Heidi Blake
Appearances
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Here's Heidi. She initially moved into a hostel in a pretty gritty part of southeast London. And then eventually she moved in with a friend who she just met randomly on the run. It seems like, to some extent, she kind of just lived as you might imagine a teenager would, having her first taste of freedom in a major city. We know she dabbled with alcohol, kind of made new friends.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
But she also did something pretty smart. She contacted a lawyer. She found this guy through the Yellow Pages, a lawyer called Paul Simon. And she just walked into his office off the street and told him she was a runaway princess, a member of the Dubai royal family, and that she wanted to claim asylum in the UK. When she said this, her lawyer said something very revealing.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
He noted in records at the time that he told Shamsa her case was very unlikely to succeed, given the friendly relations between the UK and the UAE.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The case was referred to Special Branch, which is this secretive division of the British police who at that time handled all matters of national security. Special Branch got in touch with the Dubai royal family. And the police log, which I have here, says that representatives of the family told them that they, quote, had no knowledge of the name given or any such incident.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
And so just like that, the case was dropped. And this is like one of the first of many incredibly frustrating moments where Shamsa and other women like have the guts and the resourcefulness to get the word out that they're trying to escape, that they need help and authorities just look away every time.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
So she'd be out at the races or scuba diving at the beach, and there he'd be, this guy who'd held her down as her feet were caned until all the bones were broken.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
When the yacht was eventually located off the coast of India, Sheikh Mohammed called in a favour from a powerful ally. He spoke personally with the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and they hashed out a deal. Modi wanted an arms dealer who was based in Dubai, and Sheikh Mohammed agreed to extradite this guy in exchange for his daughter's capture.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
The Indian government deployed boats, helicopters and a team of armed commandos to storm Nostromo and carry Latifa away.
Infamous
Dubai's Missing Princesses I Part 5, New Update
Guards offered to take her out shopping for books so that she could be photographed. It was an agonizing offer to refuse. She wrote, I crave fresh air and sunlight, but she knew that if she cooperated, she'd risk scuttling Haya's case. So you might be wondering, where is Latifa now?
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Yeah, the only thing I should warn you is that I live by the sea, and so there may be some unavoidable seagull noise, but we can try and avoid it.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
It's not. They're so rowdy. It's really deeply irritating after a while.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
That is a great question and something I often ask myself. Like, I kind of constantly try to find a story that is slightly less unwieldy and then get drawn into these, like, naughty morasses and think, why do I do this to myself? But I don't know. I just...
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
There's something that sort of activates in me where I feel like there is a kind of concentration of power in the hands of a person or people who are abusing it. I don't know. I kind of reach a certain level of outrage and it spurs me on to really want to get to the bottom of something. But also, this is so fun because this is kind of not an outrageous thing.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
This is just an intriguing, like, why the hell don't we know what this pool looks like? Come on, guys. Like, what are they hiding? What is so secret about this pool? This is crazy.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
With the reporting I did on the Dubai royal family, they've just had hundreds and hundreds of people pass through their employment, and actually that means it's not very difficult to find some people among them. Especially, you know, if you make it a numbers game and you just approach a ton of people, some of them are going to feel like talking to you.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I am literally going on LinkedIn. You're going on LinkedIn. That is literally what I'm doing. Yeah, LinkedIn is amazing. And this, I feel like this is one of those things where like, you know, magicians should never reveal their secrets because like, it's LinkedIn. That's the secret. Really? It's unbelievably good. Yeah, because what you can do is,
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I mean, this is obviously like a totally unintended consequence of LinkedIn, but everybody is on LinkedIn and everybody has put their whole professional history on LinkedIn. So you can go on there and you can say, show me everybody who has previously worked at Buckingham Palace. And it will give you hundreds and hundreds of results. And then you can filter those.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So I took the liberty of doing this just to see what we would find. Thank you. No, I mean, you know, you guys could do it yourself. It's kind of amazingly easy. But so you can put in Buckingham Palace or the other way they describe it is the Royal Household.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And if you do that, you have hundreds of results. You have a summer warden, a sous chef, butlers, junior footman, a building surveyor. There's a guy who was the marshal of the diplomatic corps. But then, this is when I got excited, then if you add the search term swimming pool, there are three people who are specifically talking about having worked in and around that swimming pool.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So these guys definitely know. So you have...
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So wait, you see... I'm seeing... I've got a...
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
So *** was a household electrician at Buckingham Palace from September 1971 to August 1992. And one of his duties is listed as maintenance of swimming pool plant. So, like, this dude has seen that pool. And why would he not tell you? And also, these people all have left the palace a really long time ago. So, like, I just don't think they're going to be feeling that awkward about talking about it.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Well, I think this is just a hunch, but I bet you it's a really scuzzy rundown pool.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I think so because I guess, you know, obviously Buckingham Palace does pomp and grandeur and circumstance and they wear that on their sleeves. But I think that one of the things particularly about the queen was that actually, you know, rumor always had it that in her private apartments, actually those rooms were really shabby with like threadbare carpet and really old fashioned wallpaper.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
And there was this amazing thing back in 2003, A reporter from a tabloid here called The Mirror newspaper managed to get a job as a footman at Buckingham Palace. He worked there for two months. And they kind of did it ostensibly as a like, this is a massive security breach. I could have poisoned the queen thing.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
But actually the thing that everyone remembers from that story is that he got photos of the queen's private breakfast room. And it's like, I'll send you a picture, but it is like super shabby. And she's eating her breakfast out of Tupperware. Really? Everyone was just like, the queen is eating breakfast out of Tupperware. Like, she's eating cornflakes out of Tupperware. And that was the thing.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Like, no one had ever seen that before.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Which I think is basically the situation of the monarchy. Like they actually, you know, their estate is huge and kind of enormously expensive to maintain. And they're having to constantly scrap for taxpayer funding to kind of maintain these state rooms. And so the queen was notoriously frugal, you know, with her own sort of stuff. And so that's my hunch.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I reckon this ball is rundown and embarrassing and they don't want anyone to see it for that reason. But I mean, I could be completely wrong. Maybe there is an elephant.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
I think Paul is a fascinating character.
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Why is the pool at Buckingham Palace a secret?
Paul Burrell spent 20 years working alongside the royal.