Did Labour try to rubbish film about Prescott’s Dustbingate

COMEDIAN Steve Coogan has abandoned plans to make a movie that ridiculed John Prescott after a menacing phone call to staff at his film company.

Steve Coogan Steve Coogan

The caller claimed to be a Labour Party official and said the Prescott film had to be ditched – or they would face dire financial consequences with a withdrawal of Government funding.

Coogan’s company, Baby Cow Productions, has taken the threat so seriously it is playing down its involvement with the project known as Dustbingate.

The film script tells the true story of how former Deputy Prime Minister Mr Prescott was engulfed in a scandal involving allegations of corrupt council house property deals in his Hull constituency. 

Five nightshift workers at a bottle-top factory decided to become part-time investigators and probe his business dealings in 1998, hoping to make cash by selling any information they found to newspapers.

The affair made massive headlines and became known as “Dustbingate” because bank statements were allegedly stolen from a wheelie bin outside Mr Prescott’s luxury home in Hull and his garage was broken into.

Shortly afterwards allegations emerged that 25 council houses in Hull had been sold for around a quarter of their true value to a property company whose directors included one of Mr Prescott’s sons, also called John. The sale had been approved by the Department of the Environment, part of Mr Prescott’s ministerial domain.

An inquiry cleared Mr Prescott, the MP for Hull East, of any wrongdoing and at the time he claimed he was the victim of a “concerted and shadowy” bid to discredit him.

In fact, the saga was just a stunt by former computer programmer Ian Newton and his pals, which they dreamed up while working at the factory. Ian was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to burgle but was then released without charge. He later turned the drama into a best-selling book called Dustbingate – The Plot To Rubbish Prescott, which made him and his friends more than £100,000.

Father-of-two Ian, 52, says he was looking forward to a much bigger payday when Coogan’s film company Baby Cow told him they were keen to turn his book into a film. Ian’s son Andrew Newton-Lee, an actor who has appeared in Coronation Street and Hollyoaks, held meetings with Baby Cow, who are based in London’s Oxford Street.

Ian says he was told senior executives at Coogan’s company loved his script. Then he received a shock email from Sarah Mahoney, the comedy executive at Baby Cow, telling him they were dropping the project because of a threatening phone call.

Her message read: “Ian, Baby Cow have had a rather menacing call from someone who wouldn’t leave their name but said they were from the Labour Party. We were told to drop all ideas of making Dustbingate and any (British film industry) funding was threatened. Can you please make it clear to whoever it is you talk to henceforth that Baby Cow are not involved in the project?

“Obviously it’s not nice to be threatened like this, especially as we’re pretty much all fully paid-up members of the Labour Party! Hope all is well, best, S.”

A furious Ian said: “It’s only a comedy film. We live in a democracy, they can’t go around threatening people. This seems to have been an attempt by someone in the Labour Party to sink it.

“Sarah Mahoney had read my script and loved it and rang me up and then she had a couple of meetings with my son. Everyone was getting along famously and then I get this email saying they’ve had threats. Nearly all the films Coogan’s firm make are done with the help of Film Council grants.”

A Manchester-based branch of the firm was set up two years ago after it got a grant from the North West Vision Regional Attraction Fund, an organisation funded by the UK Film Council.

Mr Prescott, 67, was humiliated by a ITV1 drama called Confessions Of A Diary Secretary last February which told how he cheated on wife Pauline with Tracy Temple, 43. He was portrayed as a Carry On-style sex maniac who kept his socks on while making love.

Mr Prescott reacts with fury whenever the Dustbingate issue is mentioned. When one of his own press aides asked him about it two years ago he reportedly said: “If you mention that again I’ll put you through the ****ing floor.”

Last night Ms Mahoney could not be contacted but Henry Normal, who runs Baby Cow with Coogan, said: “We did get a curious call, which I presume was from a crank.”

A Labour Party spokesman said: “No one has been speaking for the Labour Party in regard to these matters.”

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