Last night, I dreamt I was back at work as a journalist at The News of The World.
I took the lift up to the offices, next to The Sun, and I made my way down the dimly lit, winding warren of corridors, passed a large sign,
‘Walk Tall. You are now entering Sun Country.’
I woke and thought about the book ‘Rebecca’ and how she often dreamed of Manderley and yet could never return.
None of us could ever go back to the News of The World. Like
Manderley, the newspaper been ‘burned to the ground.’ We had all been disgraced by the phone hacking scandal - and it made us ashamed that we had ever been part of the ‘family,’ that had once been so close knit.
The News of The World had been run like a cult with layers of ‘need to know.’
Some of the reporters were mere pawns; never knowing what the upper layers were up to.
One of the most important players on the chess board of the News of The World was Mazher Mahmood whose power rose all the way to the top of the Murdoch pile.
‘Maz,’ as he was known to his friends, was a much respected ‘Bishop’ on the News Corps chessboard – he was the Red Queen’s Bishop.
I had operated as his wife. I was Alice on the News of The World, News Corps, Rupert Murdoch chess board.
I had been the Fake Sheik’s wife.
His insults when in bad temper were legendary.
‘You’re not a dirty Pk lover are you, Chris?’ he said to me.
I assumed, at the time, that he wasn’t even Pakistani - because he seemed to hate them.
He also said, ‘Let’s get that Paki,’ on more than one occasion.
He wasn’t racially insulting to other ethnic groups - he saved it for ‘Paki this, Paki that.’
It was odd. Maz could descend into vitriol in minutes that made him sound like he profoundly hated Pakistanis. It was only much later did I find out that he was Pakistani himself.
Often, when driving with him to a job, he would start.
How the job was about a ‘Paki' and how ‘we would get the Paki.’
Mazher Mahmood had Pakistani roots. He was the son of journalists but he never spoke about his parents. He never spoke about his siblings, preferring in his mind not to have come from Birmingham but some royal connection in Arabia like his alter ego – Sheikh of Arabia.
The infamous Fake Sheik was a powerful man in News Corp - a close friend of Rebekah Brooks and he name dropped about social gatherings with Rupert Murdoch.
I was stunned, when one April morning in 1997, Greg pulled me into one of the side offices at work. He sat on the desk and told me.
‘I want you to meet Mazher Mahmood, our Investigations Editor.
‘Get to know him and how he works and then work with him as a team.
‘Mazher hardly ever comes into the office, but he’s shown curiosity about you and agreed to pair up as a duo of you and he.’
My background was that I had been a private investigator for over thirteen years in ex military agencies in London.
I had read Mazher’s stories and I was a fan of his criminal investigations.
I had worked alongside ex-MI6 officers and after I left the paper joined KCS Ltd – real spies who sometimes scared me and worked for heavy hitter in the Russina government. Maz had an alter ego who had grown out of control. It was a few years before I found out I had an alter ego too, whom I called Ice. We were both butterflies for Rupert Murdoch who was a Knight of Malta.
I knew he had sky high salary and I had read all of his dangerous and explosive weekly investigations for The News of The World.
Mazher apparently looked down on the office-based journalists and had a very expansive budget to stay in first class hotel suites for long periods, eat oysters and drink champagne. He travelled first class and drove a limousine with personalized number plate MAZ 1. He was a ghost to everyone including those in the Special Investigations Unit and the newsdesk.
Mazher had kept a great distance from the journalists in the Special Investigations Dept referring to them as - ‘Carry on Spying.’
The first time I met Mazher was on an unseasonably hot afternoon in late April 1997, my porter Alan called up to my apartment in The Circle – just around the corner from the office in Queen Elizabeth Street.
‘There’s a car waiting outside for you – a long green limousine with a personalised number plate.’
I felt nervous. I knew Mazher was coming to pick me up to take me to work on a job with him in Buckinghamshire and I had put on a smart dress and Katherine Hamnett high-heel sandals.
I put on some lipstick and frowned at myself in the mirror.
How would this work out? I was afraid of this hard-hitting, celebrity journalist. What would he look like? Mazher’s photograph never appeared in the papers – only the victims of his stings.
I dressed up to the hilt so I wouldn’t feel inferior, yet my stomach was in knots.
When he did, he worked from a back office – gliding in like an Emperor, not looking to either side of him.
I had been a spy in the dangerous world of the ex-MI6 men, in what is known as MI6’s commercial arm in London, but Maz still scared me.
I worked for Company X – known as Cie X or rather Ciex Ltd at the time and they were hauling me in to ask me what the News of The World were up to and how much access did they have to the boys in Hereford.
I took the lift from my apartment and out to the car in this smart dress and heels. It was a long green limousine, a new one.
I got in the back and settled myself down, waiting for him to make small talk with me.
I had only seen the back of his head – then he turned and looked at me as he drove off. I felt confused immediately – he was an extremely good looking man – this was not what I expected.
‘Wow, you look hot, Suzy! You’ll work well at this party to entertain all the men.’
I looked back at him, worried, feeling very stressed out.
I assumed that My porter had ushered me incorrectly into the wrong car. My heart sunk – now I would be late for the great Mazher who was probably waiting for me back at my apartment block.
‘I’m sorry? Look, I’m not Suzy!’
‘Not Suzy? I’ve come to pick you up to take you to the party to entertain the lads?’
‘Oh, no. Oh, shit. Look, I’m so very sorry.’ I turned round and looked behind me as my apartment block got smaller and smaller. ‘Please – look, can you take me back home? I’m needed – someone’s coming to pick me up.’
‘Relax Suzy, you’ll be fine.’ He purred as he drove uber smoothly in the sleek dark green limousine.
‘Look, I’d love to be Suzy and come with you to your party, but I’m waiting to be picked up by someone to go to work. Could you please take me back? It’s important.’
He looked at me in his mirror for a long time monitoring my reaction, enjoying my confusion and stress with a grin on his face.
‘Chris, Chris, calm down, it’s me, Maz, God, you’re gullible.’
He laughed as he drove. My heart beat faster and I felt sick. I looked at the back of his head.
Mazher Mahmood – The News of The World’s secret weapon.
As we drove fast with the windows wound down a breeze cooled our faces. I looked at this legend. Maz was of Asian extraction with very clear skin, an aquiline nose, well contoured lips and well-shaped hands with long strong fingers. He was a very handsome man but the remarkable thing about Mazher was his eyes: they were amber and they actually glowed with tiny little golden flecks. When you looked into these childlike eyes, you believed all that he said. Mazher was hypnotic. He also had a regal air about him, so no wonder his Fake Sheik blag worked on Sarah Ferguson. I remember thinking, So that’s your secret weapon – your good skin. His victims wanted to believe all he said because they wanted the regal beauty to like them. They looked into those sweet honey syrup eyes and saw a childlike honesty. What they were seeing was truth – Maz wholeheartedly believed he was Royalty. They were falling victim to his programmed alter ego who worked as a slave for Rupert.
I was soon to find out that he was deeply ashamed of his Pakistani nationality
Was it beauty that had captured Sarah Ferguson? Was she and Tulisa zapped by the Mazher Mahmood sex appeal that made mugs of us all and nearly got me killed when I later went on jobs for him that were dangerous…. just because he wanted me to with the honey sweet eyes?
Mazher and I were off to a five-star spa and hotel in Buckinghamshire to entrap a creepy 60-year-old paedophile who was luring teen-year-old girls to pose naked in his house for him with money and promises of fame and fortune.
As we drove, Mazher ignored me. He did it in such a way to make it feel like it would be beneath him to even speak to me. It didn’t bother me at all. It would be unthinkable for Mazher to go for a drink with any of the other staff. Here was in his car with him I was supposed to feel honoured... and I was.
Yet I was to play ‘lower level sidekick’ to his leader – Mazher was never going to accept anyone on an equal footing.
Half way through the journey he rang his buddy Rebekah Brooks, who used her maiden name Wade then.
It seemed that when I was with him, he spoke to Rebekah 4 or five times per day in the hushed tone of lovers.
He began to talk to her about me in code. I sat and squirmed.
‘I think she can become one of us – not sure yet though – she may be close to Miskiw.’
He and Brooks were very, very close chatting to each other at least five times a day in whispers and punctuated by laughter and promises to meet up later for drinks. His voice would go low and he would laugh and joke with her – the only time I saw a side of him he ever showed to anyone else.
He spoke to her like an equal but the rest of us were just his go-fers and slaves. I was his dum dum wife who had to keep her mouth shut.
After arriving at the hotel in the countryside, we got settled into our luxurious suites. Mazher always got the best suites for he and his people – never rooms. Champagne was always on the menu whenever you wanted it. While other journalists had to stay in normal hotels and drink beer and eat hamburger, Mazher had the budget for five star all the way.
Later, we ate a candlelit dinner as we looked out over the gardens.
Mazher was entertaining to talk to because he had met a lot of celebrities for straight forward interviews.
He had the unpublished gossip on the soap stars - the likes of Michelle
Collins, Martine McCutcheon, Sarah Ferguson and Sven Goran Erickson.
Evidently they all found him rather charming and some had even chosen him as a confidant.
He used this opportunity to weave himself into their private lives and get their drivers and nannies on the payroll, who then became an endless source of stories for him.
Celebrities often rang him and he became their confidante.
I sat spell bound as his celebrity secrets spewed out of him – most of them were cruel observations. When in gossip mode Maz became a bitch.
‘Michelle Collins was an idiot who had let her lover beat the shit out of her.’
I cringed.
Mazher didn’t drink and being Muslim refrained from eating pork.
I could tell he was a man who liked to remain in control as he poured me more wine and regaled me with spicy secrets from lips that never seemed to stop gossiping about celebrities things that had never come into print. Sarah Ferguson had had an abortion to toe suck man, so had Brittany Spears in secret in the UK, Jonathan Ross had beat his wife Jane- according to this news machine.
I sat back and heard about the dirty washing top celebrities had that had never made it into print.
My suite had a connecting door to Mazher’s and after dinner Mazher lay on his king-size bed with his shirt off and I lay on the settee. I couldn’t help but secretly run my eyes all over his golden-skinned body. He was lovely, but he was something one only looked at rather than thought of touching because he gave out the impression that he was royal and therefore untouchable. I was also scared of his demonic alter that was lethal.
I understood how he fooled his victims that he was royalty or the film producer he sometimes pretended to be because he oozed an effortless charisma that was hypnotic. I felt breathless.
All of a sudden a cache of photos fell out of his file – hundreds of photos of girls with their legs akimbo.
God knows where he got them from.
I think the story tipster gave them to Maz.
I tried not to look.
They must have been 20s or so.
They were completely disgusting.
‘Oh, sorry about that.’ He cleared them up with a superior grin.
I felt sick and retired to my room. I knew Mazher saw stuff like that all the time. Cops saw porn too in their work but they were fit for it; I wasn’t sure Mazher was as he had an immaturity.
The next morning our job was to approach the sleazy old pervert to try to buy the offending photographs from him.
The creepy paedo pensioner left his house and we tailed him slowly to the nearby bowling club. I ended up telling him I was from the local newspaper, doing a feature on bowling, and asked if he would help us out as I plied him for information. I played bowls with him so our snapper could get a good facial shot of him for the paper.
Mazher took some snaps of us pretending to be my photographer. He smiled at me. This was it our first job and we were working well together. Dempsey and Makepeace was in business, I thought to myself sardonically. I wondered why he told Leveson that he had never hired a private eye as he had hired me – his wife.
Then Mazher spoke to him on the quiet about wanting some photos of young models.
Mazher did a deal with him about the vile pornographic photos. Then we arranged to meet him later. The job ended up as a middle-page spread and the file was passed to the cops. I didn’t get my name on it – no one shared a by-line with the great Mazher Mahmood.
Mazher and I quickly established that he was top dog and after that first time we worked together frequently and I was his bitch – literally.
Our fake marriage was first played out when we both attended Sylvester
Stallone’s wedding in The Dorchester on London’s Park Lane in May of
When I arrived at the luxury suite his team had booked for us to be based in, which was one floor below Stallone’s. Mazher answered the door in a Dorchester dressing gown, sipping a glass of milk and looking like Christopher Robin.
Maz looked me up and down before he let me in to his suite. I was wearing a tight and revealing leopard-print dress and I had a leopard-skin pill box hat perched on my blonde hair. This was my first time as
‘Shakira’ as he called me when I played that role as the ‘Fake Sheik’s wife’ and I had no idea what a Sheiks wife would wear but I assumed it would consist of animal print.
When I thought about it the night before it occurred to me that a tight leopard skin dress and a matching pill box hat was the way forward for an Arab’s wife.
Mazher’s dressing gown was slightly open at the front like he was some kind of international playboy in his Dorchester suite. He stared at me in disgust and said, ‘You look fucking absurd. What’s wrong with your head? How can anyone be as stupid as you are?’ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked a bit shocked.
‘That leopard-skin shit.’ He looked me up and down as if I was a bad smell.
I’m your wife – you’re an Arab.’
‘Wow no brains! Go home and come back dressed for this fucking job
yes.’
The door was slammed in my face. I wasn’t sure what to do. Why wasn’t animal print fitting?
I called a cab over to Harvey Nicks and bought a beige Nicole Fahri suit. I picked up an expensive hair fascinator with feathers on the ground floor. The plan was to get invited to the reception and wedding itself because he was Arab royalty.
‘Better – sit down and relax.’ Maz was laughing at me again. The room was full of his men about four or five of his team that consisted of the photographer Steve Grayson laid across one of the beds fiddling with masses of long lens cameras, Colin his personal bodyguard and some others.
A phone call came in to say Sly Stallone was in the bar from one of his crew placed around the Dorchester.
I watched as up in our luxury suite Mazher dressed up in his flowing white Arab robes or ‘rags’ as he called them and tied the black rope headband into place. His men helped him dress ………………and then
he was transformed. It was the first time I had seen him like it and I gasped. He really was impressive. He was in alter.
He glided regally out of the Dorchester suite with all of us trailing behind him like servants. I wanted to prove my worth and to let him know I was in character too. I held Mazher’s hand as we descended in the lift, to make out I was his wife. I enjoyed the feel of him. For one moment there was just me and him and the lift. I went into a trance as my palm got sweatier. Mazher held on for a while then – he turned to me as if I was the cleaning lady and I had taken a liberty.
‘You’re so getting off on this, aren’t you? I can feel it that you like me but now isn’t the time or the place.’ He held up our hands that were intertwined. He looked deep into my eyes and then he laughed.
He dropped my hand and His Majesty glided off ahead of me to the bar area to meet Sylvester Stallone. I followed through the lobby with his entourage of bodyguards suited up in black suits. It was a farce but an enjoyable one. It was one of the few stings that did not involved malice. Mazher had on his full Arab robes that were white and flowing with a headband in black. One of Mazher’s men walked up to Stallone and asked him if he would allow His Majesty a few minutes to talk with him, as His Majesty was a big fan.
Sylvester Stallone grinned and was only too happy to agree. He told us he was honoured to meet us both. I watched his eyes and not at any time did he doubt Mazher was who he said he was.
We sat with the delightful Sly Stallone and he spoke about how happy he was to be marrying his beautiful bride then bowed as he left us.
Mazher had got his exclusive interview with Sly Stallone on the eve of his wedding. What other journalist could have nailed that? I was in awe of him and I quickly learned from him.
The next day we all woke up late. I had my own suite below his but we had to meet up in Mazher’s grander suite, so when me, Mazher and the star photographer Steve Grayson had all been holed up for a while waiting for orders. I slipped into his cavernous bathroom to have a bath.
Mazher’s suite was breath taking with a view over the nearby Hyde Park. I bathed then looked out the window in a white toweling robe. Some snappers looked up at me. I waved out in my towelling robe feeling like Marilyn Monroe.
I heard someone outside getting angry. It was Maz.
‘The wedding’s on - they’re marrying on the roof. What the fuck are you doing in there you stupid tart?’
I came straight out of the bathroom wearing the toweling robe and feeling ashamed – he was the professional I was the flake. He was grinning at me. Mazher grabbed my hand and he pulled me up over a hundred stairs of the emergency exit. The staircase seemed to never end and was at the back of the Hotel and smelt. Maz went as fast as he could never letting go of me. The steep stone stair case went on and on and I got more and more out of breath. Out of breath we finally arrived onto the sunny roof of The Dorchester on the hot summer’s day. We both leant over and caught our breaths. He was laughing again. It was rare to see him laugh so much. Mazher held on to my damp towelling robe at the back. He ordered me to lean over the roof.
‘I won’t let you drop. You have to trust me – lean out over the top of the ledge and I’ll hold you. I won’t let you drop, Chris have some faith in me.’
As I leaned out over the roof to try to get a view of the next roof where Stallone was marrying. It was tricky but I hung over the edge and shouted back to Mazher, describing what the bridesmaids were wearing and what the bride, Jennifer Flavin, looked like while he dictated by shouting all I said over his mobile to the copy takers back at the office then he finished off by taking some notes with a pencil into a tiny pad he had got from the office store room of stationary.
There was a clatter of flash bulbs as we ducked into our limousine and sped off along the M4 to Oxford and the reception.
After failing to find his name on the reception guest list like he hoped, Mazher and I ended up with the rest of the press in a countryside pub in Woodstock.
Mazher stood back from the rest who kept back from him yet formed a large circle around him. I grabbed a beer and sucked on it trying to get rid of the stress of the day. It was a hot day and the while of Fleet Street seemed to be at the little countryside pub. I had been kept a secret by the newspaper so I was aware of curious glances. I felt proud to be standing alongside Mazher and Steve Grayson.
On the way back to The Dorchester, giddy from Budweiser, I was giggling in the back of the car – it was the stress of the day coming out. Mazher sat taking photos of me and making snidey remarks about my hat that had miraculously stayed put on my head all day. Steve was enthusing about an episode of The Sweeney that was being repeated on TV that night and how he was dying to get home to watch it. He noted I had the giggles and laughed too. Maz was silent. Now and again he took pics of me as we sat together in the back of the speeding limousine.
I wondered why. He said again.
‘You like Pakis, Chris?’
I frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’
‘I mean would you date a Paki or are you racist about them.’
Since I assumed he was Indian I wondered why he had a down on Pakistanis.
‘I have never got close to anyone Pakistani.’ He grinned and took more photos.
Back in The Dorchester in the lavish suite, I wanted to have some champagne with the boys to debrief. Mazher slumped on the bed said,
‘You can stay and have a drink if you and I can shag - if not, ’fraid you have to leave right now and get no champagne.’
My jaw dropped. Where had that come from. I thought we were making friends. His comment had ruined any chance of friendship.
He lay back on the bed, not looking at me, the Superstar Hack, the handsome hero of the day.
I had no choice. I left.
There were other stories where Maz put me in danger of being killed.
Maz woke me one morning at 8am to tell me I had to go to Coventry to see a little old lady and her grandson. I had to find out who her insurers were he told me simply. I was still in bed and felt angry at such a blatant use of me as a go fer – what was the story and was it the right thing to do. I had spent my life working as an investigator it felt off to take orders from a hack on how to investigate. I felt my stomach dip and knew it was because there was danger. I asked Maz was there danger because my 6th sense was warning me that there was.
He replied, ‘Don’t talk rubbish it’s a little old lady and her son.’
I demanded a body guard so he reluctantly gave me Colin his ex boxer minder.
I got the train up to Coventry. I went to the house and Colin took me by car and as protection waited outside. I knocked and asked what insurers there were using for their dead grandfather – she offered me to go in and when I sat down she asked who I was – meanwhile she called her husband. Sensing great danger I ran out and into the car – then Colin and
I went for a drink.
Colin dropped me at Coventry Station where suddenly a van load of Asian men carrying machetes jumped out and circled me demanding to know who I was and why I had come to their house.
They were part of a Triad gang and Maz knew all along.
Colin stood infront of me and said no one touches her they come through me – he was ready to fight. He saved my life.
Just as they went to attack him three meat wagons drew up and about six officers jumped out. The knives and machetes went away – and the cops put me in the back off the van.
Later I was made to tell the man whose house I was in exactly who I was. The cops were not on our side.
On the train Maz rang me.
‘O’ well,’ he replied in response to my story of horror, ‘Onwards and upwards kiddies. I’ve another job I want you on tomorrow so I want you up and out of bed early – no lie in for you, Chris.’
I sat on the train and half realized I had enjoyed the adrenaline and half felt appalled at him.
I once sat in on a job where Maz shocked me as he announced to his mark a Pakistani that he was from Immigration. We went up to London to see a man getting English lessons in a school near the Kings Rd.
Maz announced he was from ‘Immigration’ and he had to tell him when he knew or he’d be carted back to Pakistan. I sat in the back of car listening and when the man went I spoke to Maz angrily.
‘Don’t ever do that again, Maz – it’s wrong and I’m pretty sure it’s illegal and was it fair to scare that guy so much just to get info?’
‘Chris, you do it your way and I’ll do it mine and it’ll serve you well to mind your own fucking business.’
He glowered at me and said nothing. The man came back to the car and Maz got out and went to talk to him as I sat in the car watching. He kept looking back at me.
To get a pic of a girl called Donna involved in his story Maz once sent me inside a prison where I was caught by authorities taking a photo of an inmate- they grabbed me and I had no idea it was against the law Maz had told me it was allowed. The prison staff grabbed me and held me for two hours. It was his turf – and I had been hit as he knew more and I knew less.
I was doing my degree at the time at University of London – and found I couldn’t get on train as my heart began to beat too fast and I developed severe panic attacks. Little to know it was the beginning of the end.
We were all, as I was to find out – assets. We were programmed to work for the State and then to be cast from what is known as the freedom train. We were all given to Rupert to become his slaves, who would do anything to get close to powerful people using our Vatican created alters.