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5, 4, 3, 2, 1, we are live with the fantastic Matthew Steeples, folks. Many of you have seen this horrendous news about Anne Whittacombe, this guy who allegedly drove all these miles from the north to bash her head in or whatever he did to her. Anyway, there are parallels with Jill Dando, a guy just showing up at the house and unaliving Jill Dando. Extremely circumstances that are extremely suspicious. so who's going to unravel all of this for us today none other than Matthew Steeples huge thank you

for coming on my friend well a pleasure to be with you and um it it must be said first that it is absolutely tragic what has happened to Anne Whittacombe um this was a lady whether you liked or loathed her political views who you know worked tirelessly and for her beliefs for a huge part of her career and has um you know devoted her life to the political arena so for her to end in this fashion was a terrible thing whatever way it occurred and whatever has gone on um obviously there's an ongoing police investigation so um this will no doubt take some considerable time And the man who has been charged is being held under the Terrorism Act 2000. I think they can keep him for another seven days. So whether we learn more, I don't know how much your viewers know of this story, but I don't know how much they know of Anne Whittacombe. And obviously you want me to talk about Jill Dando as well. I don't know how much they know of those people. Do you want a context of who they were?

Most of our viewers are in America, Matthew, and a lot of them are not familiar. So if you could please give the complete background to both, that would be fantastic.

Okay, well, if we begin with, obviously, Anne Widdicombe. Anne Widdicombe was 78 years old when she was killed, murdered, on the 8th of July, i.e. last week ago. She was born in 1947. she was the daughter of a Ministry of Defence civil servant she grew up in Bath she walked on Dartmoor as a child this is where she ended up living her final home was called Whittacombe's Rest which is a pretty ironic name given what happened to her there given it wasn't a peaceful end But this was a lady who lived quite an eccentric lifestyle. She did not drink. She did not smoke. She never married, supposedly never had any relations of that kind, no children. She went to Oxford to university. She studied PPE at Lady Margaret Hall. She lived there next door to Mary Archer. Of course, the viewers will know Geoffrey Archer, the novelist and former MP who went to prison himself. And she lived next to Edwina Curry, who was another government minister who had an affair with the prime minister, John Major. And Michelle Brown, who was the wife of Charles Brandreth. Charles Brandreff was also an MP, but he's become more famous as a sort of television personality on things like This Morning, Our Favourite Program, with Holly Willoughby and all of that. And he's famous for his books and all sorts of other things. So she grew up at Oxford in, you know, quite an elite group. But she went from there to work at Unilever in the early 70s, 73, I think, to 75. and then she worked as an administrator at the University of London until 1987 when she was elected to Parliament. She became a Conservative MP after first being a councillor in Surrey in the 70s. She stood in various constituencies where she wasn't successful. She followed the traditional route of a Conservative candidate. You begin with an unwinnable seat. So she started in Burnley, which is Lancashire. It would have been a hard-left labour place. And in 1983, she stood in Plymouth against David Owen, who was the leader of the SDP. And then by 1987, she was given a safer seat, which was Maidstone. And she won in 1987 with a

majority of 10,000, which is a very substantial majority. And she held that seat until she Eastern. down from parliament um there were boundary changes and things so it became maidstone and the weld or well wield i don't know how you pronounce it um she was very very involved in certain issues she had strong views so in the early 80s she set up a thing with a lady called lady olga maitland who was a very eccentric mp who used to sort of like sitting in tanks and things they were both very very um pro the nuclear industry um so it was called women and families for defense so they were supporting the defense in industry against um the anti-nuclear green and common women's peace camp um she became um somebody who was i suppose let's go through all her various beliefs she was pro the death penalty she wanted its reduction reintroduction and particularly after the Soham murders of the little girls there. She was very, very keen on bringing back the death penalty. She was pro-nuclear, anti-abortion, anti-drugs, anti-fox hunting. She boycotted British Airways over them not having Christian crosses. She was anti-assisted dying, anti-LGBT legislation. In the main, there were times when she did semi-support it. She had many friends who were gay, and she kept them as friends, but they didn't talk to her about it. A lot of these people have talked about it in recent days. She was anti-same-sex marriage. She was pro-gay conversion therapy, climate change skeptic, pro-homeopathy. There were quite a lot of contradictions in her views. So she didn't like women becoming priests, so she decided to convert to Roman Catholicism in 1993. She said the Catholic Church doesn't care if something isn't popular. She was very much somebody who stood for that belief. She didn't care if things were popular or not. She had her belief, and she stuck by her belief. and a priest who I knew called Father Michael Seed was the man who converted her to Catholicism and he was one of the reasons I did get to meet her on a number of occasions because he was known as the priest of the stars and he converted Tony Blair to being a Catholic, Prince Michael of Kent and Anne Widdicombe amongst others. So he wrote a book about his upbringing and he was abused by his own grandparents and they'd become very, very friendly and she hosted his book launch in the House of Commons and I remember going to that and that was one occasion when I had met her she was quite involved in religion religion was a key guiding force in her life

anyway, as an MP she was elevated in John Major's government so in 1990 she became a parliamentary undersecretary for social security and then by the time 1995 she was a home office minister of state for prisons this is when her policies started to come into government and when she became really quite controversial because she visited every prison in the land she was very interested in how things worked she was a lady who was into detail but she came out with some very strange things so there were pregnant women who were taken to hospitals who were in prison and she believed that they should be shackled and this was considered to be very degrading by people like Jack Straw who was her opposite of the Labour Party and you know the degradation of these pregnant women was considered to be something very very controversial. Obviously the Conservative Party then lost in 1997 and she decided to take revenge on a man she didn't like, who was Michael Howard. She scuppered his leadership campaign by saying he had something of the night about him and that was considered to be a little bit bigoted given he was Jewish. And that was sort of the kind of thing she was known for throwing in the explosive comment. Now, many people agreed with her about certain things that she got rather worked up about. And William Hague appointed her to be Shadow Health Secretary, Shadow Home Secretary. She continued to come out with her quite right-wing views and her stringent views on, you know, what she believed was right and wrong and how children should be brought up and, you know, what should be seen and what should not be heard. the expenses scandal, for example, took place in Britain in 2006, which was highlighted by my late friend who just died, who was at a dinner here with me in this very restaurant only a few weeks ago, David Henk of The Guardian, one of the most brilliant crusading journalists. He sadly recently passed away. They exposed MPs claiming for duck houses and all sorts of strange things. And weirdly, Anne Widdicombe was very anti this campaign. She thought it was invasive and intrusive. But it turned out the Telegraph named her to be one of the saints of the whole story because her expenses were completely clean. She was an honest lady and she was a decent lady in that regard. She wasn't like the rest of these MPs with their hands in the till. She behaved properly. So she kept a decent moral compass.

in that, you know, she was a lady who behaved herself in that regard. Whether people liked or loathed her views is where we come to the controversy of her. But she retired from Parliament in 2010. She declined then to become a police commissioner. But then obviously along comes Brexit. And Brexit was something she was a huge believer in. So she campaigned for Brexit in 2016. Obviously, Brexit came about. And she joined the Brexit party in 2019 and was thus expelled from the Conservative Party because you can't support another political party. So she was thrown out of the Carlton Club where she was a member. That's where I had a very difficult encounter with her because she was at a lunch and I was sitting next to her and another lady and the other lady fainted and um this lady was holding a glass of red wine and it fired all over um Anne Whittacombe so Anne Whittacombe was covered in red wine and um she had an utter meltdown and screamed and yelled and I I just said you know this poor lady has been covered in red wine I think maybe a little kindness might not go amiss here and um she did get very worked up She was certainly a lady who took no prisoners with her views, but that will be my abiding memory of her, to be honest. But I say cheers to her memory, and I think we should raise a glass to her because this lady dedicated her career to helping other people. And obviously then, in 2019, she became an MEP for the Brexit party. obviously they were only there for a few months because obviously Britain withdrew from the EU on the 31st of January 2020 she compared Brexit in the European Parliament to slaves revolting against their owners obviously that offended the European Parliament hugely she viewed the European Union to be some dragon that needed to be slayed and she was very much into that And then, obviously, the general election of 2019 followed. She was a candidate. She only got 5.5% of the vote in Plymouth, Sutton. By then, she was living on Dartmoor. She'd bought a bungalow because this lady had become very successful by our other means. Because of her sort of opinions, she became popular on television shows. So she began with things like one called Celebrity Fit Club because she was quite a larger lady. she was doing you know exercise type things and things like that they tried to get her involved with first she was a guest host on have i got news for you but she deemed half the people she

was on there with as you know promoting filth and she didn't like the way that they talked so she only did that twice she appeared in celebrity big brother in 2018 and she went on about harvey Weinstein and LGBT matters and offended a lot of people in the process on there um and this continued for the rest of her life she was a regular on the Jeremy Vine show um on the day that she was killed she had been in in communications with Channel 5 presenters and this was how her her death was sort of brought you know to attention because she she was known to be very much a stickler for detail and responding and when she didn't respond to these researchers people found this odd and obviously then people went to look at her house so um she did things like pantomimes as well she was um she was very clear about what people said about sexual relations she said it's nobody else's business in her life she was you know she was dedicated to her cats.

She liked helping donkey sanctuaries and goats, and she wrote novels. She had a column in The Express. She had a website called The Witty Web. It was all, you know, very much appealing to the middle classes and the elder generations. She was a sort of national treasure to them in the same way as people like Christine Hamilton, these kind of people. And they were all, you know, a different generation. But people did tend to love this eccentricity. She was on the Strictly Come Dancing program. She couldn't dance for Toffee, but she was loved on it because she was eccentric. And that was part of the charm, I suppose, of Anne Whittacombe.

Good grief, Matthew. What an excellent summary of her life. Many in the chat are saying phenomenal. Some of them don't agree with what Anne Whittacombe said, but they certainly are saying she has the right to say it and i agree free speech all day long folks we have been you know we've had things rammed down our throats by the big brother things we can and cannot say and i absolutely believe in free speech even if you don't agree

with someone precisely and this is this is the whole issue that has um occurred as a result of her death you know she was killed in her own home um we don't know what and how this happened but um but what has happened is a lot of people immediately reacted and this is the the dangers of social media is that it gives people the ability to come out and say stupid and obnoxious things. And this has been highlighted in this case with a transgender person called Heather Herbert, who is a 50-year-old Aberdeen University academic. Now, an academic, one would think, would be somebody who would be capable of rational and reasonable thought and not to behave in such a ghastly way but this this transgender person who obviously has their own problems um you know maybe this person as one person said to me you know hates women that's his real problem um but the this person reacted by saying it was good news and wished her a painful death hoped she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony there is no need for anyone to have said such a reprehensible thing of anybody, whether you like them or loathe them. That is a disgusting thing to say. She said, I'm done with being nice to pieces of human garbage like her. Well, it hasn't worked out very well, because not only is the University of Aberdeen, who are not commenting further, but they have put her under review. This person has been arrested and charged by Police Scotland for their posts on this blue sky network which is one i personally not on i don't know quite how i thought it was meant to be one of these places that was a nicer place be kind hashtag than than x twitter which you know i i use myself and i get varying views on there and you know when when i get trolled by these crazy people which happens an awful lot i don't press block and i learned this from the great friend of Anne Whittacombe, Christine Hamilton. Always press mute. Let them wail at the wall. Don't encourage them, but don't let them know that you've blocked them. Let them think that they're still winding you up. Let them wind themselves up. And that is precisely what people like Anne Whittacombe rightly did. They didn't react to such nonsense. And they stood by their views, but they didn't deal with lunatics who rant and rave. And that is something that this individual, Heather Herbert, clearly has not learned. Heather is a bit of a Herbert, a bit of a fool. She is a very stupid person to have done what she's done.

And I hope the arm of the law reaches it. But, of course, people are actually speaking out in her favor, including Lucy Connolly, the lady who was sent to prison over her tweets saying, you know, this has gone too far. She should have her freedom of speech. Well, perhaps, yes, but there was no need for this. And it has gone too far. And this person did this purely to incite others and, you know, perhaps to bring in this transgender matter as well. And it's a ridiculous thing. I think hate is the common denominator here that has gone wrong in this country. And what does this country come to? What has England become when we are allowing this? And we've also got from the other side, Nigel Farage saying, you know, he's using this murder for his.

own ends, and he's trying to highlight the political problem. But is he justified in this? Because he gets 1,000 threats a month, allegedly. Now, at the moment, he is under investigation for his own financial matters. And the financial matters are rather shocking, in my view. And his whole strategy with calling a by-election is completely wrong. But of course, Anne Whittacombe and him had become very close. And Anne Whittacombe had been highlighting all sorts of things. So every conspiracy person has suggested that there are matters here that meant that she is some kind of political assassination. Now, whether this is the case, we will see down the line. But obviously, we are going through a whole situation currently where people don't know what happened because the police are not communicating it clearly enough but they obviously have seven days to deal with this man and they are careful in what they're releasing but i have issues with the things that have been released i don't know what you've seen sean but um the pictures of this this a 28-year-old man arrested in Rotherham on the 11th of July, which is 270 miles away. The timings of the photograph, the video footage, whether he had enough time to travel 270 miles is one thing, but as I shared on my ex-account, the photograph of the car the following day has the car in exactly the same position this is a a red old banger uh of a car i can't remember what make it is but it's the wheels the spokes on the car wheels which you can't see in that photograph do not change between the two photographs of one with the man wearing a shirt and one without him wearing a shirt and the position next to the gate does not change i do not believe that car left that driveway and that is something and i'm no conspiracy theorist and i I looked at those photographs and I wonder also, and I've spoken with quite a few mainstream journalists about this, you know, why was this doorbell camera pointing in that direction? If you look at the photographs of the street, the doorbell camera would be pointing down the pathway of the person whose house it was. Why was this man who has been referenced as being a kindly man who helped his local community? he never did anything you know wrong other than having a few communist leaflets supposedly in his house um why why is this footage released who released this footage how did the sun

release it we are not being told enough and that picture you have there unfortunately doesn't show the wheel very clearly but um there are other photographs that show the spokes of the wheel And if you then look at the second photograph of it, you will see that the spokes and the wheel are in the same position and the gate is in the same position. And there is no evidence that car has moved, in my opinion. Now, I am an armchair detective in this regard, and I am not suggesting I am completely right here. But my immediate thoughts were that. So that's all I can share on that regard.

well many of the viewers matthew are asking if that's the case about the car if you think that

he is a patsy well that is something i've had multiple messages about um lots of people have written to me in this regard um because i i did put up a poll because i was coming on here you know i said was ann widdicombe um in a burglary gone wrong or were doaka forces at work was this a Charlie Kirk style slaying? Was it orchestrated by the far left or the far right? Or was the killer a lone nutcase? Now, in my little unrepresentative poll, 57.1% out of 56 people who voted in this little poll before I did this program went for the far left. They very much believe this. I've had people writing to me saying this is the far left trying to bring down Nigel Farage. Only 3.6% thought it was the far right. The lone nutcase allegation, 33%. So that was the straw poll that I conducted. The majority think it's either a nutcase or a far left person that did this um now this matter you know we've got people like um katherine blakelock who founded the brexit party her response was do we seriously think that some ordinary middle-aged bloke with a beer belly a modest house and an old red banger as a mastermind left-wing assassin you know this is where we come to the jill dando matter which will go down perhaps in a moment um you know what kind of weapon was she killed with We find out, as it was with Jill Dando, Jill Dando was definitely killed by a professional person, a professional hitman, because the weapon had been modified in certain ways. And the person who was convicted and ultimately cleared, who, of course, is on other charges currently, and I have spoken with his sister in the past, you know, he was not capable of such things. So, you know, that was a, it's very easy to immediately want, if you're a police force, as you know, with many a story, they want an immediate answer, because when a high profile person is killed, they want it easily solved. And we have to look to the cases prior. So we had a Labour MP called Joe Cox, who was killed by a man who supposedly was a gardener in 2016 in Batley and Spen. And obviously, there's been many controversial comments about that. Her sister subsequently became an MP and became quite a big campaigner for the assisted dying bill, which obviously Anne Whittacombe was very opposed to.

And then there was David Amos, who was one of Anne Whittacombe's close friends, a very Christian minded man as well. He was murdered in Leon C. in 2021. so Anne Whittacombe knew of what had happened with these kind of people but she of course had retired from political day-to-day life so she wasn't afforded the protection and now we've got Zia Youssef of Reform demanding a hundred million pounds annually for protection of MPs now I think that's a step too far I think the general public deserve to be protected you know when you or I suffer crime. Where's the people helping us? If you choose to become an MP, you do choose to put yourself in the public arena. I would say it does not mean that people should go around attacking you and killing you and all the rest of it. But, you know, the general public needs to be protected just as much. And many MPs say that their security is already quite adequate. Obviously, in the case of Nigel Farage, he believes that his is not. And this is why he's trying to justify taking five million pounds from a crypto man called Christopher Harbourn from Thailand and having posh George Cottrell, who has multiple names, you know, paying for his housing protection, etc. Now, one could argue that Mr. Farage is using this to his own game now because he has leapt on the bandwagon of, you know, this was the time when he should be now lauded for being courageous. You know, it's a Charlie Kirk style thing. You know, he is trying to get a momentum behind what he wants. And also, could it be him trying to distract from the Sunday Times investigation into what went on with him? Lots of people I've spoken to have said, you know, Sky News and The Times have gone too far. They shouldn't have treated him the way they did. But, you know, this man wants to be our prime minister. We have to look into what his financials are. You know, I think Anne Whittacombe would want this to be transparent. Look, she was a person who was cleared completely of it during the expenses scandal. So she should surely would have been somebody who would not have liked what had been going on with the expense scandal of Mr. Farage. And I do think that that is a key point. But we've got, you know, people who have written to me in response to the Brexit party leader, you know, someone said, this must be mi5 you know this is where the conspiracies come in it's not you know this this man is a patsy

he's a you know one with a communist literature planted in his house which of course has a camera tracking his movement making convoluted mark-ups of the whole thing it also helps the psychok and i remember introducing you to my friend the mystery guest so i asked the mystery guest who is somebody who you know likes to have a theory or two and um he quite he quoted that mean Montague Norman of the Bank of England, as he would, he can be relied upon to go down these kind of rabbit holes. He said, by dividing the boaters, this is Montague Norman, we can get them to expend their energies in fighting for questions of no importance. He says, the mystery guest, Farage and Widdicombe seem more focused on making themselves look like victims and rebels whilst intentionally trying to sink electoral success by being divisive and alienating the larger electorate, which is convenient for the City of London, which doesn't want the sensible policies, but just cultural divide. And is this what Farage is really about? He is upsetting the apple cart of British politics. They've destroyed traditional politics, the three-party system. What are these people up to? My fear with the Reform Party is the Reform Party is not a political party. It is a limited company of which Mr Farage is the main shareholder at 75%. The general public do not realize this. And this man is a disruptor, but I would say he's a personal profiteer. I am no fan of Nigel Farage, but that does not mean that this man shouldn't have the right to be in politics. But I do think he should be treated with the same due process as every other politician. And he should be held accountable by the media in the same way. And that is why I salute what the Sunday Times has done. I think their investigations team is actually a good example, Gabriel Pogran, of the mainstream media doing a great job in holding these people to account week after week they've done it and farage you know did own the property where his daughter was approached and you know that's that's perfectly reasonable plenty of other politicians such as jeremy corbyn had these people outside their houses every day um you know if you're a politician you do get to be examined every element of your life if you don't want that don't be a politician um you know farage was quite happy to go off and be in the jungle program um his daughter who he said was so private was um appearing there so there is a level of hypocrisy here and miss widdekombe's possible error was to allow cameras into her own home now

that is something that has been highlighted she recently did a program called um antique celebrity antiques or something um it's where a man from a yorkshire auction house comes and sells things from your house and she was doing it for a charity but of course they pictured her house and you know that makes it easy to find on these google maps and all the rest of it um and maybe you know that was perhaps part of the error of her ways because she was a single lady living alone and um this is where we come into the dangers of all the social media it's very very dangerous to have too much information out there um but there we go um that's where it is that's the situation i i as i see it with with her excellent matthew so what's the backstory with jill dando well with jill dando um jill dando was was uh killed in 1999 on the 26th of april she was only 37 years old so a much younger lady um like ann widdekombe she was a deeply religious lady um she'd been brought up as a baptist and was a devout follower um she had a hole in her heart discovered when she was age three. So she had medical conditions. She was born in 1961 in Western Supermare, which the connection again here is Geoffrey Archer. Geoffrey Archer was also from Western Supermare, and Anne Whittacombe was at university with Dame Mary Archer. So I don't know whether Anne Whittacombe and Jill Dando ever really crossed paths, but i suppose they might have done um but um jill dando was a bbc television presenter primarily known for news casting so bbc news the holiday program and because of her religion songs of praise um she um lived prior to her engagement in a road called gowan avenue in fulham which is in West London in a, you know, terraced housing, a very, you know, sort of middle-class housing area. And she had recently become engaged to a man called Alan Farthing. who is an amazing gentleman. He's currently the surgeon to a friend of mine's wife, and he is a gynecologist, and he later became Queen Elizabeth's personal physician. He's a very respected man, and she had been living mostly with him, and they were due to get married in September that year, but she was tragically murdered on her doorstep on the 26th of April 1999.

she was shot once in the head um it was a very very direct hit you know it was it was over in a matter of seconds um she'd got out of her car her house had been for sale um and she'd gone there perhaps to collect some post or something um it wasn't a planned visit but but somebody had been possibly following her um but what had happened what ultimately happened was there was a man called Barry George, and Barry George was a lone obsessive Walter Mitty type from the neighborhood. He'd been known to pretend to be Paul Gad, i.e. Gary Glitter, when he was arrested on one occasion. He pretended to be Freddy Balsara, as in Freddy Mercury, connected. He once turned up at Kensington Palace when Prince Charles lived there with Diana and was found with poems he wanted to give to them. He'd been convicted of indecent assault in 1980, arrested in 1983 concerning Prince Charles. He'd had another indecent assault charges that failed in 1990 and 1992. When he was arrested, he was found to have 4,000 photographs of people, including Anthea Turner, another television presenter, Karen Keating, another television presenter. He had Asperger's syndrome and personality disorders, epilepsy, below average intelligence. And he was convicted of this killing in 2002. But it did take rather a lot to get there. The operation, it was called Operation Oxford, spoke to two and a half thousand people and took one thousand statements within six months. And at the time of this investigation, there were many theories, as there are with this. So, you know, with Anne Widdicombe, we have the burglary gone wrong, the far left, the far right, the lone nutter. In this case, aside from the lone nutter, we had the fact that she was the presenter of a thing called Crime Watch. Crime Watch was a brilliant series that caught many a criminal. Criminals didn't like being on that program because people in the public would see the photograph. This was, you know, before we had Google everywhere and criminals were stupid enough to put themselves on Facebook and Instagram and share their location, which has caught many a foolish criminal out in recent years but she upsets possibly an underworld figure you know a Mr Big could have ordered a hit on her and given the type of weapon

that was used I do think there is a likelihood that her death was caused in that manner now I know as much as anybody else and nobody has ever been subsequently convicted because Mr George was subsequently cleared um he is currently on um charges concerning other offenses um i did speak with his sister on occasion i didn't know who she was um via um another case um the jeremy bamber case um she had been involved in talking to the campaign team and um you know she rightly highlighted her brother was set up in this case and he was ultimately cleared but the other thing that um mustando had been involved in was um helping the kosovar albanian refugees at this point we had the conflict in serbia going on and bosnia and um and three days prior to her death um nato had bombed radio television of serbia headquarters in belgrade and obviously this was something that had angered those people um and there had been calls to the bbc about um saying that that they were they were involved in this so but wouldn't they target someone more senior wouldn't you know this this seemed a bit far-fetched to me but this is one of the allegations concerning her. So, you know. Was it a political? That is the political angle. I think the underworld angle with her was far bigger. But the other political angle that similarly people have highlighted with Anne Widdicombe is it is alleged that Miss Dando had a dossier on people. I'm not, and I know you can't use the word on here, on people of PDF files, as you call them PDF files on people who worked at the BBC, given she works at the BBC and given she worked for the Crime Watch program. Did she know things about Jimmy Savile? Quite possibly. But her family dismissed this as unsubstantiated. So that is where one thing was. And then, weirdly, in this case, there was another strange angle concerning Geoffrey Archer, which was used by both Barry George at his retrial and also by Geoffrey Archer at his trial and appeal over his conviction for perjury. and he went to prison because he had paid various people and he sued a paper for libel and lied and he was sent to prison.

But he had a secretary called Angela Pepiot and Miss Pepiot was very similar looking to Jill Dando and lived in the same neighbourhood. And both Barry George and Geoffrey Archer brought this into their respective trials because they thought it could have been a case of mistaken identity. So that was a very strange part of the story. The only connecting theme is that obviously Anne Whittacombe was an MP with Geoffrey Archer and Anne Whittacombe was living at university alongside Geoffrey Archer's wife. But, you know, these stories do attract strange theories. You know, this is the case of mistaken identity. I don't think in Miss Whittacombe's case there was mistaken identity, but, you know, she certainly could have had stalkers. she probably had many people who disliked her you know given what this transgender person had written about her there's suddenly you know the grave possibility that she'd attracted some lunatic stalker who was obsessive um you know in the same way that barry george was obsessive about other people but that didn't mean that doesn't mean someone's going to go and kill somebody it really will depend what what weapon was used to kill ann widdicombe um whether we come to some thoughts similar but in the case of jill dando she was killed with um i haven't got the gun it was sorry it was a it was a short caliber semi-automatic pistol blank firing it had been illegally modified to fire live ammunition. So that, to me, would suggest that in the case of Jill Dando, it was definitely the hitman theory. So I do think that's very important to consider here. And somebody who I've just spoken with this morning, who has some knowledge, thought of the same thing in the case of Miss Widdicombe. What has been done here, she said, was that's the point of a professional hit leave nothing but confusion and i think that is the state we are currently in with both of these stories because obviously there's never been any conclusion to miss dando and miss dando's come up again and again i recently uh filmed a program with andrew gold about this but it hasn't been aired yet but um the case of jill dando and I have some of my own experience of this because a friend of my family was killed on her doorstep in the 80s as well, a lady called Diana Moore, and she was shot with a crossbow in West London and, again, never solved. And similarly, you know, a similar-looking lady to Jill Dando

and, you know, a similar sort of fashion. So there are similarities between all this. And, you know, being a high-profile person, and as the case was with Dando and Widdicombe, obviously attracts a different level of attention to the other lady I mentioned. But these unsolved cases are, you know, it's sickening that people can get away with this. And I just hope that justice can be done for Miss Widdicombe's family. You know, her brother... Sorry, I'm trying to turn this phone off.

You

yeah sorry annoying telephone sorry you're doing absolutely fine viewers and um all matthew's links

are in the description box if you want to support his work sorry i do apologize there's a nuisance on the telephone um um right um it wasn't a divine intervention um right so um i i think that um that you know that it just just needs to be done and it has to be done carefully and people don't need to speculate too much but but if we're going to have things released like videos of these cars then give it some context and explain while you're releasing it that's what we we do need to know

these things all right we've got some viewer questions have come in and if viewers if you've got any more questions please put them in the chat so lisa's wondering why no cause of death

has been released well lisa is a great um supporter of mine and thank you lisa for your question um the no no cause of death has been released i would assume because they are doing their investigations and they want to be very careful what they release in case they have the wrong person and they may want not want to give things away that often is the case in stories like

this at least a sense a follow-up question will we ever find out truly what has happened

well that's that's something we cannot know at this stage that's impossible to answer um one can hope that process will be followed and we are able to reach a sensible conclusion on this

and with dando we still don't know with epstein with with with dando with dando you know time

has passed you know 1999 to 2026 is an awfully long period of time you know the memories have faded um her relatives have died and um you know it's the same as i know with the lady diana moore you know she was an only child and of course you know now there's nobody to campaign about that And with Jill Dando, it's similar. And with Anne Widdicombe, of course, she didn't have any husband. She did have a brother who was an Anglican priest, a canon. Sorry, her brother Malcolm is a canon. I think he died. Her nephew, though, Roger, who I believe was pictured with Nigel Farage at the Laying Flowers, he's an Anglican priest, and he will no doubt want to get to the bottom of this story and plenty of Anne Whittacombe's friends will want justice and I think in this era, I think it's going to be easier to get a resolution than it was in 1999 with Jill Dando.

So Ryan's just asked, what was Whittacombe working on with reform?

Well, Anne Whittacombe was their spokesman on immigration and justice which obviously in Britain is a very highly contentious matter. Obviously, the Stop the Boats campaign is very much at the centre of reform policy. So, you know, were there people who she defended because of her comments in that regard? Were there people who she defended because of her views on, say, abortion? You know, abortion is a hugely contentious matter. The LGBT thing, you know, obviously this university lecturer was, you know, very keen to condemn her. There was a dreadful woman who came on the Politics Live program called Days Agarichi on the 13th of July, a few days ago. A hard left woman who said a lot of people won't be grieving Anne Widdicombe's death. There's a lot of controversy of how she used her political life. She said, as someone who is queer, my rights have been affected by her speeches. I did think it was absolutely outrageous that the host of the program did nothing to stop, you know, intervene at this stage. It was absolutely appalling that this crazy left-wing madwoman was given such a degree of privilege to say this nonsense on a 12 o'clock at lunchtime show on BBC Two. And again, it to me shows the BBC is not fit for purpose. I'm disgusted that the BBC went down that route.

Philip's wondering who benefits from the demise of Widdicombe and Dando

well it does muddy the waters as lots of people have pointed out

It does, you know, raise questions about things in political life. Should all politicians have more security, et cetera, et cetera? You know, would you want to become an MP when your life is subject to so much scrutiny? Your family is dragged through that as well. And when your risk of being attacked is high. but of course if you're going to be a politician who comes out with very controversial things you have to be take as you find as as has been found with the recent prince harry case against associated newspapers one of the main journalists uh charlotte griffiths you know she said you know as a journalist i have to you know realize i'm going to be criticized and i'm going but she didn't like the fact that her family had been dragged into it but of course if you put yourself out there and as you do and i do you know i i actually think it's fair that people attack me i have no problem with people coming up to me and getting i i have people regularly coming up to me telling me i've got to shut up about jeffrey epstein and gillane maxwell i'm causing them offense um i had somebody come up to me and said i've ruined um their ability to play golf with prince andrew um i thought if that's the worst if i if i'm the if i'm the big problem my goodness I don't really know what the real issue in this matter is. But, you know, I speak with people on both sides of every story. I have many a friend who is a supporter of reform. I have plenty of friends who are not. And I personally do think reform needs to be held to account over this whole Farage scandal. You know, the fact that this George Cottrell and his mother have, you know, they have been both questioned at the very least whether they will be charged with any crimes we will get to see. You know, there's the fact that Mr. Cottrell was running casinos, allegedly, and has multiple names. He's been to prison over things in America. He had involvement with a man called Mowbray Jackson, who also uses the name Ian Jackson. And he is the reform treasurer dealing with GDPR and all this stuff. There are lots of people like there's a man on Twitter called One Finance Guy, and he is fantastic. Follow him. He's brilliant at sharing details of what's been going on with this reform money. And I think if reform want to be in government, they've got to be open to transparency. And I do think that they are failing in that regard. And I think that their complaints of, you know, we need 100 million pounds of security, it's absolutely ludicrous. And it is a bit of a distraction from what's going on in Clacton. Not one mainstream party is standing against Farage.

He's got one token candidate who's one of his own friends, Lawrence Fox, you know, saying I'm standing so we can have some democracy against Count Binface. But Farage could be beaten by a bin, so he will lose to a bin. Farage will be binned if he loses. And if he wins, he wins against a bin. He doesn't win against anyone serious. And this is a man who was under investigation over expenses. And if he is reelected, the same investigation starts again. And it costs around about £300,000 to have this by-election. and he offered to pay from it for from the reforms money that is corruption that should not be allowed you can't pay for your own by-election absolutely ridiculous and farage as in garage as people like me to say is somebody who i think has gone one step too far i was with somebody who was very much part of the um referendum movement and even they you know as supporters of the brexit party they said you know this time he's perhaps crossed the line it's rather like you know with al capone they never got al capone on the um the the main charges they got him on the little you know sideline and that this is what happens with people like nigel farage the power goes to their head they get carried away it happened in the same way with somebody i know who was very anti-brexit and this person got carried away and formed their own political party and that didn't work out and they spent lots and lots of money and got no one and that is what happens with these kind of characters they play with the this but what we should remember as a country is they're playing with our lives this is this is you know this is our economy this to them this is a chess game to many ordinary people this is you know the cost of living

We need sensible politicians. And right now we've got this idiot, backwards Burnham, as I call him. You know, another triumph of democracy at its worst. This man was just giving a speech just before I came on here saying how wonderful Keir Starmer is. And what a fantastic man. This is someone who spent the last years wrecking Keir Starmer's prime ministership. And I say presidency. That's what they virtually want. All of these megalomaniacs, we've got raving Rainer, we've got, you know, Quirk here, out of here, and we've got now Backwards Burnham. This is a joke. I was just talking to someone from Sicily, and I said, you know, your politics in Italy is far more advanced than ours. We've had eight prime ministers now in ten years. This is a joke. And if we have a bin in Parliament, which we could easily have shortly, is he going to turn up wearing his bin on his head? and what's he going to do aside from building one council house as he's promised and he's going to change the hand dryers in a pub in klaxon he was going to make them quieter or something um the bin will win and but but what happens to democracy democracy goes down the bin and this is what farage and his mates have done to this country you know the bad boys of brexit who the likes of peter dukes and carol carol wadler and david henk and all these people have exposed for years um you know these are people who think that this is their fun and games well it's not fun and games the majority and it's totally wrong um we have to have you know the right to question things but let's have remember that where we have rights we have responsibilities and politicians need to do their job rather than pontificating right well said matthew we are at

the hour anything you'd like to say conclusion to the viewers my friend well i'd like to say you

know keep inquisitive keep questioning things but don't go down the roots of of heather um the dreadful heather and start writing stupid things like that you know always be cautious in your comments because they can come back to haunt you so speculation needs to be tempered at this time but remember the Anne Widdicombe is a lady who did a lot of good whether you liked her or not and her life was taken far too soon and we should remember her for the good things she did rather than those things that we might have disagreed with her over

Absolutely, freedom of speech. Thank you Matthew my friend I'm going to let you go and close the show and you take care

Cheers. Have a lovely afternoon Thank you. Bye bye

So please support Matthew, his links are the steeple times and also on his youtube channel you can go and subscribe and watch him over there as well and we're going to end this one now and then ron and paula m are coming up