Tom Mangold

Award-winning author and investigative journalist Tom Mangold put Panorama at the forefront of current affairs reporting and continues to break news stories the world over. Elinor Malcolm meets him at home in Chiswick

If I were compiling my Fantasy Dinner Party guest list, Tom Mangold would be right up there at the top. The stories he can tell, from living in the thick of the most momentous events of our times: hunting out the hottest news stories and rubbing shoulders with the headline-makers, the world’s power-brokers and the spies behind the scenes. He’s enraged the Establishment, cowed major corporations and even had Matt Damon to tea to discuss his role as CIA chief James Jesus Angleton in The Good Shepherd (Tom assures me they’ve ‘never cleaned the settee since’). His breadth of knowledge is astounding, his intelligence incisive and his drive to discover the truth relentless. He’s also very funny.

For Tom, there was no career debate: ‘I was just born to be a reporter. When my mother gave me money to go to the boy scouts I spent it all on seeing post-war films noir – Humphrey Bogart in a trench coat and trilby with a press card and a fag hanging out of his mouth. I just knew: that was my career.’

Fleet Street in the days of ‘chequebook journalism and scallywaggery’ honed his skills and he cut his teeth on the Profumo affair. ‘I spent nearly two years on the case; that’s where I learned my investigative journalism. I bought up two prostitutes and Stephen Ward for my paper, literally running at night from one hotel to the other.’ Impressed, the BBC offered him a job. ‘I thought, this is the future. What am I doing in print?’

The corporation was then the domain of Oxbridge types who obediently reported what the wires said. Thrusting young journalists who went out there looking for the news were a culture shock: ‘My generation brought the concept of investigative journalism to the BBC. We were like an editorial virus that breeds.’ Tom and his peers broke the mould, pioneering hard-hitting, well researched documentaries. Tom is modest about his rapid rise: ‘It wasn’t because I had any talent; I just enjoyed it and was prepared to sacrifice a lot personally to do it.’ Amongst those sacrifices must have been peace of mind: a less fearless person would not have happily hobnobbed with the Krays to do the first real news documentary on them, nor left loved ones behind to follow wars around the world: Aden; Vietnam; Nigeria; the Middle East; Afghanistan. Tom’s insouciance makes me smile, when I enquire whether the Krays weren’t uncomfortable acquaintances. ‘Only towards the end. That was one of the reasons I went to Vietnam; I was worried they might blow me away.’

Only Tom Mangold could suggest a war correspondent’s life was a sensible remove from danger. His sister pointed this out, enquiring when he – by then 42 with two children – ‘was going to grow up’. He took the point and returned home but if growing up meant staying out of trouble, he didn’t manage it. His definitive documentary about the Jeremy Thorpe trial sent such shockwaves through the Establishment it was suppressed: ‘The heat from inside was intense, but we got everything – the most amazing material. Of course Thorpe was found not guilty. It was a very illuminating picture of the social mores of the time.’

By now Tom was at Panorama, where he would stay for 26 years leading its ascent to cult status in current affairs broadcasting. Through the decades, his documentaries, such as those on the Halcion sleeping pill, have broken new ground, his films have been syndicated around the world, his books have hit the bestseller lists and prestigious awards have honoured his impartial reporting, on everything from biological warfare to Cold War espionage. He brought defensive intelligence as a subject to the BBC, with revelatory reports on the CIA (‘introspective and stupid, as the agency usually is’). He’s fielded the press hounds himself over the David Kelly case (Kelly was a personal friend), in 2003 presenting the first documentary on the scandal for Channel 4. In 2006 his news documentary on the Litvinenko murder featured a world exclusive interview with a primary source.

What drives him? A political or social conscience? A fascination with skulduggery? ‘I simply see it as good stories. I have no sense of mission: I’m not a John Pilger. I don’t want to be a reporter with a cause. I just want to be a hack who tells stories: I love it. Journalism is basically you sitting in front of a river of sludge all day seeing nothing but mud. Your job is to spot a nugget, a tiny flash of gold being carried downriver by the flood. If you spot it, you get your story.’

I wonder whether Tom Mangold’s indefatigable curiosity would ever let him truly retire. He snorts. ‘It’s not that. You can’t ever stop, not when you’ve got kids. They come into the house every time saying, have you got any spare cash, Dad?’ But the lure of the next good story still calls and that invaluable gift of getting people to talk remains: ‘It’s good, the age I am. If you knock on someone’s door and they open it and there’s this poor old bugger with white hair outside in the cold, they ask you in out of pity!’Joking aside, he cares passionately about the quality of current affairs broadcasting and has been scathing about the marginalising of the once-great Panorama. Though it’s reinstated in its primetime slot, he fears ‘a lot of the energy has gone’.

His solution? ‘If I were King of England, I would buy a working revolver, with bullets, and I would go up to Paxman, Humphrys, Andrew Marr, Nick Robinson, Gavin Hewitt, Matt Frei and I would say, you have a straight choice. I can either blow your brains out or you join my new current affairs programme.’

But now, he tells me, he’s got a red-hot news story for me, right on the home patch. ‘I could probably sell it to the Sunday Times – but the Chiswick House Organised Walkers are looking for sponsors for dog poop bags!’ This nascent organisation (acronym CHOW) was formed by Tom and like-minded local dog walkers who love Chiswick House Grounds. They recently defeated red tape proposals to banish dogs to the wild periphery of the park, suggesting a new ‘Dog Code’ and winning a responsible compromise. Like the expansion of Heathrow, he sees it as a key issue exemplifying ‘local control; the extent to which you can control this very pleasant environment, which has cost us all a bob or two to live in’.

The park is one of the aspects of Chiswick life that continues to delight him after nearly 40 years of residence. Others include the river, the High Road ‘that’s still not too bad, despite 35 coffee shops’, restaurants such as Annie’s and the fact that ‘Chiswick is the first place near London where you can actually smell the difference in air quality – the good air near the park’. In between research trips, he relishes time spent here – particularly, walking his beloved Spinone Italian hunting dog Tessa at Chiswick House.

And has his instinct for spotting gold ever let him down? ‘Ah well. Yes. When my Vietnam War book came out in 1985 my agent said, someone wants to buy it for a film, but it’s a small company called Chestnut Film Productions and it’s a completely unknown actor. I was an arrogant little bugger and I said, I don’t want to deal with some guy I’ve never heard of. Who’s Kevin Costner?’ With journalist extraordinaire Tom Mangold, even the few ‘ones that got away’ confirm his place as Raconteur Supreme at my Fantasy Dinner Party…

For more information visit www.tommangold.com and www.chowgroup.co.uk