[phone ringing]
[suspenseful music]
[Aylia Fox] Everybody has a secret.
And it was our job to discover that secret
whatever it took.
As News of the World journalists, we could get to anyone.
It didn't matter who you were.
Actors,
footballers,
models,
even royals.
Didn't matter who.
Anyone was fair game.
[phone ringing]
[suspenseful music intensifies]
[Emma Morgan] Back in the 90s I was a model,
living this jet-setting lifestyle.
And one night, I flew home to London.
It was late at night, I got off the plane, I got a taxi back home,
and I felt refreshed, I'd just had a lovely break.
I was on top of the world.
Whoever you were, we'd sting you, we'd catch you in the act,
all snapped, recorded and filmed.
Just as the presses were about to roll, you had to make that one last phone call.
[phone ringing]
[Emma Morgan] When I arrived back at my flat,
I saw that my answering machine had the blinking light on,
which told me I had a message.
And it was somebody from the News of the World.
It wasn't an easy phone call for either party,
and 99 percent of the time they either slam the phone down
or decline to comment.
It was a message informing me that I would be in the News of the World
the following morning on a drug scandal,
and would I like to make any comments?
I just...
I think I needed to sit down. In fact, I did.
[Aylia Fox] You knew their life would change and they knew too.
So, you almost felt sorry for them. Almost.
I remember just sitting on the floor in complete shock.
I didn't know... I didn't even piece the story together
with what had just happened.
I was thinking, what is this about? What are you talking about?
[phone ringing]
[Jodie Kidd] It's a moment where your blood just drains from your whole body.
It's that complete panic, you know, that fight or flight
and you just go, what has happened?
[phone ringing]
[Tulisa Contostavlos crying] My life is ruined, it's over.
I just want my life back.
If your phone just started ringing at home late at night,
on a Friday, Saturday morning,
the last person you wanted to hear from was Mazher Mahmood.
[intense music]
The Fake Sheikh.
[suspenseful music]
[newsreader] The trial of Mazher Mahmood, the journalist known as the Fake Sheikh
has opened at the Old Bailey.
[suspenseful music]
[Jodie Kidd] It was so unbelievable it was believable.
You know, this can't be fake.
[suspenseful music]
[newsreader] For 30 years, he has reveled in hiding his identity.
[George Galloway] His anonymity, his secrecy, was the key to his entire act.
[ominous music]
[newsreader] The self-styled king of the sting,
turning up to court every day beneath a balaclava.
[Jeremy Dean] I think he was ruthless, dishonest, and a merciless individual.
[newsreader] Mazher Mahmood has been behind huge tabloid scoops,
things like uncovering match fixing in Pakistani cricket
and a plan to kidnap Victoria Beckham.
[Neil Wallis] Maz played on this caricature
that money literally could be no objection.
If you got close, you could grab your share of it.
[suspenseful music]
[Emma Morgan] I hate to say it.
He's very, very, very good at what he does.
[music intensifies]
[indistinct chatter]
[Paul Samrai] People are going to think that this never happened, but it did.
Strange as it may sound,
you may not believe it, but this actually did happen.
[eerie music]
Let's go back to the 90s.
I'd done time in prison for fraud,
and when I came out, I had no work, but I wanted to be a journalist.
So I got in touch with Mazher Mahmood.
He wasn't called the Fake Sheikh then, he was Mazher Mahmood,
and he said to me, "Do you want to work with me?
Come and see me, and you better bring some stories."
[dramatic music]
At that time I was known as the pizza man, the man who always delivers
[phone ringing]
So one night I get a call from a man calling himself Dr. Rangwani.
He's a well-respected, 62-year-old GP,
a married family man with two daughters, from Solihull in Birmingham.
So he explained, he said, "I'm telling you in confidence,
I'm having trouble with a girlfriend."
He'd been having a 15-year affair,
and she was claiming that he was the father of her three sons.
This would leave his reputation, both professional and personal,
in tatters.
So Dr. Rangwani says,
"I've been thinking. You've been to prison..."
I said, "Yes, I have."
He said, "You must know killers, murderers."
"I've come across them, yes."
He said, "I want her dead."
[ominous tone]
I said, "Okay, I'll see what I can do."
[ominous tones]
I had to make a decision. One was either...
go to the police,
which is what a normal person would do,
or go to Maz.
[suspenseful music]
So I called Maz.
He said, "Look, this is what we're gonna do.
I'm gonna come to Birmingham."
[intense music]
"So we're going to book a room in the Hyatt in Birmingham.
I am going to be the hitman."
Rangwani for a minute would never imagine
that he was a reporter for the News of the World.
The first thing Maz would do on any sting was bug the room from floor to ceiling.
And then it was my job to bring Rangwani into the meeting.
So, knock knock and we walk in, and I glance around the room,
and the most telling thing I see is there is a wash bag
placed on the table.
We had to catch Rangwani bang to rights.
We had to get it on camera.
And you could clearly see in the footage
Rangwani admitting to wanting his mistress killed.
Frankly, it was shocking.
[Mazher] You want it to look like an accident, or what?
[Rangwani] That is, you know what to do, I leave that entirely up to you.
[Mazher] But you want her killed?
[Rangwani] Off my life and scene...
[dark music]
[Paul Samrai] Maz says, "Great, 5,000 pounds, cash.
You have to pay half upfront and half when the job is done.
[ominous music]
[Paul Samrai] So a few days later,
we arranged to get the money from the doctor.
We had a van near the meeting point
where our tech guy was hiding with a video camera.
We had to get Dr. Rangwani on camera handing over the money.
That would be crucial evidence of intent.
So, Rangwani comes out,
Maz said to Dr. Rangwani, "Okay, where's the deposit?"
He gets out an envelope. Unbelievable footage.
[Mazher] That's the money, yeah?
[Paul Samrai] That was crucial evidence of intent.
So, Maz then said, "Right you will hear from us when it's done."
The footage is quite shaky,
but we needed to catch the doctor's reaction.
On his way back, Rangwani does a triumphant fist pump into the air.
[suspenseful music]
Maz says, "I've got him."
So Friday goes by, Saturday morning,
Maz rings me, "Right, everything is set.
When he rings you, and he's going to,
you tell him that it's going to happen today."
He said, "You've got to be realistic,
when he rings, run up and down the stairs, get out of breath.
Yeah, make your voice sound stressed.
Record that phone call and make it realistic."
He calls in the afternoon, and I'll never forget the words.
He rings, I answer, press the record.
[breathing heavily] "Yes? Yes, Doc?"
And he says, "Is it done?"
I said, "What?"
"Is she done? Is it done?"
I said, "Yes, it is done."
[ominous music]
He was arrested on the Saturday afternoon,
the story went in on the Sunday, and there it was.
Big spread.
[tense music]
[newsreader] Dr. Rangwani was a respected man.
The judge, Mr. Justice Alliot,
said he invented a mass of elaborate lies to try to get away with his crime,
but had shown not a flicker of remorse.
Dr. Rangwani, after being found guilty, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
I was really grateful to Maz, because I was an ex-convict,
and that association with Maz, the prestige that came with it,
gave me my self-confidence back.
That now, I was doing something purposeful.
I've been a policeman a long time,
and I don't think this would've ever come to court.
Had it not been for the way it'd been investigated by the newspapers.
[♪Happy Mondays: "God's Cop"]
[Paul McMullan] The 90s was the golden age of tabloid journalism.
Imagine a world without the internet, without a mobile phone.
That newspaper is literally where you got your news from.
And so, we had the power to mould the way people thought.
♪ I can virtually do anything I read ♪
♪ Someone somewhere swam between your knees... ♪ ♪
Nobody today should underestimate just how big the News of the World was in the 90s.
It was massive, it was the paper everybody talked about.
It was the biggest selling Sunday newspaper in the world.
It was always some scandal or some celebrity or politician
who'd been up to no good
and you'd learn about it from the News of the World.
♪ God made it easy ♪
♪ God made it easy on me ♪
♪ God made it easy ♪
♪ God made it easy on me God made it easy on me... ♪♪
[Paul McMullan] Mazher and myself were both undercover investigators
for the News of the World, but we were completely different,
because I was there to sell newspapers and entertain and titillate,
he was there as an avenging angel to send people to jail.
But he didn't socialise with us, he didn't drink with us,
he stuck with his own little team.
I was desperate to be his friend and nick his contacts.
I do remember going up to him and saying, "I'd really like to work with you."
And his reply was, "Yeah, that's not happening."
[suspenseful music]
I was in the Maz gang.
Now, that is something to be proud of.
It was almost as if he was an undercover secret agent.
A man of mystery.
It was known, you didn't leave photographs of Maz lying around.
You'd obviously have him in lots of the photos,
but you'd hand it to the picture desk
and they would draw with a black marker pen through the eyes.
[intense music]
Mazher really enjoyed playing a role, he really enjoyed acting.
He had kind of an aura of a child kind of thing, like a boy prince.
And then he used that boy to be a better undercover person,
like children are good at dressing up.
Me and Maz were very, very close. We were thick as thieves.
I did lots of things for Maz.
I dressed as an Arab,
I dressed as a woman,
I bugged houses for Maz.
In fact, I done everything for Maz.
[Christine Hart] The team Mazher surrounded himself with
were all misfits to some degree or other.
They didn't really fit into society and were somehow outsiders
because he was an outsider.
At the time, Maz was the only Asian journalist on News of the World.
And in those days, there were limitations
on what Asian journalists could do.
[ominous music]
Maz was limited to stories about Asians, or stories about racism.
If Maz wanted to do celebrities
or corruption in British institutions,
the editors had a sort of a mind block.
They could not see how an Asian or Black journalist
could do the same bonding with a white target.
So, he decided to turn that on its head
and he learned how to play it to the absolute max to get what he wanted.
[intense percussive music]
[Neil Wallis] Maz had this idea, the Fake Sheikh.
[suspenseful Middle Eastern-style music]
It was actually a piece of genius.
There was an image then of these incredibly wealthy Arabs
arriving in London.
Sort of transplanting their obscene wealth here
to the point where they could do what they want.
They had no sense of their own money and there incredible wealth,
and simply to be anywhere near it was to be dazzled by it.
[Aylia Fox] Because your average person had no familiarity with Arab culture,
or Sheikhs, or what Sheikhs did, what Sheikhs said,
how Sheikhs acted,
I think Mazher presumed people would act on their prejudices.
[intense music]
[Paul Samrai] So Maz very cleverly tapped into the zeitgeist of the era.
He realised he could play the race card as his ace card.
One of the common ways that he got his stories was through the hotline,
which was always advertised week in week out in the News of the World.
Do you know a scandal Mazher Mahmood can investigate?
Call us! We pay the best!
[phone ringing]
This motivated a lot of people, a lot of people, to ring in.
[Aylia Fox] The process for Mazher Mahmood of becoming the Fake Sheikh
was a process.
And he had to start small.
He couldn't expect to go straight into massive celebrity stories
when he'd not practised his art.
I think one of the ways he did this was by going for lesser-known people,
perhaps people that were more easily manipulated
into the situation that he was creating.
One day I got a call and it was a tip on Emma Morgan,
a very good tip.
Emma Morgan was one of the biggest Page 3 girls at that time,
and we heard she takes drugs.
It was the perfect job for Maz to try the Fake Sheikh out on.
So I was 24 and I was a glamour model in the 90s,
modelling for all the tabloids, The Sun and the News of the World.
Page 3 was basically a topless girl,
on page three of The Sun newspaper.
I know many would be like, "Why would you want to do that?"
But it was a thing.
I would say Page 3 girls back in the day
would be likened to Love Island,
and I know they don't walk around with their boobs out,
but we see plenty of bum cheeks, don't we?
So it was that kind of a thing, it was glamour.
[suspenseful music]
[Steve Grayson] I spoke to Mazher and he said we'll have to work a plan out,
how we can get her.
He said, "What about a calendar? That'd be good.
Offer her thousands of pounds."
I rang Emma, and I said "You know, I've got a fantastic opportunity for you
I told her an Arab Sheikh was involved.
I just couldn't believe how lucky I was, I felt so blessed and so excited
it was just the job of my dreams.
It felt like I'd hit the jackpot with it, you know?
I was so, so excited.
And I asked Maz, "How are we gonna get her on coke?"
[suspenseful music]
[Emma Morgan] We flew to Lanzarote.
We landed and we were going through the arrivals hall.
And then I saw somebody that I knew.
His name was Billy.
Maz said to me, "The person" who rang up the tip line was a guy called Billy."
This Billy was supposedly Emma's friend.
[Emma Morgan] How I knew Billy was I'd done previous shoots in Lanzarote.
I said, "What are you doing here?" He said, "I'm your bodyguard."
I thought, oh my God, this Sheikh has got me a bodyguard.
It was just making me feel super, super special.
[Steve Grayson] Then Maz said Emma's friend Billy would supply the drugs.
[ominous music]
[Emma Morgan] I got to the hotel. Steve's like waved me off.
He said, "Order whatever you like, the Sheikh will pay for everything.
No request is too big."
[Steve Grayson] I got to the hotel and I rang Maz and said,
"She's here. It's time for the sting."
[dramatic tones]
We needed sound and we needed shot. We needed the film.
If we didn't have that, we didn't have the story.
Then Mazher came in to the hotel room
where I was working out where to put the cameras.
There was a radiator with a criss-cross wood lattice.
So I put the camera in that.
Maz pretended to put the cocaine down and he did that. Perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
So the room was set.
The camera was ready, the sound was ready, everything was ready.
All we needed is for Emma to come in.
[emotional music]
I remember walking out the corridor and I sort of going to knock,
and I was all nervous, I knocked on the door.
[Steve Grayson] When Emma walked in, Maz greets her.
He wasn't in his robes, he was just in a suit.
He greets her with two hands, like he's an Arab prince.
He's always over the top, "I think you're beautiful.
I think you'll be wonderful, absolutely wonderful in a calendar.
[Emma Morgan] He was dressed very, very smart.
I noticed his skin was lovely, his nails were perfectly manicured,
he had big gold watch on his wrist.
I just remember thinking he exuded class and charisma.
And there was champagne there.
And Billy was also in the room.
[Steve Grayson] The atmosphere in the hotel room was wonderful,
but I was nervous because it was always worrying putting these cameras in.
Because they could bloody drop on the floor.
The battery could go down just when she's about to snort the cocaine.
I was worried all the time because it had to work.
[soft dramatic music]
Billy said, all of a sudden he said, "Do you want some coke?"
She was quite, not shocked, but she looked enough to say,
"Bloody hell," you know, I think she was a bit flustered.
Maz said, "Oh, go on, we don't care, it will be no problem."
And he was giving it all the Arab act.
[Emma Morgan] He saw me refuse and he said, "No, no, no, come on."
I can't remember the exact words,
but I was encouraged so much to do some cocaine.
I'd probably tried cocaine less than a handful of times before this,
and never particularly enjoyed it,
but I honestly thought if I'd said no,
it could have cost me the job.
I then went on to have some cocaine,
thinking I'm going to be in his good books now.
Maz was over the moon, he said, "We've got her."
The Fake Sheikh was working.
But Maz wanted more.
[sombre music]
[Emma Morgan] The next thing the Sheikh stood up
and he went on to a little balcony and he beckoned me,
he asked me if I could get him some cocaine.
I was a bit surprised and I said to him, "Well, Billy, you've employed him,
he sells cocaine.
Get it off Billy, I don't have cocaine."
He looked me in the eyes and said, "I don't trust him, I trust you."
He said, "I'd really rather if you could get it from Billy,
and then maybe if you could drop it to my suite after dinner."
I was at that point, worried that if I went to his suite
he was going to proposition me, I was going to refuse,
and it would be the end of the job.
Billy came up with a plan to safeguard me.
And that plan was to put the cocaine
under a small gap in his hotel room door,
push it through quietly,
tip toe away, and then send him a message to say, "I put it under your door."
So that's what I did.
[suspenseful music]
He tried the Fake Sheikh, and he discovered it worked a treat.
He was able to get away with all kinds of things.
So he ran with it.
[Aylia Fox] I think Mazher absolutely loved playing a sheikh.
It was theatrical journalism.
The Arab robes of the Fake Sheikh
were Mazher Mahmood's way into the world of the rich, powerful and influential.
[Emma Morgan] I read the whole story crying my eyes out.
There was me depicted in the paper as some drug dealer.
I just couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it.
It was then I realised that the Sheikh wasn't a sheikh.
He was an undercover investigative reporter from the News of the World
by the name of Mazher Mahmood.
There was shock, there was horror,
there was shame of what people are going to think.
I just cried and cried and cried.
Within a week of that story breaking,
I'd been evicted from my flat by my landlady.
I'd been dropped by The Sun.
My agency, I was ringing up,
we used to have to ring every day at like 5:00 PM
to see what jobs we had for the following day or whatever.
Nothing.
[interviewer] People criticise the way you work
and that essentially you encourage people
to commit crimes they wouldn't do otherwise
if you hadn't been there offering them temptation.
[Mazher Mahmood] It's an argument that's churned out again and again.
Simon, you're a celebrity, you're a well-known name,
is there any way on this planet I could persuade you to sell me cocaine?
I guarantee I couldn't,
whether I'm dressed as a sheikh or a Sikh or whatever,
you would not sell me cocaine, the people we expose are the people that are at it.
If you want to understand Maz and what makes him tick,
you've gotta go right back to his background.
[♪Eddie & The Hot Rods: Do Anything You Wanna Do]
Maz and I grew up in Birmingham.
♪ Gonna break out of the city ♪
♪ Leave the people here behind ♪
♪ Searching for adventure ♪
♪ It's the type of life to find ♪
♪ Tired of doing day jobs ♪
♪ With no thanks for what I do ♪
♪ I'm sure I must be someone ♪
♪ Now I'm gonna find out who ♪
♪ Do anything you wanna do... ♪♪
[Paul Samrai] Here's a guy from an Asian Pakistani background.
Maz's dad was a Pakistani journalist
working for an Urdu language magazine,
and was limited to doing stories about his own community.
Maz hated the prospect of being limited to local Asian newspapers like his father,
but when he tried to break into mainstream journalism,
he hit a brick wall.
In the 80's England was a deeply, deeply divided country
where racism was rampant.
It was very difficult for Asian ethnic minorities
to get work in the mainstream media.
[suspenseful music]
[Mazher Mahmood] I found it very difficult to get into journalism.
I wanted to work for my local paper,
and I got turned down two years in a row for work experience.
It was tough for Asians in those days, I did feel I was discriminated against.
But then in those days, there were no Asians in the media.
[Aylia Fox] The way he broke into journalism
tells you everything about Mahmood then and throughout his journalism career.
It was clear right from the start that he was prepared to do what it took,
even turn over family friends
that he met at a family dinner
who talked about conducting themselves in video piracy.
He took that information to a news desk and they turned it into a story,
and suddenly he had an in-road into the world of journalism.
[Mazher Mahmood] I rang up the New of the World,
I said, "I know a gang making pirate copies of tapes,
are you interested?"
And of course they were and said, "Come down to talk to us."
[interviewer] Didn't you hear about that story
sat around your own family's dining table? How did that go down?
[Mazher Mahmood] Not very well, my folks felt it was wrong,
you're kind of seen as a bit of a grass in the community.
[Aylia Fox] He was very single-minded, determined, ambitious,
and willing to do more or less what it took.
And after that initial video piracy story,
Maz told me his dad was absolutely incandescent with anger.
Threatened to throw him out of the house, said he blackened the family name.
But Maz didn't care, it was all about the story, he got it,
he was ruthless, and that's how he continued for the rest of his career.
[ominous music]
A lot of pressure was put on us, first-generation kids,
to succeed.
The key wasn't the prestige of the position,
the key was the earning power.
That's what they were looking for, our parents.
He saw journalism as an opportunity to make money.
No doubt about it, money drove him because money equates to success.
Maz was a high-octane story junkie.
Just like a junkie always needs his next bigger, better hit,
Maz always needed a bigger, better story.
The News of the World was all about sport, sex, scandal,
and if you could get a story combining all three,
you'd absolutely hit the jackpot.
[intense music]
[newsreader] As if you didn't know already,
England's Premier League kicks off tomorrow.
[Steve Burton] Football was absolutely massive for the News of the World.
We were permanently out looking for stories involving football players,
usually for the wrong reasons.
At the time, Newcastle United were one of the top teams in the Premier League.
Maz got a tip-off that the chairman of the club, Freddy Shepherd
and the vice chairman Doug Hall,
presenting as respectable businessmen and family men,
were flying out to Marbella after leaving the match,
playing the rounds all over town in seedy nightclubs.
You knew it would be a big, major story
because football meant to people of Newcastle and Newcastle fans,
it meant everything, it was religion to them.
And the stadium, St. James' Park, was like the high cathedral,
and the players, they were the gods,
and the Newcastle football bosses, the high priests of the religion.
[Aylia Fox] With that story, it's the kind of scandal
that would go viral all over social media today.
But back in the 90s,
the only way to find out what went on behind closed doors
was by reading the tabloids.
Everybody knew the News of the World was the best at exposing scandal.
It's what made them buy the paper,
it's what made it the biggest selling newspaper in this country.
[Steve Burton] Freddy and Doug were considered untouchable
and whatever they got up to, it was virtually impossible to prove it.
But the more Maz was told something was impossible,
the more he'd go for it.
We got in touch with Doug Hall and said,
"I've got a client who's a wealthy sheikh in the middle east
and would like to start a football league in Dubai,
and has money to invest and would like to discuss it with you."
Doug Hall took the bait and said, "We'll see you in Marbella."
[intense music]
Maz told me I'd be acting as his bodyguard,
to make sure I was suited and booted.
"You're part of a sheikh's entourage,
make sure you don't look like a photographer."
We all turned up at the Marbella club.
Mazher booked a swanky villa, very expensive.
Conrad was the technical expert, the surveillance guy.
He would be monitoring the feed next door.
We placed various accessories like a Dubai duty free bag
and a shisha pipe around the villa.
Maz did this to create the illusion that we'd just flown in from Dubai.
[ominous music]
My surname's Tough, T-O-U-G-H.
I was in the Special Forces
and I stayed with them for ten and a half year,
I should've been dead at least ten times, but I ain't.
So we got to Marbella about 9:30, 10:00pm.
Douglas and Freddy had said to me,
"Bri, we're going for a meeting at the Marbella beach club.
We're meeting with a sheikh from Dubai, that's all we can tell you."
[suspenseful music]
I knew a lot about sheikhs, I knew how they operated.
A lot of the time, I knew what their habits were
because in my professional bodyguard career,
I protected the Saudi Arabian oil minister Prince Ahmed Zaki Yamani,
the most powerful man in the world at the time
because he ran the world's oil prices.
Before a meeting, I usually check out the person we're going to meet,
find out their backgrounds, and just make sure they were genuine,
but I didn't have time, so I told Douglas and Freddy,
"Hold on a sec, I'll just quickly check this out."
When they arrived, we realised these two brought their own minder,
Brian Tough, who was an expert in surveillance.
I thought, oh, gosh, shit, he'll suss us out in seconds.
[Brian Tough] I walked up to the villa.
"I just want a quick look inside, please." "Yeah, no problem."
So I went inside, quick scan around.
[suspenseful music]
Looked like a very posh villa.
I had a quick sweep of the room.
We're thinking, "God what if he spots a bug? What do we do?"
[Brian Tough] We're monitoring, constantly scanning, looking for threats.
We're just constantly alert all the time.
My heart was just going crazy.
There was nothing obviously that was out of place in that room,
so Douglas and Freddy came in.
[Steve Burton] Freddy and Doug went through into the main lounge
and Maz emerged from his suite
and was in the robes.
[rousing music]
I looked at the sheikh, he looked, how do I put it...
I was going to say sheikh-like.
[Steve Burton] They didn't notice anything
because the first thing they were drawn to was the Dubai carrier bag.
Maz looked down and then looked at me and said,
"Filthy animal," etc., "What have I told you?"
And then looked at Hall and Shepherd and said,
"Staff, staff, fuck."
They're laughing and I'm looking chastised and picked up the bag.
[suspenseful music]
Freddy and Doug were sitting down and just starting the drinks.
Maz was getting more and more into it,
he was snapping his fingers,
he ordered this very expensive bottle of cognac to be brought to the room.
They were drinking champagne and brandy.
They were just caning it.
Freddy Shepherd and Doug Hall are believing everything they're seeing.
They slagged off the players
and started the talk about girls.
We couldn't believe what they said.
Freddy said all Newcastle girls are dogs and slagging their own fans off.
At the same time, Conrad was in the room next door monitoring the feed.
The footage is a bit blurry, cameras weren't great back then.
They were talking about all sorts of sordid things.
It was unbelievable to hear.
[Doug Hall] You walk in and there's 50 girls there.
[Freddy Shepherd] You go in, have a drink, the girls are there
and you decide if you want a girl or not.
[Steve Burton] Maz was just being his regal self
and convinced Doug and Freddy.
They just condemned themselves with every word uttered.
We couldn't believe it.
[suspenseful music]
Freddy and Doug said, "Let's go out and have a good time."
[intense music]
We set off for somewhere called Milady Palace,
lap dancing night club.
It was just full of girls and they were just lapping it up.
Freddy Shepherd even said to Maz, the Fake Sheikh,
that they had to be careful about what they did in the UK
because of the British tabloids.
[laughs]
[suspenseful music]
[newsreader] There's turmoil at Newcastle United tonight
after its bosses were caught in a tabloid sting,
set up by News of the World's Mazher Mahmood,
otherwise known as the Fake Sheikh.
[newsreader] The allegations against the two men
were splashed across News of the World
after an undercover reporter caught them in a Spanish brothel.
[newsreader] It reported they regularly went womanising on business trips.
It claimed they mocked fans, describing Tyneside women as dogs...
[newsreader] Revelations have appalled supporters.
I think they should resign.
After what they said about northeastern women, they've got a cheek.
What they've done is unforgivable.
It's the fans that make this club, not the directors.
[Paul McMullan] Just phenomenal the way he got directors from Newcastle
slagging off, all Newcastle girls are dogs.
The world's press would follow what Mazher did on the Sunday.
[newsreader] And fans at last night's home game
made it clear they felt betrayed by the two men,
shouting, "Judas."
Judas! Judas!
[newsreader] They repeated calls for them to resign,
shouting, "Sack the board."
[crowd jeering]
[sombre music]
[crowd cheering]
[Paul McMullan] After the story came out, Mazher won reporter of the year at 1999,
which is amazing, it was just top notch undercover investigative journalism
that I couldn't match,
I mean, I could never have done something as good as that.
I was absolutely proud, it's a huge deal, it's the Oscars.
It's the Oscars for our profession.
[epic music]
[Neil Wallis] There is no greater buzz than seeing a great story you discovered
all over over your front page,
and you know the rest of Fleet Street is looking and going, "Wow."
By then, Mazher was the best paid reporter at the paper,
and quite right too.
[Aylia Fox] I most definitely admired Maz, he had what other people wanted,
the adulation of people who read the newspaper,
the adulation of the powers that be.
If he clicked his fingers, he basically got money for a story,
whereas the rest of us had to beg for it.
It was a game to him, and he won the game every time.
[Steve Grayson] I remember seeing him in a beautiful car,
going to lovely restaurants, the jewellery,
his watch, he had a Rolex,
the four-bedroom, massive great flat in Kensington.
He was an excellent journalist, he was.
But I'll tell you, he was ruthless.
Just totally ruthless.
And nothing would stop him.
Absolutely nothing would stop him.
[intense music]