This is the second of two recent British television documentary programmes on the life and marginal times of Glasgow-born lingerie businesswoman Michelle Mone. I have a particular interest in Mone as she comes from the same Glaswegian housing district in which I grew up, Dennistoun, to be exact. At two hours long and split over two episodes, documenting her rise and fall, it went into considerably more detail than the rival Channel 4 "Where did our Money go?" special.
So was it worth watching the story of her rise and demise again? Well, yes, I think so. I certainly learned of a few more twists in her tale, for example, her spat with Sir Rod Stewart when she brazenly replaced his wife Penny Valentine as her brand-ambassador with, of all people, his previous wife Rachel Hunter, her discredited foray into Bitcoin investments and in particular, the investigation into her company finances, which showed it to be far from the multi-million pound moneyspinner it was made out to be.
The programme also more pointedly commented on the dubious background of her second husband, the billionaire financier, Doug Barrowman with the pictures of him wallowing in his luxurious accommodation and her parading on the luxury boat bearing her name being particularly hard to swallow considering what came next.
That, of course, was the £65m profit they pocketed from the PPE contract they brokered with the British government from their Medpro company, right at the height of the Covid pandemic, a deal for which Mone certainly seems to have been actively pushing, relying on her privileged position close to the heads of government at the time. Then, despite the couple's aggressive attempts to suppress press reports into their activities, they proceeded to commit a massive own-goal with a calamitous "clear-the-air" interview with BBC's new Lady Inquisitor, Laura Kuennsberg, (had she never seen Prince Andrew's tete-a-tete with Emily Maitlis on the same channel?) where Mone admitted to openly lying about financially benefiting from the scandal.
The government investigation into the Medpro contract (and others like it) rushed through in the crisis, has yet to be completed, but it seems that no matter the outcome, Mone is now considered a disgraced figure in the eyes of the general public, much like another infamous Scot from a previous crisis, the ex-Sir Fred Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland group. (I wonder if Mone might lose her title too.)
Whilst one or two of the participants here seemed to have their own personal axes to grind with Mone, given their past treatment at her hands, I personally consider the programme was reasonably balanced, so that even if the viewers were, arguably, led to a particular conclusion, I'd say the facts were always leading that way anyway.
There just seems to be too much smoke for this to not turn out to be a bonfire of Ms. Mone's vanity.
