Garrett Graham
Appearances
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Yeah. I am here to tell you about some digging that I've done.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So walking out of that conversation with Heidi, it felt like she had mapped out this like crazy wall of suspects connected to the palace by like red string. And all that was left for us to do was like trace that red string until we found a suspect who would talk and like flip somebody. Are they convicted of a crime?
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
They're convicted of having seen the swimming pool of Buckingham Palace and not telling us about it yet. In the world of podcasting, holding on to narratively interesting information is a crime. It is a crime and they're found guilty.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So the first person that I reached out to was the tabloid guy that Heidi told us about, like the Mirror reporter who had snuck into the palace and snapped a photo of the queen's cornflakes or whatever. But it turned out that the tabloid had dealt with some legal action after this piece came out.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so they had actually agreed not to publish any more information from their reporting, which meant that the tabloid guy was out. But the next step that I took was just to start reaching out to the people on LinkedIn. And as reporter Heidi Blake mentioned, there's basically three people who had mentioned the swimming pool on their profile. There's a 20-something project manager.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
There's a retired electrician. And there is a maintenance officer turned aromatherapist, all of whom were one-time employees of Buckingham Palace but are no longer.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
That's not a chapter you expect to find in a book about Buckingham Palace, but it's one that I was pretty charmed to find.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So, yeah, the first guy I decided to reach out to is the 20-something project manager. He worked at the palace just a few years ago, and the clue on his profile that he might have the goods that we're looking for is that he was involved with realizing, quote, substantial carbon-saving opportunities for the on-site swimming pool plant operation. Okay, that feels like... It feels promising.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
It feels like this guy would have seen the pool, right? A neon sign. So... I like sleuthed this guy out on the internet.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I learned pretty quickly that he's ex-military and also happened to share the name of a 14th century Earl of Pembroke, which to me, those are two details that kind of suggest like this guy might have some sympathies towards the royals and maybe he won't be willing to break the privacy for the sake of an American podcast.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Yeah. And I reach out several times actually. No response. Totally fine. We have more suspects. I move on to the next one.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
The next person I reach out to is the retired electrician. He worked there from the 70s to the 90s, which on the one hand, it means like it's been a while since this guy's seen the pool. But on the other hand, it means like he was definitely there before the NDA era. And so maybe he's more keen to chat with us about it. I reach out LinkedIn and on Facebook. Again, zero response. Okay.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So then what? I go to the final person on LinkedIn. And honestly, this is the one that I'm kind of the most optimistic about because, again, this is the maintenance officer turned aromatherapist. Oh, okay. Yeah.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Their LinkedIn bio just reads, quote, using aromas to support positive mental health, which like not only is this a person who is in a totally different field of work now, but this is like a decidedly non-royal line of work. Yeah, okay. And so I'm like, we found our person. I just need to get this person to see the note that I send. And so I reach out on every single platform I could find her on.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And this one actually turned out kind of interesting. She said, nothing. Nothing. Not a single word of reply. There was nothing interesting about it. It was just a failed attempt at a joke. I see. I see. But anyway, the point of all this is just to say that LinkedIn was kind of a bust. There were other people that I reached out to who didn't want to talk to us.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
But I want to tell you the story of one person who would talk to us. Please.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So this is a person that came up in multiple conversations that we had, both on and off the record. And it's a guy who's kind of infamous in British tabloids. He was Diana's former butler and after her death, he kind of presumably sees an opportunity and kind of cashes in on his access to the royal family when the entire world is obsessed with Diana and the circumstances surrounding her death.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so he writes a book about his time working on staff for Diana, which he did without royal approval, which I think is a big no-no.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so, you know, even now, like, 30 years removed from Diana's death or however long it is, like, he's still taking, like, lots of media opportunities to talk about his time in the royal household. And in interviews, he speaks with this kind of, like, high school theater drama.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
All this to say, he seems like the perfect candidate to tell us what the swimming pool at Buckingham Palace looks like. So you reached out to him? So I shot him an email, and after a couple of weeks, an agent got back to us, which is kind of unusual for a search engine booking request. Like, we're not used to dealing with agents. Like, it's a podcast.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
But let me just read you the message that the agent sent me. Please. Hi, Garrett. I hope you're well. Many thanks for your inquiry, spelled with an E, and apologies for the delay in getting back to you. Can you please let me know what fee you have for the recording? Ah, of course. Many thanks. And, of course, by fee, that agent means that we need to pay money to do an interview with the butler.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And at Search Engine, I think most journalists in the U.S., we don't pay for information, meaning we don't pay sources to talk to us.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Right. But I should also say there does seem to be a real non-malicious cultural difference here, which is just like... There are different boundaries in different countries around journalism. And one of those differences in the UK is that reporters are a bit more comfortable offering sources like some compensation for information.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Like I found some poll data saying that 53% of reporters in the UK believe paying people for confidential information is justified on occasion compared to 5% of journalists in the US.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And on the other, like, this is also just a guy who has sustained an entire career off of selling the information that he does have. So, like, it shouldn't be totally surprising that he's asking for this. Like, in some ways, it's a perfectly reasonable request. But the agent ends up offering us the butler for 1,500 pounds, which is like 2,000-ish dollars. We politely decline. Yeah.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
But actually it was okay because this is around the same time that we're about to fly to England.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And honestly, like, it's funny that you say it that way because that is kind of the extent that I thought about it. I was just like, oh, it's over there. Like, we'll be closer to the object of our reporting later.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Oh, Derek. Maybe. Honestly, it's a little embarrassing listening back to this that we just kind of hopped on the tube and went to Buckingham Palace without a reporting plan.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
We show up, there was a massive crowd. There's like a royal marching band, like playing brass instruments as we walked by. But bad news was like the reason why it was such a madhouse outside of the palace gates, we quickly realized was that we happened to be there in a month when the palace was closed to tourists, which meant for us that we weren't gonna be able to get inside of the palace.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So we walk around the perimeter of the palace, literally like looking at my phone's Google Maps to like see how many feet we were away from the indoor pool.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I just wanted to know if we could see it, like if there was some gap in the shrubbery that would allow us a glimpse of the building in real life. It was a noble idea. There wasn't. There wasn't.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So that was attempt number one, which was in May. But honestly, I personally left feeling not that disheartened because I knew I was going to be back in London because I had a friend getting married there in August. And so I knew I'd have another shot. And also August happens to be a month that Buckingham Palace is open to tourists.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so I booked not one, but two palace tours while I was going to be over there.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And I show back up, my second time at Buckingham Palace in about two months. And the first tour I had booked was like the actual inside of the palace, like as much of the interiors that they'll show to visitors. And so I walk up the side entrance and I go through what's pretty much airport style security.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
There's metal detectors, there's bag screeners, there's an announcement that no photos will be allowed inside the palace. But I put my iPhone in the front pocket of my shirt so I can talk to myself and take notes as I'm walking through the palace, like audio diary style.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so I enter the palace, I walk down what's actually kind of like a dingy hallway that's poorly lit that pretty quickly opens up into the fancy part of the palace. Okay, we are officially inside the palace. It's very quiet in here. The first thing I see is the inner courtyard, which is the first time you get a sense of just how massive this place is.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I think it's something like a football field in both length and width. Yeah. So you get shuffled along from there into what they call the Grand Hall, which is exactly what it sounds like. The tour more or less proceeds as you would expect. I mean, you're going through the state rooms, which are the fancy rooms that have historically been open to the public.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And they're all filled with like impossibly expensive looking decor. A lot of gold, a lot of gold. And maybe the coolest grandfather clock I've ever seen. Honestly, I had the feeling like I was walking inside of Ashley Hicks' book.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I definitely thought on multiple occasions, like I think I can outrun some of these guys. There were like secret looking doorways off to the side. I was curious where some of these things went. I think that they mostly just lead to servant corridors where food and other items get ferried through the palace that visitors can't see.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So I'm kind of like shuffling somewhat quickly through this first tour because the second tour is in the back gardens. And the back gardens is where the building that we're interested in sits. Like the back of the palace is where the swimming pool is. So then I show up to like the sign that says this is where the second tour starts. And I'm about to start the garden tour, which...
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
you won't believe, happens to start directly in front of the swimming pool. Seriously? So can you like see through the windows? I was standing on the steps. Obviously, I'm walking directly up to it to try to look in, but it's very opaque two-way glass. Oh.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Like my assumption is you're inside the pool and you can look out on the beautiful back gardens of Buckingham Palace, but from the outside, you cannot see anything. Like the panes just look like ink-stained squares of glass. which was honestly so tantalizing. Like a quarter inch of glass is what was separating me from the answer to this question that I had been thinking about for months.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
That's so frustrating. It was so frustrating. And to make matters worse, we start the second tour and the tour guide, who's like this kindly British woman from Essex with long gray hair. And the first thing she says is, If you look to your right, there's the indoor swimming pool. I've actually swum in it. What?
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
The new king has actually turned down the temperature a few degrees, so I'm swimming in it less, but there's the pool house right there. So for the rest of this 90-minute tour, I'm thinking the whole time, please say more about the swimming pool, please say more about the swimming pool, please say more about the swimming pool.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
But instead, she's pointing out the rare shrubbery that they have lining the gardens, and she's pointing to the rose garden, and the marmalade plants, and the tennis courts, which are actually cool if a little dingier than I would have expected.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And at the end of the tour, I'm kind of trying to play it cool, but I go up to her and I ask, like, hey, you mentioned that you had swum in the Buckingham Palace swimming pool? Yeah. Like, I'm so curious. What's it like in there? And she tells me, it's just a normal swimming pool. Four of us have to swim in it at the same time in case there are any accidents.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
There's a squash court in there as well. And immediately gets drowned out by like hordes of other people on the tour asking her questions about the rose garden and marmalade plants. And that's the only information I get from her.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I don't have any like decoder ring to interpret these words. These are just the precious few words that I gleaned from this like wealth of information before she was cut off from me forever. Okay. So what we had here was like, I mean, as you said, the mission was to bring the swimming pool, like one more moat into the light of public view. I feel like we'd done that.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And so I talked to Shruthi and we were like, yeah, I think we have enough to answer the question. Like we know enough to answer Chris's specific question. It's just a normal swimming pool, like not some fancy marble swimming pool. But at this point, we still didn't know why it was a secret.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So I went back to LinkedIn. Okay. And this time, instead of just searching for the keywords Buckingham Palace and swimming pool, I searched for the keywords Buckingham Palace and podcast. What? And it turns out there's one former employee of Buckingham Palace who also has a podcast.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Of course, the suspect we were looking for the whole time was another podcaster. The worst kind of criminal there is. So we're going to talk to him tomorrow.