Garrett Graham
speaker
369 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 24 Jul
Garrett Graham’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It feels like this guy would have seen the pool, right? A neon sign. So... I like sleuthed this guy out on the internet.
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.
Yeah. And I reach out several times actually. No response. Totally fine. We have more suspects. I move on to the next one.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But I want to tell you the story of one person who would talk to us. Please.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Showing 321–340 of 369 · page 17 of 19
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