Celebrity and Scandals Portillo's State Secrets

One thousand years of history under one roof,

the National Archives, a treasure house of secrets.

The records of extraordinary times and people.

These files are this nation's story, our shared past.

Documents housed here were highly classified,

intended for the eyes of only the privileged few,

protected from your sight for decades -

but not now.

I've been granted special access to files once kept hush-hush.

I'll unearth amazing tales from our hidden history.

Forget what you've been told - these documents tell the truth.

Coming up in this programme - celebrity scandals.

The musicians who rocked the establishment

and the detective determined to bust them.

This was the last famous trial against pop stars.

Do you think anybody was tipping off the press?

That's a very difficult question. It certainly wasn't me.

The unknown Oscar -

how Wilde's private life was exposed to the public.

The lynchpin in the whole case - "Did you kiss him?"

"Oh, no, he was far too ugly."

Whoops.

And spying on the King.

The files that show how the police slandered his lover Wallis Simpson.

Are you surprised that Special Branch were spying on this couple?

No, because the establishment was terrified of having

Wallis Simpson as Queen Wallie.

So they were looking for every reason not to like her.

You know the saying -

"If you can remember the 1960s, you weren't really there."

Well, I was a youthful and innocent spectator living in 1960s London...

..enjoying the pretty girls...

..ogling their avant-garde fashion,

and above all, loving the music.

MUSIC: It's All Over Now by the Rolling Stones.

And this - Carnaby Street - was its epicentre

and the generation that gathered here was young and rebellious

and experimental and part of the permissive society,

which for some represented a threat to traditional British values.

The biggest threat, it seemed, came from the Rolling Stones.

# Let it roll right now... #

As tales of their excess filled the tabloids,

stories of their drug use brought a crackdown by the authorities.

From the late '60s to the early '70s,

there was high-profile bust after high-profile bust.

Why were the police determined to go after them?

What happened during those arrests?

The secrets are in these documents that remained sealed for decades.

What I have here is a Metropolitan Police file dated July 1973

of a raid that occurred in Cheyne Walk in London

against Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg,

who were discovered in bed together there.

It is a great big, thick Metropolitan Police file

and it contains, amongst other things,

a huge list of the things that were found there.

Oh, my goodness, Keith. What a beginning.

One Smith and Wesson revolver. Wow.

Any number of tablets - white, green, brown,

virtually every colour. It goes on and on and on.

Now, here we have some of the conversations,

very tense conversations that took place between the Met

and Keith Richards.

A policeman says, "What's in this envelope?"

Richards says "Grass."

"How do you know when I haven't shown it to you yet?"

"Well, I guessed. It is grass, isn't it?"

And then Keith Richards tries to imply

that it belongs to somebody else.

And then I rather like this.

There's a moment where they're searching the house

and, of course, Keith Richards heads towards the bathroom,

maybe to dispose of certain substances,

and the policewoman says, "Keith! Would you come back here?"

He said, "Mr Richards to you."

Well, I wonder how Keith - Mr Richards - would have felt

when he was being charged with these offences

had he known that his friend and fellow Rolling Stone

would one day become Sir Mick Jagger?

MUSIC: Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones

But this was far from a one-off case.

By the time of that 1973 raid,

the police had been targeting rock stars for seven years.

And driving much of it was a plain-clothes drug squad detective

from Scotland Yard, Norman alias Nobby Pilcher.

He'd convinced his superiors to pour resources

into investigating the rich and famous.

Nigel Gunning, as a Detective Constable, worked for Nobby Pilcher.

He was a South London boy with a good CID officer's background.

He was a great guy to work for, devoted to what he was doing.

He was also quite charming but could be very, very hardnosed at times.

But overall, he was very, very shrewd.

Was he, in any sense, a crusader?

He'd find a hoop to hang something on.

We will try and clean up London and deal with the drugs situation

as we knew it then, which has now spiralled out of all proportion.

No rock star was exempt from Pilcher's attention.

As well as busting the Stones, he arrested the folk singer Donovan

and raided the home of Eric Clapton.

His crackdown bought him tabloid fame,

especially when he and his team targeted a Beatle.

You were involved in a raid on John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Yes, I was. And some alleged drugs were found,

which subsequently were analysed.

John and Yoko were gathered up and taken out the front door

and suddenly, we were surrounded by lots of still cameras.

Press photographers snapped John and Yoko as they were led

out of their apartment and down to the station.

How were the paparazzi there?

The suspicion was that the police had tipped them off.

And as these formerly secret files now reveal,

even the Home Secretary was suspicious,

asking Pilcher why a simple arrest

had involved seven officers and two dogs

and why photographers were there within minutes.

It is notable that many of the raids on rock stars

were accompanied by extraordinary publicity at the moment of the raid.

Now, do you think anybody was tipping off the press?

That's a very difficult question. It certainly wasn't me.

To answer your question, it's not impossible.

When you go up to the court, maybe somebody, you know, saw the paperwork

and made a phone call and the press would turn up with still cameras.

Lennon's arrest made headlines, but the biggest drugs case of all

involved, once again, the Rolling Stones.

MUSIC: Let It Rock by the Rolling Stones

In February 1967, the West Sussex force mounted a raid on a mansion.

Inside were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

During the operation, police found cannabis and amphetamines

and charged both men with drugs offences.

Cue a media frenzy.

Smoking cannabis resin, better known as hashish...

Richards, who earlier had talked in his evidence

of what he called "petty morals"...

Four months later, the trial, and guilty verdicts.

The judge jailed Jagger for three months and Richards for a year.

Stones fans were outraged.

Judge Block said sternly to Richards

that the offence of which he'd been found guilty

carried a maximum sentence of 10 years.

There was a gasp of pure horror from the youngsters

crowded into the public gallery.

In the event, after their trials Jagger and Richards spent

just one night in the cells before being released pending an appeal -

an appeal that was successful.

Jagger received a conditional discharge

and Richards' conviction was overturned.

# If I have to sleep on your doorstep all night and day... #

Despite that judicial leniency, Pilcher and other detectives

pursued rock stars for drug taking throughout the '60s and beyond.

In 1973, Richards again became the focus

of that extraordinary raid that I read about.

I've come to where he was tried -

the Great Marlborough Street Magistrates Court, now a restaurant.

I've invited my next witness to meet me here.

Simon Wells, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth

and nothing but the truth?

Yes, Your Honour.

Is this or is this not the magistrates court where

Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards were tried on drugs offences?

Very much so. Way back in...

Well, it must be over 40 years now,

emanating from the charges in Cheyne Walk residence, 25 charges.

I feel this was the last-ditch attempt of the drug squad

to try and put a Stone in jail.

Once again, the attempt to imprison Richards failed.

He pleaded guilty to the drugs charges,

but the magistrates imposed minuscule fines

of just £10 on each offence.

So, a very different outcome from the 1967 trial

where Keith Richards had received a one-year custodial sentence.

By this point, I think though,

the steam had run out of the whole prosecution against pop stars.

Decades after they were pursued by the police,

the Stones continue to roll,

defying their age to pack out stadia around the world.

But what of the detective Norman 'Nobby' Pilcher?

MUSIC: I Am The Walrus by the Beatles

Well, at the end of 1967, he found himself immortalised on vinyl.

In the Beatles track I Am The Walrus,

John Lennon supposedly refers to his old adversary as Semolina Pilchard.

# Semolina Pilchard

# Climbing up the Eiffel Tower... #

A bit of an indignity for a proud detective?

Yes.

But a few years later, things became a whole lot worse for him.

What happened to Norman Pilcher in the end?

Well, he was found guilty on a perjury charge in 1973.

He'd tried to go to Australia but was deported straight back

and he was jailed for four years

and I think many people in the counter culture

were clapping their hands with joy.

# I am the walrus Goo goo g'joob. #

My next story is about a talent that many celebrities possess

for self destruction.

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde,

playwright, poet and wit,

the toast of Britain's literary scene and an early modern celebrity.

But at the very height of his career,

when his comic masterpiece The Importance Of Being Earnest

was playing on the London stage,

he made a calamitous error that would lead to his downfall.

There's a document in the National Archives rarely seen,

tiny in size, massive in its consequences.

In the 19th century, every gentleman carried a calling card.

When he made a visit, it could be presented,

carried up to the drawing room by the servants

to announce who it was who had arrived.

But also, more sinisterly, it could be used as part of a ritual

that might lead to a duel,

perhaps presented with a militaristic click of the heels.

It was perhaps in that tradition that a card was presented

by the Marquess of Queensberry, a man who was desperately upset

that his son had been involved in a four-year homosexual affair.

He presented the card at the Albemarle Club to Oscar Wilde

and on the card he wrote, "For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite."

This tiny document, this calling card,

the very thing that I have before me here,

unleashed the biggest social scandal of the Victorian period.

We know what happened from a statement made by Oscar Wilde

in his own handwriting.

"I spoke to the hall porter at the club.

"In handing me the envelope,

"he said there was a message from the defendant.

"The message was, 'Lord Queensberry desired me, sir, to hand you this

"'when you came to the club.'

"I read what was on the card as well as I could.

"Immediately, I communicated with my solicitor."

Oscar Wilde commenced a criminal libel proceeding

against Lord Queensberry.

Had Wilde's case against Queensberry succeeded,

the Marquess would have gone to jail.

But Queensberry was determined to turn the tables

and to expose Wilde as a homosexual.

The Marquess of Queensberry hired investigators who were able to prove

that Wilde was involved in a homosexual affair with his son

and indeed with other men.

This was serious for Wilde because homosexuality at the time

was a crime

and Lord Queensberry, having been acquitted, a new trial began.

Oscar Wilde was tried and sent to prison.

Two years of hard labour must have taken a huge toil on Wilde

because, as the files now reveal,

the man who many think of as a gay icon

was prepared to say almost anything to get out of jail early.

Now, this is a pathetic document.

This is Wilde in prison making an appeal to the Home Secretary,

seeking to have his sentence commuted.

And now he refers to his homosexuality

as a "form of sexual madness".

He talks about diseases that ought to be treated by a physician

rather than crimes to be punished by a judge.

This is extraordinary to a modern audience

to talk about homosexuality in this way.

Perhaps Oscar Wilde's finest moment was at his trial

where he spoke of the love that dare not speak its name.

Wilde clearly made a colossal error in choosing to prosecute the libel.

But how did he behave once the hearing was underway?

His only surviving grandson, Merlin Holland,

has studied the transcripts.

They reveal that Wilde started off

with less than his celebrated self-assurance

and show how the quick wit that brought him fame and fortune

also proved his undoing.

What we've got now is Oscar starting off quite modestly,

finding his feet,

teasing Edward Carson, who was Queensberry's defence lawyer,

becoming overconfident and then,

that moment at which the whole thing turns,

the lynchpin in the whole case - "Did you kiss him?"

"Oh, no, he was far too ugly." Whoops.

A flippancy too far?

A flippancy too far and he's talked himself into prison.

The other document that I've seen

is a rather pathetic petition that he's making

-to see whether his sentence can be reduced.

-Ah, yes.

And now he's talking about his homosexuality as being

a kind of madness, about being a disease.

How do you reflect on that tone?

I've always felt deeply uncomfortable about it.

I mean, I've always felt his...

It's the behaviour of a man

who's been utterly cowed, bowed down, broken by prison.

But I think it's one of those compromises in his life

which is very unexpected but so totally understandable.

After his eventual release,

Wilde never recovered from his imprisonment.

Within three years, he was dead.

Today, his literary achievements overshadow the scandal

that made him an outcast in his day,

and yet it's hard not to see his downfall

as part of his enduring appeal.

Is Oscar Wilde a gay icon, should he be and would he be pleased to be?

I think he is a gay icon, I think he'd be pleased to be

and I think he should be.

I think he's also a sort of role model for young people today

because here was a man back in Victorian times

who stood out against everything which was authoritarian,

and one loves to find someone who is older and who is historical

and to whom one can say, "Thank you for being a role model to me,"

and I think in a sense, Oscar does perform that function

to a lot of young people today still.

Nothing sells tabloid newspapers better than salacious gossip

about the Royal family.

Normally, these scandal sheets endure only as wrapping

for tomorrow's fish and chips.

But occasionally, the tittle-tattle assumes a genuine,

deep-seated, constitutional significance.

As it did in 1936.

Think you've heard everything about the abdication crisis?

Think again.

These archives reveal the secret actors

who make this real-life drama stranger than fiction.

As King George V neared the end of his life,

his son was a very handsome Prince of Wales

with a very marked taste for the ladies.

But at a time when the press imposed self-censorship

in order to avoid embarrassment to the Royal family,

his many affairs were of no particular concern.

Until, that is, he took up with Mrs Wallis Simpson,

a married woman who, in fact, had two living husbands.

And then get this - Special Branch began to follow

the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson and to open a file.

Here we are - "Mrs Wallis Simpson.

"She was regarded as a person very fond of the company of men

"and to have had many affairs.

"She was with different men at these addresses."

Then Special Branch have pursued the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson

to an antique shop where they've done some shopping.

"The opinion of the dealer,

"expressed after his distinguished client had left, was that

"the lady seemed to have the Prince of Wales under her thumb."

Then it says, very shockingly,

"The Simpsons are regarded in some circles as Jews."

Things get worse for Mrs Simpson.

Special Branch is convinced that she has a secret lover.

"The identity has now been definitely ascertained.

"He is Guy Marcus Trundle, a very charming adventurer,

"very good-looking, well-bred and an excellent dancer.

"He meets Mrs Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings

"as a personal friend,

"but secret meetings are made by appointment

"when intimate relations take place."

Now, if this file was made available to the Cabinet,

it's scarcely surprising that when, as King Edward VIII,

he sought to marry this woman and to keep the throne,

the Cabinet would have none of it.

How true were these secret Special Branch reports?

And why did Wallis Simpson provoke enough suspicion

to warrant being followed?

-Hello, Anne.

-Hello, Michael. Lovely to meet you.

-Welcome.

Time for afternoon tea at the sort of place that Mrs Simpson loved,

London's Langham Hotel,

with the woman who's written a definitive biography of Wallis.

Heavens. Pages of teas.

How lovely. Thank you.

-That's beautiful. Thank you so much.

-Delightful.

Why did the Prince of Wales apparently fall in love with her?

She was different.

And I think the first occasion when they met, he said to her,

"Oh, madam, may I say how wonderful you look tonight,"

and she shot back quick as a flash

because she'd overheard him saying to an aide,

"But, Sir, I thought you said all the women in this room looked ghastly."

And he thought this was so funny, so brash,

it showed such a lack of deference

and I think that was really what attracted him to her.

I think he had lots of pep

and I think he was very much ahead of his time.

If there was anything new came along,

I always wanted to try it out, always.

What sort of a woman was she?

Fearful, deeply insecure.

But I'm surprised to hear you call her insecure,

because the image we have of her is that she was assertive,

that she was witty, that she was domineering even.

No, this insecurity was seared deep.

Her late father's brother paid an allowance into her mother's account,

but it was irregular.

Sometimes there was a lot of money, sometimes there was no money at all.

So, Wallis grew up believing that you have to depend on men.

On the other hand, you can't depend on men cos you just never know,

they use and abuse you.

And that too was part of this insecurity

that there just was never enough money for her.

Ah, we're on to the scones.

-Oh, look, they look lovely. After you.

-Don't they?

I've been looking at the papers of the Special Branch operation,

because they were tailing Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales.

Special Branch believe that Wallis Simpson

was having an affair with Guy Trundle. Do you believe it?

I don't believe it, no.

They were trying to find some reason,

because the establishment was terrified of having Wallis Simpson

as Queen Wallie.

So, they were looking for every reason not to like her.

And I think they found this man - Guy Trundle -

who was a notorious womaniser, a boaster.

I don't believe she had time or an appetite for this sort of man.

She didn't want a second-hand car salesman.

Did she think she was going to become Queen or...?

No, Wallis did not want to be Queen.

So you see her as really getting trapped in a situation

-which she hadn't intended. Is that right?

-Yes.

I'm afraid the old cliches are the best.

You know, if you play with fire, you get burnt,

hoist by her own petard, all those things.

I think she thought she would have a few months of fun,

acquire some jewels, and then go back with a little bit more money.

In January 1936, when his father died,

the Prince of Wales became King.

He was determined to marry Mrs Simpson.

He established her in a safe house,

the very address that she used on her petition for a divorce.

The voluntary self-censorship of the press broke down,

the story got out and the public was shocked.

The Prime Minister, Mr Stanley Baldwin,

said that the marriage was impossible,

even if Mrs Simpson were not to become Queen.

Unable to convince the government

and determined to marry the woman that he loved,

the King was left with only one possible choice -

the terrible decision to abdicate.

'I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility

'and to discharge my duties as King, as I here would wish to do,

'without the help and support of the woman I love.'

To this day, people argue about whether Edward

could have kept the throne if he married Mrs Simpson.

I've come to Fleet Street, where in 1936, journalists' typewriters

went into overdrive when news of the scandal broke,

to meet someone who feels that the truth has been kept secret

for too long.

-Hello, Susan.

-Hello, Michael.

Historian Susan Williams has an explosive theory

about the real reason that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin

was so set against Edward.

Certainly, one of the things that bothered the Prime Minister

and also other aspects of the establishment, if you like,

was his support for the long-term unemployed.

He went to South Wales and he visited the long-term unemployed,

who received him in their heart and were so pleased that he came

and he said, "Something must be done to bring work to these people,"

and the Conservative-dominated government

was really unhappy about this behaviour

because they perceived it as criticism

of what they were failing to do.

So, your view is that the government engineered the abdication

because they didn't like the policies of the King?

Yes, I think that's right.

It's not simply that he went to South Wales

and was perceived to be criticising the Government implicitly,

but also, that visit to South Wales was recorded on news reels

and news reels were shown all over Britain.

Baldwin told the King that to marry Wallis, he must abdicate.

But was it as straightforward as that?

Do you think there was a compromise that would have enabled the King

to marry Mrs Simpson and be on the throne?

Well, there really was a compromise and a solution

and it was put forward by Winston Churchill, Edward's champion,

and that was for a morganatic marriage,

by which Mrs Simpson would be Edward's wife but not his Queen.

But the Prime Minister asserted

that a morganatic marriage was unacceptable.

Edward and Mrs Simpson moved to France

and lived the rest of their lives in exile

as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

How, decades later, did he feel about the awesome choice that he'd made?

'Do you have any regrets at all

about not having gone on being King?'

No, I would like to have

but I was going to do it under my own conditions.

So, I do not have any regrets.

Today's documents have been scandalous.

A playwright involved in a gay liaison,

a musician caught in possession of mind-altering substances

and a monarch wishing to wed a woman with two living husbands.

Perhaps it was the misfortune of Oscar Wilde, Keith Richards

and King Edward VIII to be born too early.

Now homosexuality is legal,

sex, drugs and rock and roll has become a cliche,

and nowadays we can even contemplate a king being married to a divorcee.