Thank you for listening to White Devil, a podcast about power and privilege in a fragile paradise. You can hear new episodes released weekly on Amazon Music. Campsite Media.

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It says a lot, I think, that a story that begins with a shooting on a déserted pier in Central America really It can't be told, at least not by me, without talking a lot about someone who wasn't even there. Lord Michael Ashcroft, as far as I can tell, was 5,000 miles away when Henry Jamot was killed. He clearly had nothing to do with the horrific events on the dock. But when it comes to power and how it plays out in Belize, his fingerprints are everywhere, which makes sense. The guy's got his fingers in a lot of pies, as they say in the UK. I mean, say what you will about Michael Ashcroft. He is not a lazy man. Belizians know him for being extremely rich and owning lots of things. And back home in the UK, he's also known for being a ruthless businessman, as well as a passionate conservative, a generous philanthropist, and the author of many, many books, 33 at last count. A mix of political analysis, pet interests, unauthorized biographies, plus a whole series of books celebrating British military heroes.

And as the title of my latest book suggests, it's about some of the heroes from the Falkland's War.

This is Ashcroft in November 2021, speaking at the launch party for one of his more recent titles, Falkland's War Heroes. The book jacket notes that Lord Ashcroft has been, quote, fascinated by bravery since he was a young boy, and certainly His publishing record backs that up. Falkland was his seventh book with the word heroes in the title.

My Book tells wonderful stories of courage by our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, and their support staff. Book launches are a time to express gratitude to others who have helped the author, but I'm deliberately going to keep these short tonight and refer you instead to the long list of thank yous in the acknowledgements within the book. However, I must say a public thank you to my publisher's, Bite Back, which, by the way, I own, so it's a self-convergence.

Yeah, you heard that right. The book is published by Michael Ashcroft via Bite Back Publishing, his own publishing company. He went on to read off some of the most stirring examples of the 40, quote, incredible tales of courage, reconstructed in the book. These are, in all seriousness, truly incredible stories. And then he closed with another joke.

I will end by asking you, no, imploring you to do your bit to support good causes by buying lots of copies of Falkland's War Heroes for yourself, your family, your friends, and your other contacts, because this struggling author in front of you is 100% committed to donating all authors' charities to military charities.

An equally important- Lord Ashcroft doesn't do a lot of this, public speaking. He's a private man. People close to him would probably call him guarded. But I'm just guessing because it's really hard to get anyone to talk about the man on the record. Once the tape is rolling, folks who know Ashcroft are reluctant to share their stories. It was clear we needed to do something more practical to try to a handle on this mysterious man. I decided to take a trip to England to see what I could dig up. To your go. From Campside Media, this is White Devil, and I'm Josh Dean. Episode 6, The Long Shadow. So again, it's a sign of our ever-shrinking world that in order to tell a story about Belize, we had to fly to England. Joe and I started one morning in March at the Imperial War Museum in central London, home to the Lord Ashcroft Gallery, an exhibition that houses Ashcroft's large collection of Victoria Crosses, Britain's most prestigious metal, which recognizes bravery. Here he is, introducing that collection in 2016.

Bravery manifestsests itself in many different forms, if you think about it. A man that manages to resist giving information whilst his toenails are being pulled out. Somebody with a spear-like I said, The Man Loves Heroes.

It's just a collection of exhibits of the fifth floor as the Lord Ashcroft's gallery. It's very subtle. His philanthropy is very subtle. The exhibition, made possible by a five million pound gift from Michael Ashcroft, occupies an entire wing of the museum, and it's marked by a giant banner displaying the Ashcroft name.

Let's be honest, these metals are not that big. It's got a lot of them, but not much space do they need?

I'm getting the sense that maybe it's not all about philanthropy. There's no question who made this exhibit possible. If you missed the sign announcing that this was the Lord Ashcroft wing, you'd see signs of him everywhere inside, on screens and on placards. Lord Ashcroft holds the largest collection of Victoria's crosses in the world, along with other collections of Special Forces medals, Decorations for Gouentry in the Air, and the George crosses. Fascinating man. I feel like he's like... I'm not sure what the itch is he's scratching, but there's something. Ashcroft sees himself as a generous philanthropist. He spent millions of dollars on initiatives like a campaign against wild game hunting in South Africa, as well as one to protect whales. And he's the founder of Crime Stoppers UK, a charity that encourages people to call in tips about suspected crimes. He's also spent millions on charitable causes in Belize, a zoo, a soccer stadium, a gym for the police. During the pandemic, he committed 10 million Belizeian dollars to various causes related to the country's recovery. That's 5 million US.

If you read the introduction to what the gallery is about in Ashtaroth's word, it's honoring the qualities of bravery. And those qualities are boldness, aggression, leadership, skill, sacrifice, initiative, and endurance with your family. That's not how I would describe bravery, but it might describe how an outsider might look at his way he has applied himself to his career.

I would say that seems fair. He did not serve in the military himself, nor did I believe any of his children. Certainly not Andrew. This is true, but the military was an important part of his family history. His parents met soon after the D-Day landing. His father was injured during that invasion and met the woman who had become Michael's mother, a nurse, while he was recovering. Here's how he explained it on a short radio interview with the Times of London. Upon release of his book, Falkland's War Heroes, in the fall of 2021.

My father was a young officer who was in the first landing craft that landed on D-Day. He talked about very rough waters, ramp going down, men as they came onto the beach, his running zigzagged up the beach. And I became a schoolboy geek on Normandy, and I hope one day to be able to own a Victoria Cross. And when eventually I had enough funds, I purchased the first VC.

His metal collecting became obsessive. He basically cornered the market.

And today, of the approximately 1,500 issued, I have 210 Victoria Victoria crosses, all of which are on public display.

This is not a small undertaking. He paid one and a half million pounds for one of these?

For one of them? Oh, it's probably the oldest one or something. Oh, look, by the way, boldness, aggression, leadership. There's a section. The gallery is impressive, and the accomplishments it celebrates even more so. But there's something a little cheesy about the packaging, especially the signs. The font choice is just awful. For a somber It's a museum exhibit anyway. It's a great typeface for fast food marketing.

I feel like I look at it and I want to buy a salad. Exactly.

It's like being at Chopt. Do you guys have Chopt in London? No.

Like prep?

It's like a prep but only salad. And they chop the salad. That's the innovation, which, to be fair, is a legitimate innovation, in my opinion.

What's the salad that's not chopped?

It has the giant pieces of lettuce in it, and you have to use a knife. You should not have to use a knife on a salad. Very important that this makes the show. One thing in particular was bugging me about Lord Ashcroft as we strolled through this gallery. What the hell is a Lord? It feels like such a silly thing to call oneself in the 21st century.

Okay, let me try and break it down as best I can. The House of Lords, which is where lords work, is- Which is one of the Houses of Parliament, right? Yeah, it's the Upper House. So it's our equivalent of- The Senate. Senate, exactly. And traditionally, being a Lord was hereditary. So your dad was a Lord, you were a Lord. And that was only abolished in 1999.

Whoa. Not a super democratic process. So you literally could not earn your way into the House of Lords.

You could also be appointed into it. So nowadays, lords tend to be appointed by the political parties who all share them out. But you can also be appointed Lord if you are notable and influential in other fields, non-political.

In 2020, Boris Johnson torpedoed any legitimate privacy left in the process by nominating Evgeny Lebedev, son of a notorious Russian oligarch, into the House of Lords under the official title, Baron Lebedev, of Hampton in the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, which is not a part of the UK. Anyway, becoming a Lord was very important to Michael Ashcroft.

So Lord Ashcroft was made a Lord. That gave him the right to go to the House of Lords, get paid a daily rate, and gets to comment on laws that are going through British Parliament. He revoked his official job in the House of Lords, but still maintains the title.

Once you leave the House of Lords, are you not technically Lord anymore? Or you can keep the title?

You can keep the title, but it just doesn't have any power attached to it.

Joe pulled up a list of British Lords on Wikipedia, a list that included some truly fantastical titles such as, Viscount Colville of Coleross, Lord Green of Hearst-Peerpoint, Lord Grimstone of Buscabelle. Some of them are just ridiculous names. Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon. So some of these would be handed down. Wait, and then why is there a baroness in there?

That's a female Lord.

A female Lord? Woman Lord. So you can be a woman Lord. Probably not until the 20th century, though, right?

But look, there's also like, Viscounts here, Earls, Lord Baker of Dorking.

What the hell? Berenice Bacwell of Hardington, Mandeville. Berenice Bacwell of Hardington, Mandeville. The Imperial War Museum was actually great. But I was beginning to wonder how he'd ever get beyond the boring two-dimensional cut-out of Ashcroft that he seems to have mostly laid out himself. When Joe stumbled on something incredible, he'd been reading Ashcroft's autobiography Dirty Times Dirty Politics. It's a monstrously dull brick of a book. But Joe found something I had missed, a very peculiar diamond in the rough.

I'm just going to read you a couple of lines because I- He told me about it first on a call. It was like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I went to boarding school, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I also managed pop group called Trident, who I naturally hoped would become the equivalent in Fame and wealth to the Beatles.

This was such an odd detail, especially in the context of everything I knew about him already. Before he owned companies, Michael Ashcroft managed a rock band? Now we're talking.

I dug into this, and it isn't really very much online, but it turns out the Trident were quite big in form of British colonies, particularly in the Caribbean. That's quite possibly down to Ashcroft his links there.

But they're not Caribbean themselves. They're British.

I think he must have met them when he was at college.

Okay, so go on.

So I found this one blog by this guy who was living in Belize at the time, he's now in London. It's really incredible, but the band disappeared in 1984 in the Bermuda Triangle.

Wait, literally? Wait, hold on. Wait, it literally disappeared. They're not just like, vanished because they're not famous anymore.

It literally disappeared. The news report said it was because of an unexplained electrical short on the yacht. No bodies were found. The band, gone, disappeared.

Joe had found an old fan blog, tour posters and tour itineraries, some old records, and a few interviews uploaded by fans. There was even a small documentary about the band, as well as a radio show in which the guy who wrote the fan blog talks about for an hour, in between tunes.

I'm your host, Ben Ford, and you are listening to Resonance 104.4 FM. This is the story of an ungrown rhythm and blues band called Trident.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to I've introduced to you the fabulous Trident.

I think my father always felt really frustrated by the lack of recognition here in the UK.

Michael was working with a number of other acts that he'd brought under management. Trident were one of the many acts that he managed.

I remember switching on the news. I was in complete shock. They were sailing from Bermuda to Belize, and were right out in the middle of the ocean, and then they were gone. So this is one of the unfinished tracks, which I believe was written in the early '80s.

A cigarette burns low, the ashy tip swings to and fro.

As I I consider, as I consider, the cross in the road, you can only deal with the devil so long.

You can only deal with the devil so long. They don't sound like a band that Lord Michael Ashcroft would have championed. I had them figured for more of a Moody Blues type of guy. But we all contain multitudes, and the sheer facts of this were nuts. Maybe too nuts? A band that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle. I feel like I would have heard about this. But wait, there's no news stories about the disappearance of this band? Are we sure this actually happened?

I mean, that's what I... I don't know.

The answer to that bizarre question and a whole lot more after the break. You're listening to White Devil from Campside Media. I love to be Okay, where were we? We were trying to unearth something about Lord Ashcroft, and we learned that back in the '60s, he was the manager of an up and coming rock band. But before they get their big break, the band inexplicably vanishes into thin air, presumably lost its sea in the Bermuda Triangle. It was incredible, more than we'd hoped for.

Hello. How's it going? I'm Chris, and I'm in Manchester.

This is Chris Alton. He was a guest on that radio show you heard a bit of, the one from 2016 that the Bayesian Trident blogger hosted.

Chris is an artist and filmmaker for the past few months. He's been working on a short documentary about Trident's disappearance.

Welcome, Chris. Chris's documentary is called Under the Shade, I Flourish, and it featured loads of old footage of Trident and interviews with family members and people who knew and worked with the band. Chris seemed like precisely the person to explain this bizarre Trident mystery to us. Joe tracked him down, and we asked him for every last perplexing detail.

Yeah, so it's all fake. The only information that is real is that the band was called Trident. They played rhythm and blues music. Michael Ashcroft managed them. That's it.

Okay. Wow.

The rest of it, the The interviews, the posters, the whole 10-track album, the fan blogs, the photos, all fake, all stage.

The daughter of the band member?

Oh, family friend.

This is quite incredible. Honestly, I was skeptical about the disappearance, but the music, it's convincing. So who is it? Somebody wrote and recorded those songs. Turns out it's Chris and a few friends. Eli and Hava Carvahal and Louis Chernyovski from the band New Manhattan. That's Trident, as envisioned by Chris and his mates. They wrote and recorded an entire album of Trident music, including our theme.

Under the shade I flow It's quite believable on first glance, but one of the tip-offs for me was the map of the tour route and the peaks and valleys of the financial system, so that it looks a financial graph.

Like, oh, come on, there's no way that could be real.

I think the most subtle of the clues that I put in there is the name of the main fan of the band. And he's someone who I fictitiously interviewed.

I'd always assumed that Trident were as popular in England as they had been over in the British Honduras. But when I arrived here, no one had heard of them.

Again, this is a fake fan and blogger, Ben Ford, played by another friend of Chris's, talking about a fictitious narrative of a real band that Ashcroft actually managed.

His name, Ben Ford, it comes from a mathematical law called Benford's Law. And Benford's Law is used to spot financial malpractice. And there is a, I think about 10,000-word fan blog of his, which I authored.

Talk about dedication to a bit. And this fake host with a tricky name wasn't just a voice on the radio. He also had a real-life email address. So why wouldn't we be convinced he was real? Joe tried to get in touch with him for weeks.

So when I found out it was a hoax, I wanted to know why. How did this come about?

I was visiting Anglia Ruskin University.

That's in the east of England, with branches in Cambridge, where Chris was, and Chelmsford, which is about half an hour on the train from London.

I was walking through their main entrance way corridor thing, and then there's this massive bronze bust. It's about a double life size, head and shoulders, very grand, but So NAF.

Naf is British slang. It means vulgar, tasteless, but not necessarily cheap. Something a Kardashian wears on a bad day might be described as NAF.

It all looks a bit incongrious. I was like, What is that? That looks interesting.

A small plaque answered the question. It was a bust of Lord Michael Ashcroft, a benefactor of this small regional university, which it turns out he attended, though he was at the Chelmsford Branch.

And when I started to look into Ashcroft, I found out about this rhythm and blues band, which he genuinely did manage in the 1960s. It's quite an obscure reference, it seems.

So this whole hoax or work of art seems to have been inspired by the same couple of lines in Ashcroft's biography that got me so excited.

I began to think to myself, what if Ashcroft had taken a different route with his life? What if this band had some level of success that he was aspiring to? And I let myself go a little bit wild with that, as you've perhaps discovered. Yeah.

Chris's project was genius. Lord Ashtraff cuts a fine line between incredibly well known and incredibly private. Secretive, really. You can invent almost anything to fill that information void.

The project is channeling some of the essence of Michael Ashcroft that perhaps I was picking up on. I think I got this overwhelming sense of someone who was interested in money and interested in power and wanted to get as much of it as he could, however he could. At the time, I was interested in personally learning more about the relationship between things like tax avoidance, Britain's colonial history, the appropriation of rhythm and blues music that has its roots in slavery and pioneered by people of color, and then was appropriated by bands like the Beatles.

Chris's project was exhibited at a place called the Historic Dockyard in Kent, as well as a couple of other galleries. Just before the show opened back in 2016, Chris got an email from the curator with some surprising news. They would not be referring directly to Michael Ashcroft in any of the exhibits text. Chris read me the email.

We've come across a snag. The museum will not accept the work if it references Ashcroft as it is non partisan, I think that's the right term, and doesn't want to cause direct political controversy.

Was this an Ashcroft edict or merely a reaction borne from fear of this man's reputation? That's impossible to say.

I suppose the impression that I did get of him was someone that would tenaciously protect his image and his privacy.

That's very true. Michael Ashcroft is famously, or infamously, protective of his image. And he wields the UK's extremely plaintiff friendly libel law like a cudgel. He sued the Times of London and the Independent. He once sued someone over a single word.

So this was a very interesting instance of someone having this cultural influence, which at his behest or not, could prevent people from speaking about him in a way that he might not like.

Neither Chris nor I can say for sure if Michael Ashcroft was behind the Dockyard's request to not directly mention his name in any way. My guess is that the place is just small and anxious about bad press and was trying to be apolitical, or at least not pick any fights in the name of art.

I made a couple of posters that just say, Don't mention Michael Ashcroft. I think of them as advice for artists in a Nam June Pike way, who famously said, The artist should write the hand that feeds, but not too hard.

Chris's project may have been fake, but he had done extensive research. I mean, really obsessive work on Ashcroft. I knew this would be helpful for us.

I don't know if you've come across the story of someone who he knew at school who was going to write an unofficial biography, and Ashcroft paid him off.

I had not. Tell me more. Chris fiddled around on his computer a bit. Hang on.

Okay, cool. So, Alister Primrose was this guy that I got in contact with over Facebook. The message that I sent him on the 14th of February, 2016 was, Hi, Alister. Are you perhaps the Alister Primrose who wrote about Michael Ashcroft? If so, I'd very much like to talk to you. Thanks, Chris.

He'd fired off that Facebook message and waited. And waited.

The reply, almost Just three years later, eighth of February, 2019, Yes, I am.

That was it. Yes, I am. No further comment or context. No question about why this random Chris dude was asking Alastair this bizarre question out of the blue. Just, Yes, I am.

I think I must have replied almost instantly. Hi, Alastair. Thanks for getting back to me. My original message was sent almost three years ago, so I don't remember exactly what your connection to what Ashcroft was or what I might have wanted to ask. It may well have been to do with the band he managed in the 1960s, Trident. Anyway, thanks for your time. So Alastair replies.

It didn't take three years this time.

Yes, Ashcroft was my manager when I was in Trident. You presumably are aware that I wrote an Ashcroft biography.

This was an amazing coincidence, the universe talking. Chris was reaching out to find out what he could, but he had no idea Alastair was in this band, mentioned in one paragraph of Ashcroft's biography. And the band was real.

Ps, used to manage punk bands, UK subs, and Bruce Dickinson, latterly, of Iron Maiden. Wow.

We got to find Alister. Alister Primrose was not an easy man to track down. He's not in the phonebook, and despite having an unusual name, it's spelled ALA instead of ALI, is not registered in any other way to an address. He is still on Facebook, and I sent him a message. But considering it took him three years to send a few words to Chris, I wasn't hopeful that that would help much either. It didn't. In the end, it was that detail from the PS about him working in music that was most useful. The UK has this publicly accessible database known as Company's House. Basically, a record of anyone who owns a company there. Sure enough, listed in Company's House was an A Primrose, Registered Secretary of Swan Music Publishing Limited, with an address. Granted, this entity was registered 20 years ago, and Swan Music Publishing is long gone, but it felt like a start. So Joe took a little road trip.

Okay, so I think this is the place. Let's go and see if he's in.

He wasn't in. Joe left a letter in the mail slot, or a letter box, as Joe and Alister I would say. Three weeks passed. We were not hopeful. And then Joe got a message out of the blue. It was Alister suggesting they get together. He called him back straight away. Hello?

Hi, Alister. Can you hear me? I am, Joe. How are you?

Right. Joe, the best day for me is going to be Friday. How are you placed on Friday?

Friday is actually one of the best days for me, so that works perfectly. Right.

You You're not a member of the Tempting Society, are you?

I'm not, no.

Well, in which case, I suggest we have a pleasant meeting in a pub in Cologne.

Absolutely. I'd enjoy that.

Good man. I mean, there's quite a nice pub.

The British love a pub, but this was great. Finally, someone who actually knew Michael Ashcroft. Well, back when he was a young man and not a mysterious character who fancies himself a Bond It was fitting in the end, after Chris's elaborate prank, that Joe finally met Alastair on April first.

You know, what he would have done today, he would not have arrived. And he was said to you, April before. Or he would have turned up here and he was written on a piece of paper, Joe, by the way, I'm done. That's Askarov's. That sums up what he was like.

This is already great. Misterious. Joe wasted no time telling him about Chris and his Trident project.

He wrote songs as if he was Trident.

That's unbelievable.

I'm going to play you one of the songs if you're interested.

Yeah. Alister listened for about seven seconds. No more. He wasn't impressed.

No, we were a three-piece, hence Trident. That was our logo, Trident. Rhythm and Blues band. And the guy who joined us, called Del, was very much into soul. That was the music he played. So Motown, not that stuff. He was like, I can assure you.

So it's all true. We solved, to an extent, the mystery of Trident. But more importantly, as I listened to Joe's three-hour conversation with Alastair in the Pub, I realized that this was the key, or our A key, anyway, to Ashcroft's past that we had been looking for. I was involved in the music business-Alaster painted a vivid picture of a different time and a different person from the one we've been studying from afar.

There's something about him, but it was a nasty side to him, an confusing side to him. And I think, really, that's carried on.

Alister and Michael, or Mike, as they called him back then, initially met entirely by chance through a wanted ad for roommates.

So in the second year, we We rented this property in Upper Bridge Road, Chumstead. We needed a fourth person to make up the numbers. And of course, through the bursal, we got this Mike Ashcroft.

Alister and Mike were young men finding their way in the world for the first time, drinking, meeting women, scraping together money for rent and pints. Occasionally, there was studying, too. Ashcroft, the man, started to come to life a bit. There were little nuggets that make sense in the context of everything else we know. His indisputable talent for business, his ruthlessness, and just maybe something that hints it a motive for this path he has chosen to take.

I think he bloomed in Chelmsford. I think he came there as a gangly young man as was, and found that he could... This was like, obviously, Belize is his fiefdom now. Chelmsford was his fiefdom then.

Chelmser. That was obviously where we had to go next. After the break.

Joe and I decided to trace Ascraff's life back to the place where he and Alister had spent their formative years.

It's also part of the same school where Chris Alton saw that giant Bronze bust that inspired his whole incredible project, Anglia Ruskin University. I met Joe at Liverpool Street Station in London to catch a train to the Chelmsford campus. Good morning, Josh.

How are you?

I forgot you had a bright orange jacket on. We're two very easy people to spot in here. Chelmsford is one of the biggest towns in Essex, a British county best known for the TV show, The Only Way as Essex, which you can think of as England's version of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. I got you a text, thanks for inviting me.

How are you? How are you?

What's going on?

The stereotype is rich, but not exactly classey, which hits on something about Ashcroft. Despite his success and power and titles, his background is far more humble.

I'm from bedding, which is probably one of the most ordinary towns you could come from. And I feel that Chelmsford is one level down from that.

Ashcroft isn't from Chelmsford. In the UK, his family live in Maidenhead, which is squarely upper middle class. But it's still a few steps away from the elites of the British establishment. And Anglia Ruskin is certainly not Oxford or Cambridge.

Okay, welcome to Chelmsford.

All right, we are. Home of the Let's Get Social Burger Company.

Down to Homeark. This is the place, actually, the railway tavern. Wait, that is? Yeah.

Out of the station, and basically, the first building we see is the railway tavern, an old pub where a young Mike Ashcroft used to hang out with Alister and their mates.

What a place that I was expecting. It's going to be easier than we thought. It's closed, but you got to take a look.

It required absolutely no navigation. There it was. The pub was closed, so we'd have to come back later. We headed up the hill in search of, I hoped, another giant bust, or maybe a full statue you. Also, if you'll pardon the brief digression, we learned some very exciting things about Chelmsford along the way. The world's first wireless broadcast for entertainment began from the Marconi laboratories at Riddle. This was fate. Chelmsford is known as the birthplace of radio. There you go. Who knew? And here we are, Recording Radio. That's quite amazing.

I have to say it's a little windy for my taste for making radio.

Are we close to the Coast?

We're closer to the Coast than we were when we in London, but no. Okay.

I think I see the University up ahead. As in Anglia Ruskin, it's a regional university. There are courses for dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, art and design. They do a lot of stuff. And the newest and most prominent of its buildings is the Lord Ashcroft Building, home to the Lord Ashcroft International Business School, which you know by the giant fucking letters that say Lord Ashcroft Building. So, giant letters, but no bust. Sadly, I don't think there's a bust. I'm seeing no photos of, no giant photos.

Obviously, this Lord Ashcroft International Business School is named after him, but it's a very clever way of getting your name everywhere. It is.

Something Donald Trump also likes to do.

It's very grand and ostentatious, but it comes as a combination of a genuine desire to help people on the same path as he did, but also this grandiosity of just like…

Don't forget where it's coming from.

His presence is everywhere, but there's no connection to the people or the town.

We headed back to the railway tavern for lunch, where I guess we stood out a bit.

What are you filming? It's not filming. This is for video because we are… Okay. We heard that this is a pub where Michael Ashcroft used to come to Lord Ashcroft.

Did he? Yeah, when he was a kid. Oh, wow. It's quite an old pub. He went to university or college. Yeah, at the behind, but they're no longer there. It's all flat now.

But the picture there, the top middle one, that's 19.

Is it 19, 19, the picture of the pub? Yeah. Which one? Quite an old boozer. 780, please, sir.

Do you need a receipt? Yeah, I'm good.

Thank you, darling.

I think we should go to the lounge project. Thank you.

Thank you. Chelmsford has clearly changed a lot. The university buildings we visited are not the ones where Ashcroft, who studied business, learned about balance sheets and compound interest. But it didn't seem like the railway tavern had changed much. Joe recalled some of his conversation with Alastair as we ate Scampy, like this amazing detail.

And the other thing he became notorious for was that he would curl up in a ball on a seat and emit wind and light it with matches. So he became known as Mike Arskraft.

So Michael Arskraft This is where the legend of Michael Archcroft was born.

I remember he had a sick patch, a rubber sick patch.

Or as we call it, fake vomit.

And he'd go up to a customer and he would go, and drop this patch on somebody's leg. And they'd be horrified.

This is endearing and like a million miles from the stuffy businessman we'd been thinking about. Alister and Mike became friends, but it was not a good start.

The first night he arrived, he arrived by cab, and I thought, we can't afford cabs. And he walked into the flat, and the first thing he said was, Have you got any storage space covered? And he had two suitcases, and he had the bottle of Bacardi spirits, right? Which he promptly stashed away. And that was his private stock. And I looked at Ian and the other guy, Frank, and I thought, who is this guy? Anyway, we went out for a drink in the evening, and it came to my round, and he was drinking Rum Co. And we were drinking Double Diamond, or a 10thee of pint, a drink in the evening. And it came to my round, and he was drinking Rum Co. And we were drinking Double Diamond, or a 10thier pint, or a 10thier pint. I mean, we nearly came to blows the first night I told you about, and I stood up to him and said, he was amazing. He just arrived, and he's provocative.

Let's not underestimate the importance of drinking in the UK and the complicated his related etiquette of buying rounds.

In other words, he got off on a very bad footing with us, and he went from bad to worse. For the first months, we were embarrassed to be with him in the same property.

Mind you, Ashcroft certainly made an impression on campus. He was confident and handsome, and stuff happened when he was around. These are not negative qualities in Alister's mind. He warmed up to this aggressive flatulent mate.

So in other words, because he was a bit of Aladdin, whatever, eventually the ice melted, and we became reasonably friendly with him. We had a rag in Chumsford, and he dressed up as Tars, and I dressed up as a woman. I did, but anyway. And I remember we were in the flat, and he said, oh, the house, rather. He said, Me, Tarzan, her Jane, you pillard. When he's interviewed, and he's not interviewed very often. He comes over being quite meek. He's not as brilliant as he was when I knew him. He was very interested in foreign affairs, a very staunch Tori Party supporter in those days. And the guys who shared the flat, Frank and Ian. Ian was a liberal. I was labor. Frank was Labor. Because when there was an election on during the time we were there, we'd put Labor posters up, Mike would take them down. But it was a nasty side to him, an amusement side to him. And I think, really, that's carried on.

After lunch in the pub, we set out to see the old flat where Ashtraff lived with Alister.

Got a picture of the house. Let's see if we can find it.

I'm not 100% sure we found the right place. We knew the street and the general area, but we didn't have an address. Not that it matters much. The houses were basically all the same. Modest two-story brick, Victorian row houses.

University in the '60s for somebody like Michael Ashcroft. I think he really stood out.

He was a-So he's always been a little odd, then. A little out of place. Like, trying to be important and relevant, and yet always slightly out. I don't know why I sound out of breath here. What was he studying? Chelsworth is very flat.

He's studying business. And Michael actually, he applied to study something else, I think, psychology at Reading University and didn't get in. So this wasn't his-First choice. Yeah.

You can go to the best school because you're rich and privileged or because you're very smart. Seems like neither was the case.

I think that that's definitely one of the reasons why he fell in his business. He understood it. He loved it. I think he described it as a puzzle that he could put together, and it was a way for him to prove himself outside of those perhaps more traditional routes to status.

Obviously, he's good at it. He's made a fortune. However you feel about him, he's been very successful financially, economically. Alister had told Joe that Mike's business acumen was pretty apparent from the start.

We formed a business called oddJobsUnlimited. It was quite a good idea, actually, in that you got other students apart from the three housemates he to do specific jobs. And the job he took on was a gardening job for a family called the Gore-Browns, who were quite an upmarket family near Chester. And he did a strive the motor mower, mowing their garden. And there were a number of things like this. And the slogan was odd jobs unlimited will do anything.

Well, not anything.

And I think we packed up when something wanted a hit man. I remember something injured. But the amazing thing at that time was that there was a guy called Gordon, he was the electrician, and he was sent out by Mike to do a electrical job somewhere for an old lady. And when he came back, Mike said, How much money do you get out of it? And Gordon said, She's very old, and I felt sorry for her. He said, We are a business, not a charity. So in other words, even at that early age, there was a slightly ruthless side to him.

Alister says he didn't know even the most basic details of Mike's past, including whether he had any siblings. After college, they lived together for a bit, but eventually they parted ways.

The fact that I thought about him a lot over the years means that I did have an affection for him. There's no question about that. But he was never able to show it because Because once we parted company, that was it. We didn't have any contact with him at all. And that was when he was relatively successful, and we're not like he is now.

Did that upset you at the time?

Yeah, he did a bit, actually. We sent Christmas guides, and all was ignored. Yeah, it did, actually, because you're being close to somebody. You live with them in various flats and houses, but suddenly it was cut off. It was not for financial reasons, but he probably was quite an important person in my life, I'm not sure.

At this point, Alister was quite emotional. It was clear to me that this relationship had meant a lot to him. They'd had their ups and downs, but it really seemed like they were close back then. Alister's proud, but I could tell he was holding something back. It's probably telling that he's heard from Michael Ashcroft exactly once in the past 50 years. It had to do with the book that Chris, the artist, had mentioned to us. Alister had indeed written a manuscript about his experiences with Ashcroft during their years in Chalmsfield.

I wouldn't have written that book unless he had an effect on me, and he did. Because I went on to be quite successful in other things, he was always on my mind.

And that's the title of the book, You were on my mind: The Early Life of Michael Ashcroft. Alister had sent a copy to Michael.

And he sent me a letter. And it was a very strange letter where he said, I'm sorry that you are having difficulties publishing the book because only my mother would be interested. And he then referred to a bounce check, which we must have given them back in the '60s. And he remembered that from all that time ago. It was a very strange letter. But anyway, he was a strange guy.

Ashcroft then offered a gift of £10,000 for, well, it's not quite clear what. Research for his autobiography, a veiled warning against publication, perhaps just a generous gift.

Did he buy me off? I don't know. I don't know. Which probably tells you a lot about it.

We have no idea what that money was all about, and it doesn't make much sense. But we do know the book was never published. And Michael Ashcroft and I are the only people to have read it, which I think is something of a shame. In the many years since he last heard from Ashcroft, Alastair had done some thinking about his old friend's psychology.

I think what we're looking at is a citizen, Kate. I think this is a very disturbed individual who has stifled those demons by becoming a very successful businessman. And as they all do, charity, honors, power. I think he's dropped the power thing now.

He's got it.

He's amazing.

Next time, we go from England to Belize. Oh my gosh, you have no idea. It's been absolutely insane, insane, insane, insane. And find ourselves in the middle of a maelstrom and Revolving murder for hire? Tonight, a magistrate and the Commissioner of Police are on high alert after information emerged that someone had allegedly put out a hit on them. That's why I react that way.

And I said, You know what? When my love goes to hit, it goes deeper down to kill.

That's next week on White Devil.

Under the shade I flora. White Devil is a production of Campside Media in Association with Olive Bridge Entertainment.

The show was written and reported by me, Josh Dean, with the series producer, Joe Barrett. The story editor and sound designer is Mark McAdam, who also provided original music. Additional sound design by Joe Barrett. Studio engineering by Ewen Lytrom-Ewen. Our closing theme is Under the Shade, I Flourish by Chris Halton and New Manhattan, including Eli Carvahal, Hava Carvahal, and Louis Chernyovski. This episode was fact-checked by Sarah Ivry. Additional research by Emma Simenoff and Reporting in Belize by Hippolito Navello. Artwork by Anthony Garace. A special thanks to our operations team, Doug Slawin, Ashley Warren, Sabina Mara, Emma Simenoff, Destiny Dingle, and David Eichler. Campside Media's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriades, Adam Hoff, Matt Sher, and me, Josh Dean. At Olive Bridge, the executive producer is Will Gluck. If you enjoyed our show, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. It really does help other people find the show. Here's a thought, maybe tell a friend to check out White Devil while you're at it. Anyway, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.