Watch the latest episode of our exclusive interview between actor and comedian John Cleese and private investigator turned whistleblower Daniel “Danno” Hanks.
Danno recently hit the news for coming clean about targeting Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for the tabloids, and in our exclusive new interview series goes into detail about some of his most high profile targets, including John Cleese himself!
In this episode, Danno explains how, after coming under scrutiny for their use of hiring private investigators, the newspapers asked Danno to change his company name and emails to remove the words “Detective” and “Investigator” from them.
The Sun deny this and a spokesperson said this in a previous statement regarding Danno’s work with News UK:
“Mr Hanks was not tasked to do anything illegal or breach any privacy laws – indeed he was instructed clearly in writing to act lawfully and he signed a legal undertaking that he would do so.
The information he provided could not and did not raise any concerns that he had used illegal practices to obtain the information.
The Sun abides by all laws and regulations and maintains strict protocols in relation to the obtaining of information from third parties. Strict compliance is in place to cover all our reporting.”
TRANSCRIPT
John Cleese: I’m talking to Danno again about the dirty tricks of the British press. Now, at the beginning, it was mainly the Mail and the Mail on Sunday that used you and then their sister paper, the Standard. But then a lot of other papers used you. So you worked for the Mirror? The Sun?
Danno Hanks H: I worked for them all. And the reason I started British American News was I was called by various editors and reporters. And they’d say, “You know, we’re having some problems with the press office and we would appreciate it if you would change your company name. So it didn’t have the words ‘detective’ or ‘investigator’ in it.” So I had my regular email as ‘Detective Danno’ and my other one I had to change to’Hollywood Reporter Dan’.
JC: So a journalist friend of mine, Graham Johnson, who does a lot of good work for byline, said that they kind of whitewashed you. What did he mean by that?
DH: Well, they had me sign statements saying that I wouldn’t do anything illegal, with the total intent of having me to continue doing everything illegal, but they wanted to cover their own butts.
JC: Well, Danno and I will be exploring this further very soon.
