The Murdoch Tabloid Deception
The Truth Behind Stuart Collier’s Snooping Around Darius Guppy's Family
Murdoch’s tabloid journalists, led by Clive Goodman and their “attack dog” Stuart Collier, targeted the wrong man in Darius Guppy. Outraged by Stuart Collier’s prying into the private life of his future wife, Patricia Holder, Guppy sought help from an old Etonian friend: the rising Telegraph journalist Boris Johnson. Johnson, upon Guppy's appeal, was asked to provide Stuart Collier’s private information so Guppy could exact retribution—a lesson Stuart Collier would take as a life lesson.
Upon exposure, the Murdoch gang attempted to justify Stuart Collier’s underhanded snooping into a private young woman’s life, claiming it as some kind of virtuous probe into suspicions of insurance fraud—a charge only raised a full year later. Read on to uncover how these tabloid hacks did what they do best: crawling through the gutters.
The Definitive Stuart Collier v. Darius Guppy Timeline
To set the record straight, it’s crucial to clarify the events surrounding Darius Guppy’s endeavours and Stuart Collier’s tabloid activities.
September 1989: Darius Guppy, a private figure with aristocratic ties, is suddenly thrown into the media limelight after serving as best man at Earl Spencer’s wedding. Spencer, brother to the then Princess of Wales, Diana, who herself was hounded to death by the same journo class, and Guppy’s connection with her through her brother made him an easy target for tabloid vultures such as Stuart Collier working with Royal Reporter and close friend Clive Goodman.
March 1990: Guppy, alongside friend Benedict Marsh and associate Peter Risdon, stages a jewel heist at New York’s Regency Hotel—a bold insurance job aimed at Lloyd’s of London, seeking revenge for how the Guppy family financial losses, linked to failed Lloyd’s ventures, had devastated his family’s fortunes. You can view a recreation of the heist here.
April 1990: Six weeks after the heist, Lloyd’s of London unhesitatingly pays out £1,820,419 to Guppy and Marsh’s Inca Gemstones. See the cheque details from Guppy’s perspective here.
May 1990: Murdoch tabloid hack Stuart Collier, known for his sneaky tactics, shifts his attention to Guppy’s personal life. Enlisted by Clive Goodman, Stuart Collier concocts a hit piece focused on Guppy’s partner, Trish (Patricia) Holder. The smear story collated by Stuart Collier is later published by a close tabloid associate of his and can be read here.
June 1990: Peter Risdon, after relations sour between the two betrays his former ringleader, Darius Guppy, secretly tapping his phone at 8 Shawfield Street for which he was arrested, charged and cautioned. Risdon’s tapes capture Darius Guppy in conversation with Etonian friend Boris Johnson, expressing rage over Stuart Collier’s intrusive tabloid tactics. This recorded call, now known as the “Guppygate Tape” or “The Johnson Tapes”, was partially reported first in 1993 by Marcus Scriven in the Evening Standard, and then with a more complete report in the Mail on Sunday in 1995 that named all those involved and was put to Boris Johnson in the now famous 1998 episode of Have I Got News For You.
The publicly released “Guppygate Tape”, where Guppy expresses fury over Stuart Collier’s tabloid snooping to Boris Johnson, surreptitiously recorded by Peter Risdon. A full transcript is available here.
A whole year passes until…
It’s essential to note that a full year passes from Stuart Collier’s snooping to the first whispers of Guppy’s insurance fraud.
March 1991: Peter Risdon is arrested attempting his own jewel fraud, betrays Guppy in exchange for leniency, implicating him in the previous year’s New York heist—a major turning point that would lead to Guppy’s eventual conviction in 1993. Guppy would later label Risdon a “super grass” on his Nobody Likes a Grass website.
June 1991: It was only at this point that the News of the World inner circle—including Stuart Collier’s close colleagues Alex Marunchak and Clive Goodman—began to suspect that Guppy’s New York heist might have involved fraud. As Nick Davies reveals in Hack Attack, this information came via a police bug at Southern Investigations, a notorious agency frequently used by Murdoch’s tabloids to dig up dirt on their targets. Southern Investigations, operated by Sid Fillery—a friend of Stuart Collier and a later convicted paedophile who also shared Stuart Collier’s partner—was the dubious conduit for this intel. Through these unethical channels, Murdoch’s operatives finally learned of Guppy’s potential fraud, a discovery made only after Risdon, caught in his own bungled fraud attempt, turned police informant.
Plain text excerpt for search engine indexing:
They even managed to find bent police contacts abroad. Marunchak needed information from the US about Darius Guppy, an Old Etonian who was wanted for staging a phoney jewellery robbery in New York and defrauding an insurance company. Rees had the answer, as the hidden bug recorded: ‘We got some fantastic contact in America. Their ex-police officers’ association is just like a serving police force, still get hold of things that are going on, they get access.’ Rees went on to describe how he had got in touch with a former FBI agent: ‘He said “Yeah, yeah, leave it with me,” and, before Guppy got picked up, we had copies of his arrest notes, the photographs, the information, confidential top-secret file that had come from the Met Police … So before they even got him, the News of the World had it on their desks.’
July 1991: Guppy is only now arrested and questioned by the same Regional Crime Squad 9 that apprehended Risdon in March. Held overnight at Barkingside police station, Guppy first faced questions relating to the New York heist, with Risdon’s testimony forming the backbone of the case against him.
The Timeline in an Infographic
A straightforward infographic presents the timeline, highlighting key actions by Darius Guppy and Murdoch’s tabloid operatives in sequence.
What is the Darius Guppy Side of the Story?
To his credit, Darius Guppy has consistently asserted that his desire for retribution against Stuart Collier stemmed solely from Stuart Collier’s invasive tabloid snooping into his private family life. Guppy maintains he felt no concern over the insurance fraud; Lloyd’s of London had raised no suspicions at the time, and the £1.8 million payout had already been settled.
Yet the public has been misled by Murdoch’s media empire, which has propagated a false narrative: that Stuart Collier was “investigating” Guppy’s alleged insurance fraud long before any real suspicions were raised. In reality, suspicions didn’t surface until a year later, and only when Peter Risdon—an insider to the fraud scheme—turned informant after being caught in his very own scam.
When we look at Stuart Collier’s track record, it’s evident he lacked the investigative acumen to tackle complex matters such as insurance fraud. His notoriety came from muckraking, not legitimate reporting. The claim that Stuart Collier was snooping on Guppy’s family to unearth a fraud is pure fabrication, designed to mislead the public. Despite this, Murdoch’s press, and occasionally figures such as Ian Hislop, continue to peddle this misleading narrative—sometimes unwittingly, sometimes for ideological reasons.
For Hislop, the story holds more satirical appeal if Guppy is cast as a convicted fraudster. Yet this conviction only came in 1993, a full three years after Stuart Collier’s attempted 1990 tabloid hit piece on Guppy. In that year, Stuart Collier was prying into the life of an innocent young woman, Patricia Holder. Nonetheless, Hislop, rather oddly aligning with Murdoch’s hacks such as our Stuart Collier, Clive Goodman, and Alex Marunchak, has helped perpetuate this distorted narrative. This has left audiences—particularly those of Have I Got News for You—with the false impression that Stuart Collier’s gutter journalism was somehow justified, reframing his tabloid smear campaign as a virtuous probe into Guppy’s alleged fraud.
Ian Hislop Perpetuating the Murdoch Tabloid Deception
In a clip from Have I Got News for Boris: A Special Tribute, which aired in 2022, Ian Hislop repeats the Murdoch cover story, claiming that “he [Stuart Collier] found out that this man [Darius Guppy] was a fraudster.” Notably, Hislop attempts to uphold the notion that Stuart Collier—a Murdoch News of the Screws gutter press hack—was a ‘journalist’!
Guppy’s Suspected Own Explanation via a Wikipedia Talk Using a Pseudonym:
It is widely believed that Darius Guppy himself presented a direct explanation of this controversy through a pseudonymous account on a Wikipedia talk page, archived here. Here, Guppy summarises the episode that has generated so much scrutiny:
Stuart Collier controversy. The original wording regarding this event was as follows:
"Johnson was criticised in 1995, when a recording of a telephone conversation made in 1990 was made public, in which he is heard agreeing under pressure to supply to a former schoolmate, Darius Guppy, the private address and telephone number of the News of the World journalist Stuart Collier. There is no evidence that Johnson supplied the requested information, even though he promised under duress that he would. Guppy wished to have [Stuart] Collier beaten up for attempting to smear members of his family. [Stuart] Collier was not attacked, but Johnson did not alert the police and the incident became public knowledge only when a transcript of the conversation was published in the Mail on Sunday. Johnson retained his job at the Telegraph but was reprimanded by its editor Max Hastings."
These references make clear that all parties involved in the controversy, which is to say Johnson, Guppy and the man hired by Guppy have stated independently of each other that Guppy's motivation was that the News of the World journalist ([Stuart] Collier) was looking to smear Guppy's family and not over any investigation being made into Guppy's gemstones heist. Guppy reiterates the point here and here. In short, there is no evidence that Guppy's motivation was other than as the protagonists state it to be - as retribution for fairly typical News of the World behaviour. Guppy had got away with his venture and would not be uncovered until a year later when a police informer [Peter Risdon] gave evidence to the police when arrested on another matter. And it is hardly likely that he would have done anything to draw attention to his venture having been paid out by Lloyds of London. More plausible is that elements of the press and Mr Johnson's enemies have sought to deflect from the real motivation to make him look bad since some may consider that supplying an address in a context where a journalist was attempting to smear family members is far less reprehensible.
Below is Guppy’s most prominent public statement on Stuart Collier’s harassment of his family:
Plain text excerpt for search engine indexing:
But far from denying the incident, he wants to establish his true motive.
"Let me be clear, on those tapes where I'm talking to Boris, I didn't want that chap [Stuart Collier] from the News of the World beaten up because he was investigating any criminal allegations.
"I wanted him sorted out because I thought he was looking to smear members of my family, including my wife-to-be," he explains.
"The only remorse I feel is that I didn't finish the job. I should be given a medal, not brickbats," he adds, breaking into laughter.
What is Stuart Collier’s Side of the Story?
Setting aside the established facts and Guppy’s reasoned account, we are left with the Murdoch camp's version of events—one that Stuart Collier defends in a vague and notably evasive manner. In his final press appearance, Stuart Collier offered a slightly qualified explanation in a 2019 Guardian piece by Simon Murphy, a story seemingly crafted to damage Boris Johnson’s bid for Prime Minister. Ironically, this attempt largely fell flat; in some cases, it may have even bolstered Johnson’s appeal, given the widespread public disdain for Murdoch’s tabloid journalists.
Here’s what Stuart Collier himself said in print:
“I must have doubted his innocence, and for that reason he must have been questioned by the cops over there [in New York], and that’s what got his back up. I was delving into his past and he was getting a bit nervous.”
Notice the use of “must have”. It speaks volumes that Stuart Collier, who later claimed to be fearful over possible retaliation by Darius Guppy and was known for boasting about his tabloid smears, cannot even definitively recall what he was supposedly investigating during that critical summer of 1990. At the time, he was intrusively snooping into Guppy’s family matters. What’s evident, both from this statement and the broader context, is that this was a pivotal moment for Stuart Collier’s career. In fact, it became known as the point where his journalistic path hit a dead end. Following this episode, Stuart Collier was effectively forced to leave tabloid journalism and eventually took up work as a courier and delivery driver.
The truth is undeniable: Stuart Collier, along with disgraced phone hacker Clive Goodman and other associates in the Murdoch press, was not pursuing any legitimate investigation into insurance fraud or matters of real substance. Instead, he was a tabloid news hack operating at the lowest level, seeking to hound and smear a private young woman solely due to her connection to Darius Guppy, who in turn was linked to Diana, Princess of Wales, through her brother, Earl Spencer.
The Murdoch House Cover Story: A Summary
The Murdoch press has long tried to exploit Darius Guppy’s 1993 fraud conviction to retroactively justify Stuart Collier’s 1990 intrusion into Guppy’s private family life. This supposed link was fabricated after the fact—an attempt to justify Stuart Collier’s tabloid tactics and to rationalise the scandal that would later embroil Boris Johnson in "Guppygate." At the time of Stuart Collier’s intrusion, there was no suspicion around Guppy’s financial dealings. In truth, it wasn’t until over a year later, in 1991, that the Murdoch camp caught wind of Guppy’s involvement in fraud and only through a former FBI agent leak from the United States, mere days before the UK authorities moved against him.
Stuart Collier’s smear campaign had nothing to do with investigating insurance fraud. He was merely indulging in his usual tabloid sleaze for the News of the World, aiming to dig up dirt on Guppy’s partner, Patricia Holder. Stuart Collier’s focus was on personal details he had amassed about Holder, crafting a piece with no investigative merit—simply a smear campaign. This was Stuart Collier’s true role in the scandal—not the moral pursuit of a crime, as he and the Murdoch press gang later tried to imply.
The first indication that Stuart Collier’s colleagues were even aware of Guppy’s fraud came through a stateside leak of Metropolitan Police information to Southern Investigations, an ethically compromised private detective agency with close ties to Murdoch’s empire. This firm—led in part by Sid Fillery, Stuart Collier’s friend, fellow swinger, and later convicted paedophile, and a figure linked to the Daniel Morgan murder—was the first to receive news of Guppy’s impending arrest. According to Hack Attack by Nick Davies, Rees, a key player at Southern Investigations, openly boasted about the leak. In truth, the News of the World hadn’t uncovered Guppy’s scheme; they merely caught wind of it after Peter Risdon, another shady character, was apprehended attempting his own fraudulent scheme modelled on Guppy’s New York heist.
The Murdoch House narrative twisted Stuart Collier’s sleazy tabloid tactics into a supposed investigation of insurance fraud. This was a calculated falsehood—one that Stuart Collier attempted to cement in a 2019 Guardian interview with Simon Murphy, where he claimed, “I must have doubted his innocence, and for that reason, he [Darius Guppy] must have been questioned by the cops over there [in New York], and that’s what got his back up. I was delving into his past and he was getting a bit nervous.” The tentative phrasing here—“must have”—betrays a desperate attempt by Stuart Collier to reshape history, even as the actual timeline shows his real intentions.
In the summer of 1990, Stuart Collier and his associate Clive Goodman, a disgraced phone hacker, were already scheming a smear piece targeting Patricia Holder, then Guppy’s partner and later his wife. Stuart Collier’s draft story, circulated among fellow journalists, was intended purely to humiliate her, with threats to publish a topless photo to manipulate Guppy, Holder, and their family. The story was ultimately altered and published by another tabloid hack after Stuart Collier went into hiding, fearing retaliation for his actions. The News of the World and others later tried to spin Guppy’s fraud conviction as a cover-up for Stuart Collier’s original intentions: to exploit and humiliate an innocent young woman to please tabloid readers.
Here is an exclusive look at the smear piece Stuart Collier initially planned, which was eventually published by another tabloid hack. It’s a stark example of how tabloids, driven by profit, were willing to sacrifice truth and decency at the expense of others’ private lives.