening I think there's a bigger story on that to be honest yeah for sure um I just was shocked hearing the word like modern slavery in that documentary but it it adds up like it's hand in hand with like betting paid 40 bureas and yeah i mean i was to be honest i was shocked too but that's the thing because i think i did a season i was almost immune to it and that when you're undercover sometimes there are parts of you where you're like

is this that bad you get immersed in that world so much that you start to second guess things a little bit when we got home that the team conducted interviews with experts in the field and they were like you know realistically 30 years for a night's work is modern slavery. That's what they said and I was shocked at that too. Well, there are moments where you saw like girls out in Ainawa being treated differently compared to like the males that were also working. Yeah, I mean, we went there, as I said, to investigate workers' family

and we had good reason to investigate them because there had been a lot of complaints, a lot of case studies already. Before you conduct an investigation into a company like that, you do need to have evidence that there is wrongdoing, which we had. And it wasn't a sexual harassment story. That's not what we went out there for. But it was impossible to ignore. Even, you know, when I was standing on the street at night,

just the punters who were coming past me, they're grabbing me, they're saying things to me. Yeah. It's an environment which is, it's an environment where that sort of thing is almost bound to happen, unfortunately. And there's very young girls that are doing a season. Some of them are, you know, 18, some of them below 18,

spanning to your sort of early 20s. A lot of the managers and people that are in positions of power are a lot older and should know better. And what we filmed in a documentary when I was undercover was, you know, the manager making inappropriate comments and one of the promoters of a big party and Iron App are also making inappropriate comments. Do I think that that happens to men?

No. No. Of course not. Yeah. You mentioned you obviously wore a wig. How much do you build out or like mentally prepare for this persona? Like do you make a fake Instagram? Because surely people go and got social media.

And you don't want to slip up on that. 100%. So her name was Sean Watson. Do you know what? So when we started the production, I was originally called something else and I just could not remember her name. Oh no. And Sean's my middle name.

So I was just like, guys, zit. But, you know, we hadn't. started filming or anything yet but I was like can we change it to charm because I know that I'll remember that in a room we went to a hairdressers and tried on loads of different wigs that was really fun and we went with the one that we thought was a few things so suited my complexion the most as in looked realistic not for vanity reason and the one that made me look young as well because I'm not going to reveal my age, but I was supposed to be,

I can't remember, like, early 20s, which I'm definitely not. And I needed to fit in. So I had to, you know, also wear different clothes, but that was a whole other story. And yes, I did pretend to be a persona and character that was not me. I kind of made myself come across a bit more naive,

a lot younger. And do you know what? Loads of people picked up on that in the comments. they're like, loll, I love that voice that she do it does as soon as she puts the wig on. Like,

that's crazy. But, um, so with undercover filming, you have cameras that are built into different objects. So, wow.

Um, before we went out, we had, um, this camera in a shirt and we had a camera in a bum bag. Right. And the shirt that they gave me was just not iron apper. Like,

I know what the iron appra vibe would be and it was not iron appra. and I just felt really self-conscious because, you know, all of these girls are in these fab outfits, like little sequin, hot pants and bikinis and stuff. And then there's me. And it's like really baggy shirt. Worryed that my wig's going to fall off

so I have a bandana on it. And I just look like, I don't know, like a rapper or something. No. I stick out like a sore thumb. I thought at least. And, you know, me and the crew were just laughing about it quite a lot. because I was like, you expect me to go out like this. But it was fine.

And I think people just thought I was a bit quirky. Quirky. Yeah. Do you, like, do you make friends and do you, do you fully have to stay committed? Like, you can't be telling them, like, this is, this is a bit. Undercover. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't necessarily call them friends. They may have seen me as a, yeah. Oh, rude. No, but I mean, like, professionally. Yeah. Yes. It's hard. And there were people there who don't really know what the right way to say this is

because of course I'm undercover like a hat to make friends. So yes, I did make friends. And that's kind of how you were getting little bits of information. Kind of fit right in, to be honest. Yeah. But, you know, after the production comes to a whole, you wouldn't speak to them again. It's not like long-term friends. Has anyone contacted you after?

Do you know what? no one that was kind of involved in the documentary, but since making that documentary, and this always happens, I have had numerous messages from people saying that the story was a lot darker than what was told. And that happens all the time. It's one of those things where, you know,

you wish that you were able to speak to them when you were making the documentary, but with these sort of things, you bring light to the topic, and then you get an influx of emails, and that happens all the time. So yeah, I've had a lot of people reach out to me with quite shocking stories. So, I mean, I would be really interested in doing a follow-up.

Could you do? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, potentially if someone commissions it for sure or even if it's an article or whatever. In terms of the people that I met there as well, there were a lot of people that obviously weren't part of what we were investigating and they weren't doing anything wrong. They were just, you know, punters there to have a good time. And you do feel bad.

Yeah. Like you can't help but feel bad because you feel like you're deceiving these people who are really nice. Yeah. And that was something that I really was stewing at night over. I'll be honest. But, you know, it was my first undercover.

Everything that I do, I am myself as a journalist. So the production team were very supportive and everyone that I spoke to on the production was like, you know, this is what being undercover entails. There are people that go into institutions for months and months and months. and befriend people. Yeah.

And, you know, can you imagine how they feel? It's wild, isn't it? Would you ever want to do something like that? Yeah. Yeah? I would love to. Panorama at BBC did this investigation, which I thought was amazing,

which was some guy went undercover in the Met Police. That would be a dream. So you're always in this character when you're undercover. Like, you're obviously working at night, but how are you spending your days? Were you just hanging around with the people, going to the beach, wearing your wig? Disappear.

Yes. Yes. Yes. So we had a villa where me and the production team were. And we would in the day, honestly, it was working nonstop. I think I was getting about four or five hours sleep because the shifts were long at night. And then there was stuff to film in the day that was as myself. Right.

So as tier talking to the camera saying what I went through that night and then getting into the blonde wig. But then also doing all of the kind of. of meetings off camera to sort of build that trust. Because you don't film everything, you know, and you can't legally film everything in order to point an undercover camera at something, you need evidence, as I said, of wrongdoing. So we were only allowed to film in certain areas.

There was protocol to it. We couldn't just film someone without their consent that was, you know, had nothing to do with the story. So it was meeting people and talking to them and finding out what the story was, getting all of that paperwork done sending it to channel four before we were allowed to turn on the cameras, you know. Right.

So there's a lot of work behind it, essentially. At the end of it, for example, in this documentary, there's like a guy that you're, what's even the word, exposing? Did he get, what happened to him? The people who were at the top of the company of workers' family were not in Iron Apper and were kind of faceless in the documentary. We didn't manage to film with them, but we were filming with the rep. And the rep was, you know, someone who almost got inadvertently caught in the,

fireline because he was representing a company where there was wrongdoing but you know he didn't own the company himself we explain that in the documentary yeah it's shut down since so the website's shut down i don't know if maybe they've rebranded um under another name yeah they're not functioning anymore do people ever like make jokes like oh you're not an undercover or like all the time all the time when i was single um and i was dating guys would be like, are the camera's coming? Or I was like, no. Are they like, am I part of a dating show

or like a podcast or another? I'll be like, no. And yeah, there's always a lot of jokes around that. I find it's very interesting because it's such a like male-dominated field. How does it feel? Like, is there many females that also like do what you do? Or is it hard to kind of like navigate such an environment,

especially being a woman? Yeah, there's definitely a few. Ellie Flynn's one of them. She's done things for Channel 4. Amber Hake. She's amazing. as well. But I would say that in terms of kind of directors and stuff, mostly I filmed with a lot of male directors and I worked with a female director for the first time, I think, on my Iron Apper

documentary, which you guys want to talk about where I went undercover. And it was brilliant. I loved working with a woman and I would love to work with more women in the industry. I would say, yeah, when it comes to kind of cameras and shooting and directors, for some reason, I seem to. to always be paired up with a male. And no shade to them or anything like that, but it was really lovely to work with a woman. So what does a team look like behind you with a documentary like this?

So you're obviously the producer of it, but like what's your team and how do they keep you safe as well? I mean it changes from production to production, but a setup that really works for me and it's cheap for the boardcasters is I'm producing and presenting and then I have a director.

And when it comes to act shooting the director has a DOP so director of photography so me and the director will spend you know seven eight weeks in development before we start filming together crafting the story finding the people everything that goes into the film and then we'll spend you know maybe two weeks filming and there'll be another shooter on board that's the core team but in terms of safety sometimes I have security that come with me. So on the Iron Apa film, there was security with me just in case.

And honestly, I felt like I was in a spy movie sometimes because, and it's like a film. So my team are blending into the background. So, you know, they're pretending to have dinner. They're having a little drink in the corner.

They're dancing sometimes. I'm like, okay. But, you know, everywhere I looked, they were surrounding me. And so that, was kind of fun in a way, I guess. But that's how the security were operating for that. Obviously, there was a sort of plan in place.

There's, I mean, every documentary that I do, there's always security chats, but not all of the time does security come with me? And there's a reason for that. Yeah. So on the Thailand shoot, security did come with me and my fixer did not like it at all. He was like, I don't know who this person is. They could be wearing a wire. I trust you, but I don't trust him.

Who is that? and it created a lot of problems. And I often say that to the channel sometimes. And, you know, when I tell my friends, they find me a bit mad. But I'm like, sometimes I would rather go without security because it actually creates a more hostile environment. When it's just me who a lot of these criminals see as a kind of young girl, is less likely to kick off.

Whereas when you have security with you, it instantly kind of sets the tone, I think. And they then look at you and think, you don't trust us so why would we trust you with your friends that are like male documentary filmmakers how do they find it harder to get contributors like maybe it's a good thing being a woman but like how does it differ between like how you ask questions like how you approach building that rapport i wouldn't say they find it harder to get contributors but this is just my assessment and i mean i might get shot down for it but I think criminals open up to women way more I think sometimes I can disarm

them instantly whereas with a male presenter it might take them some time because you have that sort of macho bravado that comes with being male and there is a bit of a you know tension yes and yeah with women they're instantly quite I don't know just instantly disarmed I would say Obviously the Louis Theroux dock on the Manosphere, there's like a big investigative doc that was in the headlines this year. It also got a bit of backlash that it didn't show like the perspective of women and the effects it would have had on women. I'd be intrigued to hear like if you were to have approached that documentary on the Manosphere,

how would you have portrayed it? Yeah. So one of my best friends actually directed that. Wow. That's amazing. No notes. No. No.

And I'm also not slender. I thought it was an amazing documentary. I'm just curious from like a woman's point of view how you might have. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And do you know what? I think I had this conversation with him.

Every director will direct a topic differently. And there's so many ways you could do it. I think his was really brilliant. But if a woman was presenting it, of course it would be completely different. And I would love to see a woman do a documentary on the Manosphere. I think it would be a completely different film. I would also love to see a woman do a documentary

on, you know, the women that are affected by the Manosphere. I would also love to see a women doing a documentary on the Themisphere. That is something that I'm really interested in. So the Themisphere is, again, another movement similar to the Manosphere. It has lots of different fractions of it. I would say more variation than what the Manosphere has. Ultimately, lots of different views within it. Some are, for instance, have you heard of Tradwise?

Yes. Yes. So that's part of the femisphere. Okay. There's also women who are into the sort of dark energy, feminine energy, divine feminine, that sort of stuff. So it's all to do with quite either traditional views of womenhood or, you know, it can go quite right field and it can go quite left field.

So there are different factions of it. But it's definitely a movement. that's up and coming and it's being talked about a lot at the moment we need to see a documentary from you too i wish what would you say is like a maybe a misconception about being a journalist in 2026 when i go down my few page and everyone's a crime journalist nowadays yeah you're up against that so you have you know you're more kind of journalist type then you also have people that come on just to present and there's no right or wrong way you also have people use social media and do you know what i think social media is actually great for journalism.

That is one of the things when everyone's like, do you think social media is a good thing or bad thing? Yeah. I think for journalism it's great. You have access to so many things on social media that, you know, we just didn't used to have. We'd have a few newspapers and a few channels and that was the news that we were in taking.

But now it's like so much variety. When I first started, it was at Vice and Vice was digital. digital and a lot of the channels looked to vice and said you know you guys are digital that's not real TV or that's not real journalism YouTube isn't real journalism but now that has completely changed and you're seeing channels like BBC and Channel 4 revert to YouTube because it is the future everything is going digital where's like the most unlikely place you found a story or someone's like come to you and decided it's something worth working on there's been a few. I think an Instagram DM sometimes is, okay, so the first documentary I made for BBC

was hunting the Rolex rippers. So I got access to criminals who were stealing Rolexes of people in London. And I was making that documentary for quite a few months. Whilst we were making the documentary, I was posting on Instagram and I got loads of Rolex Instagram pages to reshare it. Sort of if your watch has been stolen, contact me. This, like, kind of thing. And I got approached on Instagram by this guy who robbed Allard Jones. Do you know who Alan Jones is? Yeah. He sings, we'll walk it through. Yeah. Yeah. Well, walk here for it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So it was a huge story in the news. He was out and he had his Rolex stolen with a guy wielding a machete. The machete wielder reaches out to me on Instagram and

like I'm the guy that robbed Allard Jones. Do you want to interview me? And we were like, oh my God. Obviously, as you say, how do you know this person is legitimate? Et cetera, et cetera. It was 100% him. He had a tag on his thing.

He had his trial in a few weeks, but he had pled guilty. And he did go to prison for it. But we managed to get an interview with him just before he went to prison about what he did. And I was like, I can't believe this is just falling into my lap. Amazing.

We interviewed him in a car and he was sitting opposite me and as he was chatting to me he just lifts up his shirt and he had the machete there and I was like, brilliant. So then I was, I was said to the director I was like, we can't hurry up to him.

He used to like wrap up quickly. And we did mention that in the documentary we were like, you know, I was asking him questions and then I saw that he did have the machete on him so it made me feel a little bit, you know. A little bit. Scared.

Yeah. But yeah, it was stuff like that. And then the other day I was sitting in the park and some guy walked over to me and he was like, I know your documentaries. Da-da-da, what was the last one that you did? And I was like, Brits importing weed from Thailand. He was like, I have loads of mates that do that.

Stuff like that happens all the time. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That therapy, let me just get the truth out. Why not? No. Yeah.

But like, what? What do you think the psychology is? Like someone that has done such a fucking horrible act like that and has a machete wants to like talk about what they've done? Yeah. And honestly, everybody asks me that. And it's bravado. It's they want to boast.

They want people to know their story. And that is honestly why most of the people end up agreeing to an interview in the end is because they want to talk about it. They want to boast. There's obviously some criminals that are like absolutely not. And that happens all the time as well. I speak to people and they declined to interview. They're like, that's crazy.

Why would I do that? That happens all the time, by the way. There's always someone that wants to show off. It's amazing. They don't get paid for that, do they? No, never, never, never, never. No one gets paid in documentaries, apart from the team that are making it.

You can't pay a contributor because it compromises your journalism, you know? Yes. They need to say it. They need to say what they want to say without being paid, you know. I can't imagine what it was like being in that car with that man. Were you nervous? Yeah, it was a bit nervous, only because I thought could turn a bit sour here. Yeah.

And there was something about him, which was a little bit, I don't know, after he got released from prison, he actually ended up. When he robbed Allard Jones, he didn't realize that Aller Jones was a celebrity. Oh, wow. Yeah. And then coincidentally, which is bizarre, when he got released from prison, he ended up robbing another celebrity in Joe and the Juice. and it got filmed. Oh my God. And he again didn't realize it was a celebrity.

So he was like committing high profile attacks without realizing it. Jesus. Yeah. I don't want to, Flex isn't the word. No. Strikes again.

So yeah, I think he might be in prison now. Oh, hopefully. But yeah. Oh, God. Imagine he's watching. Well, also probably worth going into, you just done the documentary on drug meals.

Mm-hmm. That was the Thailand one. That was a Thailand one. How did you get into that story? There's been multiple reports in the news of young Brits getting caught in the UK with suitcases full of weed. The news tends to focus on the women that are caught. There's been a lot of females that have been caught with it. And they're kind of a certain type of person.

They're very glamorous. They're really young. And that really intrigued me because I was thinking, why are these people doing this and how are they getting caught up in it? Who is it that is recruiting? them. It was a story that I thought, you know, I reckon I can get access to this. And so I pitched it to Channel 4. And as I said, luckily, one of my fixers was actually in Thailand and able to help me with it. I did realise later on that actually it's not just women that are doing the mulling.

It's a lot of men too. But interestingly, the news loves to focus on female criminals. loves. So the women were being reported in the news and it was making national headlines. The men not so much because they feel like, you know, it's being seen all the time. When we went out to film in Thailand,

I met someone called Lucy. We named her Lucy. And she was about to smuggle weed back to the UK. And we filmed her with the suitcase full of weed. And then we filmed her back in the UK. Wait. She was successful. She made it.

She made it. She made it. She made it, yeah. Can I just ask, like, what is the, I know as you as the production, you've got your security and stuff, but what's the duty of care for those that are being interviewed or covered by you guys? But for them, like, how, how safe is it? Because ideally, if something bad was to happen, where does the fall back? Happened, yeah.

And it's a really good question. And we have so many conversations, you know, how vulnerable are these people, all of that gets spoken about. We have to be very careful that we are just filmed. what is already about to happen. And that's hard, you know. And I said that in the documentary. As a person, I want to tell her, you know, don't do this.

Or if you feel like you're in trouble, call the British Embassy or something like that, giving her a tip or I don't know. But you have to just let whatever unfolds, unfold. You know, it's like people talk about wildlife programs. I just about it. Where they like let the penguins die. stuff. Same thing, watching the weed go in the suitcase.

Yeah, I'm being bald. It's hard because with criminals and people that are committing a crime, we do protect their anonymity. So they have balaclavas on, there's a voice change. And we have, as journalists, no obligation to report them to the police.

There's no obligation to do that. So we try and protect their identity as much as we can in order to get the interview. But we can't guarantee that they will be fully protected. But that crime in particular is something that is happening a lot, a lot, a lot. There's people being caught all the time. And actually, we went out with Border Force in the documentary.

You film with Border Force for a day. It's like filming the police for the day. You don't expect that they're going to catch a woman with a suitcase full of weed, coming back from Thailand in the space of the four hours that you're filming. and they did. Yeah. We were shocked because we kind of went out on that day

and we thought the likelihood of them you know, hitting that whole checklist and crushing someone is so slim. But we did and I think that shows like the prevalence of the crime. How do they do it? Like do they know that someone's going to look at the scanner? Surely.

So this is kind of what we explore in the dock. Loads of people are getting through although the Thai authorities are saying that they're doing everything that they can and cracking down on it. they are 20 kg of it's a 20 kg suitcase and the weed is vat-packed so we saw the vat-packing machines in the dock so that's kind of you know like a yes yeah yeah um so they pile the suitcase full of vat-packs full of weed I mean and the market value on

some of it is a million the flyer gets paid 5k sometimes 10k and they get a free holiday so So they get flights to Thailand and then they get roughly 2K spending money. That's an incentive for a lot of these people to do it because some of them have never been out of the country before. You know, holiday in Thailand sounds very appealing. One thing that I did learn whilst making the documentary which I thought was interesting was that a lot of these young people

they get this promise of this holiday, they go out, they get their two grand spending money, they're having a great time. It comes to the day where they're flying the suitcase back and by the way they never know which day that's going to be the gang always gives them their ticket on the day and says it's today. They freak out. They don't want to do it on many occasions.

And then they say to them, well, actually, you now owe me five grand. I've spent money on your flights. I've spent money on your spending money. So how are you going to pay me five grand? You have to do it now. And it's a kind of way of tricking them into making sure that it happens, you know? How do they get recruited? Yeah.

So it's friends of friends. and word of mouth. However, weirdly, again, after that documentary got made, I had people message me saying, I've been approached and they were sending me the screenshots of the dealers that were asking them to do it. And it was, yeah, that sort of package deal, 5K. And a lifetime in prison.

Yeah, essentially. A lot of them are frequent flyers because they are getting away with it. And she said that she probably, would do it again, yeah. Even though, which I found quite shocking because there was a moment you'll see in the documentary if you watch it, that she saw the suitcase

and she freaked out and I was really worried about her after that because it felt to me like she didn't wanna do it. And I was, when we left, I was thinking, is she even gonna do it, you know? But she did and then because she got away with it, she was almost like, you know, maybe I'll do it again. And I sort of had to remind her, I was like, last time I saw you, you were so scared. You really want to do that again?

Yeah. It's just the money's a massive incentive. Yeah, she was off on holiday to Mexico. Wow. Yeah. Have there been like any like conversational moments that have stayed with you like long after filming? Especially like speaking on that, the lady. Has there been any other moments within your career?

A lot. So two of the documentaries that I made. one of them was on sex distortion it affects a lot of young men that get targeted and they send explicit images of themselves and then they get blackmailed

and in a lot of cases they commit suicide and I was making a documentary about this one young boy who was 16 who committed suicide because he was a victim of sex distortion and got really close to the family they're in America and I think about that all the time they were just great people and it's, you know, had such a massive impact on them.

And then we basically, the story was the scammer ended up leaving behind a piece of evidence, which was an IP, and we ended up tracing it all the way to Nigeria, Lagos, and then we conducted an investigation there. Oh, my God. So, yeah, that is definitely a project that really stayed with me. And since then, I've done talks at schools about it. I don't document it, but it's one of those ones where I felt quite passionately about it. So I wanted to spread my knowledge and do harm reduction and make sure things like this don't happen to people and they're educated about it. And then the second one was I did a three-part investigation for BBC about a young woman who disappeared in the US Virgin Islands.

Her name is Sam Heslop. That was another one that really stayed with me. So yeah, it's when something really awful happens. it has an impact on you when you're filming as well because you're very much like interviewing the family, talking to the family, hoping that you can try and make that little bit of difference even if you don't find out who was responsible, you know.

Yeah. Do you often find yourself in cases doing more than like the police are doing? Because that must be quite hard for families to, yeah. Yeah. In the Sam Heslop documentary on The Missing Women, we definitely got way further than the police ever had. They'd almost said it was a cold, case. Different jurisdiction and laws and stuff because it's in the US Virgin Islands. But there were so

many things, for instance, there was CCTV footage of her last movements that a lot of her friends had never seen before. And the authorities were refusing to give it to the family and friends. And they obviously really wanted that because they thought, you know, if we can put something like this on the internet, people might come forward with more information. Things like that can have a huge impact we managed to get that CCTV footage from them after a really long time of negotiations and chats and they were then able to kind of put that out to the world and I think that things like that where it's like why hasn't this been done before where people are like yeah you have got further than the police and I mean even in my crime documentary is the more kind of actuality based crime

um we managed to speak to criminals and yeah yeah I guess It's a massive thing here. Like people just don't trust the Met Police. They're more likely to talk to a journalist than someone of authority. Like the, I think it was the crash on Netflix. Did you see the documentary? I haven't seen it. No, I need to.

But like one of the people that were, he was like an attorney or something, one of the girls that he wanted to speak to for years was like, no, no, I'm not talking to him. Like, he's of too much power. And then they spoke to like the documentary filmmakers. And he was like, wow, I've tried for like seven years to speak to this. this woman. So it's a nice thing to have that kind of trust, but I guess it holds a lot of responsibility. Yeah. What's the next big story that you want to crack? I am pitching a lot at the

moment, so I am constantly hounding commissioners trying to get my next idea off the ground. I think I can't really say what it is. But I, you know, I would love to do something in the sort of Femisphere space. I'm also always into crime stories. That's definitely my niche. I would like to see something on ticket resellers when you talk about this morning, like

how much money they make. How do they do? How do the box work? Well, if you ever have any ideas in my way. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I'm just literally fascinating at your resilience, especially something so like heavy. Having that

their passion to actually like get the pitch out there, get the story done and actually, you know, push those stories out there. Because I do feel like, especially people my age and younger, we watch more like crime documentaries on YouTube or more interesting in like documentaries and stuff, instead of like doing like the research ourselves, watching the news. I don't remember the last time I put the news on, to be fair. Yeah. And social media as well.

Yeah. I think a lot of young people get their news from TikTok and Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I appreciate the way you do. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. It is tough and like, I think the other thing that's tough as well is when you really believe in a story and no one will commission it.

And you think that that story really needs to be brought to life and people need to know about it and you just can't get it off the ground. But I would say that sometimes everyone says no but then eventually you just keep plugging it, keep plugging it, keep plugging it,

keep plugging it and someone will say yes. Yeah. So yeah, I think no idea is ever done unless someone else has made it and it popped off. Just to round up, I'd love to ask, what would you say your favorite documentary you've ever produced is

and maybe what was the most challenging? So my favorite documentary that I've ever made was actually when I was at Vice. It was with the director of the Manosphere documentary. He was directing it. And it was called Tantra Island. And I went to Thailand and I got involved in this tantric sex,

slightly culty. world and I really immersed myself in it and that's why I loved it and I know I know a lot of the stuff that I've spoken to you about as being quite serious and hard hitting this had an element of that but it also had an element of fun and it was you know I was doing everything from getting tied up in a shibari rope workshop god that's a bit of a mouthful was blindfolded have people tickling me I went to kind of darts workshops basically I was immersing myself in the documentary and that's what I really loved because I was like, you know, as a journalist, you have a lot of kind of sit down interview formats, but to really get involved and immerse yourself in it, that is what really

excites me. And that's why I loved going undercover so much because it was really immersive. So that was definitely my favourite. And it had shades of light and dark because it was like really funny moments, but also uncovering a lot of sexual abuse, assault and trauma that was happening in the community. And that was a really important. story to tell so loved making that documentary what was your most challenging so the one that got pulled where I got swung by the police yeah for sure probably the one on sex distortion that was really challenging for me just because I was attached to the story I really really wanted to help the family as much as I could and we weren't able to find out exactly who did it but you know we were able to

shed a light on something and educate young people. So there is always that. But it was more just, I felt bad coming back to them, you know, and saying we weren't successful. For sure. Yeah.

It's such an interesting chat. Yeah. Do you have any more burning questions, my darling? No, I'm going to go back and watch some more of it. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah,

we love your dogs. Where can everyone find them on your social media or platforms? So I just did this little thing on YouTube where I put all of them, the ones that are available on YouTube into a kind of playlist. So if you just type in Tired on, do it's there. That's all the Vice ones and Channel 4 ones.

And then all the BBC ones are on BBC I player. Gorgeous. Thank you so much for chatting. You're a very cool job. We've loved having you too. Thank you. Thank you. Woo-hoo.

It was fun. Thank you so much. You're welcome.