Welcome to this bonus edition of The State of It.
I am here with one of our former hosts, Gabriel Pogrand,
who has actually moved on to bigger and better things, arguably.
He is now editor of Insight and has this week produced a quite extraordinary story about Nigel Farage
and some benefits in kind he has received from a convicted fraudster called George Cottrell.
So, Gabriel, do you want to just start by, I mean,
this looks like a hell of a lot of work has gone into this with you and your team.
Well, yeah, let me begin by saying that I genuinely really miss seeing you and Patrick and Lara in the studio.
And I also miss the rhythm of my life where I used to get to do things every week.
So part of the concept of Insight is that we dedicate lots of time and resource to an occasional big bomb.
And I guess one hopes it's worth it by the time you get there.
But we did feel leaving the office on Saturday that we had nothing left to give.
And it seems like the story is done reasonably.
Well uh the podcast pos george as well is available to listen
to um but the thrust of the story relates as you said to this guy george cotrell
who is a very colorful character he's an aristocrat he grew up in uh the caribbean island
mustique went to boarding school in worcestershire uh and then was expelled for gambling related activity and responded
to that setback by Going into the bit of Mayfair where Arab, Russian, British money mingles in hotel lobbies and clubs,
and he essentially became very proficient at moving money around the world,
learned a lot about the highways and byways of the slightly greyer areas of international finance.