29 Oct COMEDY legend John Cleese has come face-to-face with a man who spied on him and hacked his mobile phone
COMEDY legend John Cleese has come face-to-face with a man who spied on him and hacked his mobile phone.
The Fawlty Towers legend sat down with US private investigator Daniel “Danno” Portley-Hanks in his new GB News series The Dinosaur Hour.
Hanks, who recently appeared in the High Court to give evidence on behalf of Prince Harry, tells the comedian how he’d snooped on his life on behalf of tabloid newspapers.
Their remarkable meeting forms part of an investigation on the issue of Press freedom which also sees Cleese interview fellow-hacking victim Chris Tarrant.
During an episode, which will be screened this Sunday [29 October], Cleese says: “Years ago, I used to read about hacking, but I never actually knew what it was until this b****d here hacked me, you naughty, naughty man.”
Hanks responds: “I wouldn’t have met you if I didn’t hack you.”
Revealing how he operated, Hanks explains: “I was a private investigator and whenever a story was breaking I had to track that person down so they (the UK newspapers) could go and interview them or contact them.
“I never advertised at all, journalists in London started calling me and asking me to locate people and do background checks on them and to find out everything…
“They knew exactly what they were doing and they paid big money. I was making $250,000 a year for quite a long time because I had a reputation that I could find out
everything about anybody, anywhere and it didn’t matter who they were. I have the social security numbers for the five last past US Presidents and all of their data.”
Asked by Cleese what he found out about him, Hanks said: “You’re actually kind of boring, John. They [the media] were very interested in one of your wives down in Texas.
“In your case they had people call up credit card companies and say, ‘oh, I lost my phone bill’. You know, I need to get a copy. And as long as you can answer all the questions correctly – I don’t know whether they even bothered to impersonate your voice.”
Cleese also spoke to the former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant about his experience with tabloid newspapers.
Tarrant told Cleese: “I have a very good relationship with some journalists. I’ve done interviews with some of them time and time again because they’re decent, honest folk. I’ve also had periods of my life when I’ve been surrounded by journalists I didn’t like very much and the paparazzi did go through my dustbins.”
Explaining how he first started to fear his phone was being hacked he said: “I just thought it was a rubbish phone that I was using. But then when I split from my wife, I mean it became just open season. They were everywhere. You know, they were trying to get at my children. They were obviously trying to talk to my ex…
“It was only later that I began to realise this hacking lark was actually taking place on my phone. I had never heard of it. I thought it was something that happens to somebody else, and that happens in Hollywood.
Explaining how things eventually came to a head, he said: “The police came to me, there was a gentleman called Glenn Mulcaire from the News of the World and on his blotter pad in his office were all sorts of phone numbers of various people.
“The guy eventually went to prison, I mean, he was banged up.”
Tarrant said the hardest part of being hacked was thinking he’d been betrayed by his personal chauffeur, and lifelong friend, a driver called Jim.
“Jim, my driver is an enormous, wonderful, big bear of a man,” Chris said. “He’s a lovely guy, huge. And he’s been with me for 20, 25 years and one of my closest friends, the kids all love him. He’s just a really good guy. There was one particular night when I was separated, I took a lady out. I met her for a drink, so we went for dinner and there were photographers everywhere we went. And this carried on through the night and through the next morning when I took her to work and so on.
“That evening we’d done Who Wants to be a Millionaire? up at Elstree and when we were driving home, I said to Jim, ‘I can’t understand this. How did they know so much detail about where I was going?’ I mean, it was quite extraordinary because the only person I talked to was Jim on the phone.
“Jim turned to me, a great big lump, with tears in his eyes. He said, ‘you’ve got to think that’s me.’ And I said, ‘you know, I love you mate. I do think it was you. It can’t, it’s nobody else, no other explanation’. Our relationship was pretty grim for quite a long time. It’s a guy I love, I trusted this guy literally with everything. And he knew so much about me, you know, because we spent hundreds of hours together driving late at night from TV studios.
“I didn’t trust anybody. It was a horrible time. I mean, it also became a kind of sport because they were just everywhere.”
The interview forms part of episode one of The Dinosaur Hour which Cleese says came about after GB News made him “the most extraordinary offer in the history of television”.
Speaking earlier this month about the new series, Cleese said: “I’ve had no interference of any kind and it has been joyful,” he said. “Can you imagine the BBC doing that? It would be subject to committee A and then you’d go to committee B.”
The Dinosaur Hour series features John in conversation with friends and “the people who interest me most” as they tackle a range of issues from Creativity, The Press, Religion, Woke, and Friendship.
Celebrity guests include Stephen Fry, Caitlyn Jenner, Rob Schneider, Lionel Shriver, Sir Tim Rice, Sir Trevor McDonald, and others.
The series Executive Producer is author, comedian, and GB News presenter Andrew Doyle, who also produces the channel’s nightly newspaper review show Headliners, hosted entirely by comedians. John said he had “never worked with a nicer team.”
Filmed on location at Hedingham Castle in Essex, John described the set of The Dinosaur Hour as “a slightly lunatic gentlemen’s club”, complete with roaming cats, in which his guests could relax for cosy but sometimes challenging discussions about some of society’s thorniest issues.
“It’s a lovely atmosphere because humans are much happier when they’re working in smaller groups – it’s more interesting and intimate,” John said.
