Tony Lloyd MP,
House of Commons
Houses of Parliament
Westminster
W1
Dear chairman,
As you no doubt know by now, we at the Channel 4 Dispatches team have conducted an investigation into the extent to which Labour MPs could be ‘bought’ or encouraged to lobby for vested interests for money,
In fact, though many of the most serious findings we were able to broadcast related to Stephen Byers MP, Geoff Hoon MP and Patricia Hewitt MP, as a result of broadcasting regulations, practically the whole interview with Geraldine Dreadful MP, conducted with a camera hidden inside a bag full of money, cannot be broadcast, partially because of the amount of swearing she did during the interview, and partially because we were unable to take seriously anything she said.
The Channel 4 Dispatches team was prepared to overlook Ms Dreadful’s comments as the mewlings of a fantasist, but recent revelations have caused us to re-evaluate the footage we took with her.
In the interview, recorded at 12.34pm on 19 February 2010 in Portcullis House, Ms Dreadful began her interview by deriding other MPs.
“Nothing’s too good for the workers” she said, describing herself as the “hardest working fucking cunt in Westminster”. She went on to outline how, in her early days, she had occasionally arranged MPs to work as exotic dancers for clients in her Westminster office, and she declared that she could hire Ben Bradshaw MP to do a dance for some visiting businessmen on the condition that he got £500 per half our slot.
When we told her that Stephen Byers had described himself as a ‘Taxi for hire’ she laughed (9.01 into the recording) and said “Taxi? Taxi? I’m like a fucking Routemaster bus, me. I’m for hire, but I’ve more fuckers paying me than four in the fucking back. With me, people can buy a fucking ticket for a couple of hundred quid a fucking pop.”
When we asked Ms Dreadful what influence she might have on IT policy and communications strategy, she declared in a startling and somewhat disturbing soliloquy: (14.09 in the recording) “I can fucking blow up fucking twitter, me. I can fucking close your fucking facebook in your face. Slip me a couple of grand in me cunting Paypal account and I’ll have Ellie Fucking Gellard tweeting whatever the fuck you want. We can arrange Margaret Moran to launch your fucking website for you. Christ, six grand will have Ed Miliband doing a live dump on chatroulette as you talk dirty to the fucking MP of your choice.”
At this point, of course, the editorial team was concerned that Ms Dreadful might be involved in a counter-sting operation to cause difficulties for Dispatches. We have no reason to believe that Ellie Gellard, Ben Bradshaw or Ed Miliband have anything to do with Ms Dreadful’s operation, and indeed we feel certain that they were uninvolved in what seems to have been a fantasy of Ms Dreadful’s. On the other hand, let’s face it, Margaret Moran is probably up to her neck in it.
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Simpsonsonson,
Channel 4
