The Money Programme: Dirty Little Secrets

Dirty Little Secrets: Four spy stories from the business world
1 February 2008
The Money Programme
on BBC2

The temptation to gain an illegal advantage on your business competitors has never been higher. Companies now routinely employ private detectives to find out just what their competitors are up to.

In the first of a new series, the Money Programme's Max Flint lifts the lid on a murky world of phone taps, secret filming, break-ins and deception - all in search of a profit.

Last year Formula 1 team, McLaren, was fined £50 million after it received details of a rival car's design.

The Money Programme discovers that far from the glamour of F1, many other businesses are also relying on dirty tricks to give them that extra advantage. The programme investigates competitive spying in, of all businesses, the conservatory industry. And it explores in depth how a waste tycoon Adrian Kirby ordered corrupt London-based private detective firm Active Investigation Service (AIS) to bug the phones and hack into the emails of opponents.

Dirty Little Secrets is an Old Street Films production for BBC2 Money Programme.

Producer: Adrian Gatton
Director: Rob Lemkin
Executive Editor: Clive Edwards

Sex in the 90s: Lap Dance War

Sex in the 90s: Lap Dance War
28 June 2006
Channel 4 Television

Naked spies.
Private eyes.
Council-imposed underpants.

A romp through the dirty war to control American-style striptease in Britain.

The 1990s saw the rise of lap dancing in Britain. Giant corporations opened strip clubs up and down the country, fundamentally changing British attitudes to sex. Lap Dance War tells the behind-the-scenes story of how lap dancing conquered Britain. It reveals the men behind the industry - like Michael J Peter, Peter Stringfellow and Spearmint Rhino's John Gray - and their power struggles to dominate the scene. It is the story of backroom deals, lapdancing spies, and private detectives who re-wrote Britain's rulebook for selling sex forever.

The programme features interviews with Michael J Peter, Peter Stringfellow, Mark Young and David Fierstone. The documentary also includes an interview with Adrian Gatton about his investigations into the lap-dancing wars (follow the links for some of the stories Spearmint Rhino lap-dancing clubs' boss is convicted fraudster, Tale of the Rhino, A gangland killing, lap dancers who are said to sell sex and the criminal past of the man behind the Spearmint Rhino empire, Spearmint Rhino dances to £1.75m.

Consultant: Adrian Gatton
Producer: Pete Sawyer
Director: David Monaghan

Lap Dance War is a film by DMP. Read a transcript of Lap Dance War here.


Adrian Gatton interviewed about the lap-dancing wars that hit London after the arrival of Spearmint Rhino.

I Spy With My Little PI

I Spy With My Little PI
Adrian Gatton explains why investigative reporters need to be wary
26 November 2004
Press Gazette

I was on my way to work recently, when a young man from my mobile phone company, Orange, rang. He had some bad news. He regretfully informed me my phone had been reported stolen and, to make certain I wasn't the thief, would I mind answering a few personal security questions.

I felt a bit suspicious. The week before, a colleague at The Guardian had taken a call about me from a man posing as a television researcher. When I called the man he admitted he was a private investigator. Wheedling, he tried to find out what stories I was working on and, indeed, already seemed to know quite a bit about that.

Was I being paranoid about the man from Orange? ...