The Journalist and the Whistleblower: The inside story of the Lockdown Files
Chopper's Politics
The Telegraph
4.2 • 864 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than 100,000 WhatsApp messages. 2.3 million words - the equivalent of three copies of the King James Bible.
You’ve read the headlines about the Telegraph’s extraordinary examination of the Lockdown Files - and now you can hear from some of the journalists behind it.
Christopher Hope is joined by the woman with the WhatsApps, Isabel Oakeshott, and Investigations Editor Claire Newell, in the newsroom where it happened. The pair tell Chopper how the team found the stories among the many files, whether it's all been worth it, and they consider his challenges to beat the Expenses Scandal record of 30 front pages in a row.
Keep up to date with the latest stories from the Lockdown Files: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/lockdown-files/
For 30 days' free access to The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/chopper |
Sign up to the Chopper's Politics newsletter: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politicsnewsletter |
Read Chopper's Peterborough diary: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/peterborough-diary |
Email: [email protected] |
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Chopper's politics, much as we'd love to have the entire account, |
| 0:08.0 | this is where we've started with 2.3 million words. |
| 0:12.0 | Of course if other ministers want to fill in the gaps |
| 0:14.7 | great you know you know where we are. |
| 0:18.7 | More than a hundred thousand WhatsApp messages 2.3 million words that's three versions of the King James Bible |
| 0:28.5 | You've seen the headlines about the telegraph extraordinary examination of the lockdown files this week. |
| 0:35.0 | Now you can hear where the story began. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm Christopher Hope, the Associate Editor for Politics at the Telegraph, |
| 0:40.0 | and this is Chopper's Politics Podcast. I'd like to be joined by our head of |
| 0:45.1 | investigations Claire Newell and the journalist who brought it in Isabelle |
| 0:49.7 | Olochshot, the whistleblower. Hello both. Hello, Welcome to Chopper's Politics Podcast. Where to start? |
| 0:57.0 | Isabel, you're the whistleblower. When did you first think you had to get this information out there? |
| 1:02.4 | Well, for any journalist to be handed this kind of |
| 1:06.1 | treasure trove is an extraordinary moment indeed and it actually came to me in |
| 1:10.4 | batches and I really frankly couldn't believe I was being given it but at the time I was working on a book for Matt Hancock for and with him it was a book that was being produced against an extraordinarily tight deadline. |
| 1:24.6 | Initially, we were hoping to produce the book within six months, which was completely |
| 1:27.9 | unrealistic. |
| 1:29.3 | And I only got the messages |
| 1:34.0 | really after about four or five months on that project which left me very little time to go through them. |
| 1:36.0 | When was this? When this was last summer? |
| 1:39.0 | Last summer and obviously couldn't believe my eyes at the scale of this the quality of it and the |
| 1:45.9 | the kind of historical importance of what was in there but the initial objective was to get this |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in -713 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Telegraph, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Telegraph and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.