In an exclusive interview with John Cleese, Private Investigator Danno Hanks explains how his past traumas helped him decide to help Prince Harry and other claimants in his fight against the British tabloid newspapers.
This is 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!
TRANSCRIPT
JC: You’ve given a witness statement to Prince Harry and other claimants in the phone hacking litigations still going on at the British High Court. Now you came over to do this kind of thing. You came over from the dark side. Tell me about why.
DH: Well, there was a couple of things that you know, I was I became I don’t know whether it was victim, but I became where they started interviewing me right after a good friend of mine had died from suicide. And I started feeling, Well, is this what happens to people that I, you know, give them the information, you know?
JC: Because you didn’t actually give them the information. You simply gave them a way of a way of getting the information.
DH: But I started really realising, you know, that there was better ways to use my skills. And one of them was as a child, I had been the victim of a peadophile. And so I I started working with a couple of other people and going after peadophiles, tracking them down. And one of them was Jeffrey Epstein. You know, could I get people that would testify against him?
JC: So really, there were two elements of you coming over from the dark side. one was a longstanding one of wanting to try and reveal who were peadophiles. The other one was the realisation when it happened to you. Of how unpleasant it was and how disturbing. And you decided you didn’t want to be part of helping people to do that again.
DH: Yeah, you know, and it changes you when you certainly have a completely different when you view the empathy side of emotions, you know, when you get empathy for the other person, you suddenly go, “Oh, my God, is that what I’m doing?”
JC: Maybe empathy is the thing that British newspapers…DH: They have no empathy.
JC: I know. But maybe they could find somebody who would teach them to be just a little bit less awful. Thank you, Danno.
DH: You’re welcome.
