The Fleet Street Sewer Rat [Hardcover]

This is the inside story of "Fleet Street" written by an insider who sheds
light on its grubbiest corner. Tabloids and broadsheets alike may be fearless
in exposing the antics of the rich, the famous and the powerful, yet they
would rather this particular "stone" be left unturned. For underneath this
stone – in the pit of the gutter – lie some tawdry and questionable
activities.

The book’s central character is Benjamin Pell, better known as "Benji
the Binman". He made his fortune – and became infamous – by raiding the
rubbish of lawyers and other professional advisers to famous clients and then
selling documents he scavenged to the Press – and others. Mohamed Al Fayed and
Sir Richard Branson are among those who also received the "fruits" of his
labours. Sir Elton John, All Saints, Robbie Williams, Jonathan Aitken, Neil
Hamilton as well as, er, Mohammed Al Fayed and Sir Richard Branson, are among
the long list of famous people who fell victim to his nocturnal prowling. A
thief, a cheat and a liar Pell, who is possessed of a formidable intelligence,
lives on the edge of madness. A High Court judge described his method of
making a living as "despicable" and "contemptible".
The book exposes his activities and lifts the lid off cheque book journalism
in Britain at its very best, its very worst, and at its most hilarious.
Based on taped interviews with Benjamin Pell.
Foreword by John McVicar.

The Fleet Street Sewer Rat is a remarkable true story about a bizarre, surreal character who in four years broke more major news stories than most reporters do in a lifetime. But Benji the Binman stole the documents that were behind the stories.

He said of one his arrests, when the police downplayed his offences:
‘Well that of course was the biggest scandal of all ’cos otherwise the whole of Fleet Street would have had to be in the dock with me, and I don’t think there’s enough room.’

Max Clifford: ‘Benjamin Pell is no ordinary person by any stretch of the imagination.’

John McVicar: ‘Meeting Pell for the first time is like going down to beach for a swim and being confronted with a tsunami – most people just want to get out the cross and the garlic, and head for the high ground.’

EXCLUSIVE:
the muckraker who
got rich scavenging
celebrities’ binbags

‘Benji the Binman’ Pell hit on a simple but astonishingly effective method of gathering news-worthy documents – he targeted the binbags of lawyers, PR companies show-business agents...anyone who managed the affairs of the rich, the famous and the powerful. He sold these on, sometimes through middle men like Max Clifford, to virtually every national tabloid and broad-sheet...including The Guardian.

The celebrities, tycoons, QCs, politicians who suffered from his night-time scavenging read like a Who’s Who of the establishment. Elton John, George Michael, Richard Branson, Cherie and Tony Blair...

Yet what he did was against the law and Benji the Binman turned out to be a very successful and remarkable criminal. In fact, unique as well because by exploiting his obsessive-compulsive disorder, Pell actually put himself above the reach of the criminal and civil law.

Mark Watts, 39, is a journalist who has specialised in investigative reporting for Britain's national Press and TV for more than a decade after working for two-and-a-half years as a cub reporter on a regional newspaper.

At ITV's World in Action in 1995, he helped expose the role of a former Conservative Cabinet minister, Jonathan Aitken, in promoting defence exports to Iraq and Iran during the 1980's. He was chief investigative reporter on Sunday Business from 1997 to 2001, heading a three-strong team that outed most of New Labour's secret businessmen donors, exposed many of the revelations in the share-dealing scandal at the Mirror, and revealed corruption at a leading firm of City surveyors.

At the Sunday Express in 2001, he revealed that the financial ‘black hole’ at WorldCom, the failed US telecommunications company, was 10 times larger than initially admitted. The US Securities & Exchange Commission, the New York-based financial watchdog, later confirmed his disclosures. He also revealed how 10 Downing Street told untruths about the extent of contacts between New Labour ministers and executives at another failed US company, Enron.

He has worked on several other newspapers, including The Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent on Sunday, Daily Express, London's Evening Standard, and Daily Star; and has contributed to other publications, including The Observer, The Guardian, The Times, Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Mirror, Business Age and Private Eye.

His wide-ranging experience in Fleet Street, as well as his comprehensive investigation of Benji ‘the binman’ Pell, gives him the insight to expose this truly amazing story.

Mark Watts is a freelance journalist who has written for most national newspapers.

The first time I met Benjamin Pell was in July 1998 in Soho’s Groucho Club, then a druggies’ den of iniquity where – despite the fact that he doesn’t even use SSRIs never mind cocaine to regulate his serotonin levels – Pell looked quite at home. Not that his clothes matched his unfazed demeanour: shiny navy trousers, scruffy leathershoes worn down to a pronated list that would sink a ship, a grubby nylon shirt that was doing a fine job at not just cooking but breeding the BO. Groucho louche Pell is not. Then there was the spittle shower that sprayed my notepad every time he talked. And can Pell talk...the word speed is like a Gatling on an old newsdesk typewriter.

My editor at Punch magazine, James Steen, had inflicted this on me. He had decided that he wanted a cover on the Hendon hacker who was causing havoc with Elton John, All Saints and sundry other celebs, and it was my job to stand up the rumour that Pell was a computer geek supremo.

In fact, Pell didn’t even own a computer, which I didn’t really want to find out even though all the clues popped up when I asked him about what programmes and cracks he was using. He knew nothing about computers but the hacker story was too good to knock down. I filed accordingly and ‘computer hacker who hits the stars’ went on the cover. Luckily – it certainly wasn’t good journalism – one of Pell’s friends convinced me that he was just a binman. I had time to correct the copy inside the magazine but it was too late for the cover. If he thinks I need a dose of cringe, James Steen still reminds me of my howler.
The cash nexus is always a binding link in any relationship with Pell, but above that he is always looking to ensnarl whomever it is into his web. He becomes generous, friendly and helpful, he interests himself in your problems and assists you with solving them...he inveigles you into becoming dependent on him. Meanwhile, he is logging your weaknesses, vulnerabilities, vices, secrets...for when he turns on you...as he does everyone with whom he fakes a friendship.

Once a ‘friend’ does not do what Pell regards as proper repayment for all the help he has given them, then he becomes a viper: poisonous, vindictive, malignant and, most of all, righteous. Invariably ‘proper payment’ is not doing what he thinks should be done to ensure that the world recognises and celebrates his uniqueness, intelligence and genius.

Of course, as Mark Watts’ book documents, Pell has been incredibly destructive in the way he has shattered reputations, careers, businesses...in his trade as a scavenger of discarded intellectual property. But what is especially repellent is the glee and delight with which he crows over his victims: people whom he did not know personally and who had done him no harm. Indeed, more often than not he had already made a great deal of money out of them by selling their secrets to Fleet Street. We can all laugh at the humour with which Pell lightens his darkness and the book is genuinely funny, but The Fleet Street Sewer Rat is actually a study in comedic evil.

I always knew that Pell controlled his ‘seeming’ madness far more than it controlled him, but what this book brought home to me is how Pell is actually a very successful, professional criminal who by dint of deploying his nutter act has, for all practical purposes, made himself invulnerable to either the criminal or civil law. This so-called and self-styled ‘nutter’ earns at least £250,000 a year tax-free out of crime without risk of imprisonment.

Some nutter.
Pell by his own admission has never had a friend..nor will he ever have a lover, and despite his gay affectations, he is actually a dormant heterosexual, and will remain so. Nevertheless, he fantasises about the fairytale, and secretly worships any woman he meets who just might see the real beauty behind his ugliness.
Marks Watts lists a couple of these but my wife was another.

In 1997 Pell stole a confidential Elton John document, which he put on her website. She was sued and Pell came to her pseudo-rescue. She was repelled by him but, after we married, Pell reacted as if I had stolen his fairytale. He sought revenge by a malicious but ingenious campaign to destabilise our marriage. We were subjected to years of hate mail, anonymous phone calls, fake faxes, poison pen letters, phoney emails, computer viruses... It some ways it was pathetic and ridiculous – my wife even complained to Pell’s lawyer about the spiteful banality of what he was up to – but, of course, this vicious, albeit childish, vendetta went to the heart of the man.

It culminated in an 18-inch long rat being put into our flat, through our open letterbox just before Christmas 2004. I spent the whole of Christmas stalking it. Yet, the couple of times I cornered it, the rat held my eyes almost reproaching me for hunting it down. It was odd. Nonetheless, I still thought it was a wild rat that had somehow got into the flat through some crevice or duct in the heating. I even spent an hour on the phone on Christmas morning talking to some pest control adviser (who was on duty!) in Manchester about what to do.

Then, on Boxing Day, I flushed the rat out and clubbed it to death with a wooden pole. As I looked at it still twitching on the floor, I felt sorry for having killed it, then I noticed that it was well-fed, its light-brow fur sleek and unmatted... It dawned on me that this was a pet rat, not a wild one. But I still didn’t make the connection until, like in the movies, the rat’s features slowly dissolved into Pell’s face.
It was Artnik’s Christmas present for publishing The Fleet Street Sewer Rat.
John McVicar 2005