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Andrew Jennings has been chasing bad men around the world for three decades. The 1980s were spent pondering the curious relationship between London's top gangster and the city's top detective. He made a one-hour documentary the BBC will still not show so he quit and, with Paul Greengrass (United 93), remade it for Granada TV's World In Action programme in 1986. That brought the first award.
He graduated in organized crime by filming nose to nose with the Mob in Palermo as they exported tonnes of heroin to England and America. This was essential preparation for his next investigation: the International Olympic Committee.
Revealing that the IOC’s president was an unrepentant jack-booting, right-arm waving Franco fascist got him a 5-day jail sentence in Lausanne, Switzerland. Blue-shirted Juan Antonio Samaranch denied the photographic evidence, lied his head off in court and as he lied, senior IOC members and officials nodded their heads supportively.
Currently Andrew is the only reporter in the world banned from FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s press conferences. He suspects the leader of the People’s Game fears this reporter might stand up and wave embarrassing items from his unique archive of confidential FIFA documents.
His new book about FIFA is in 12 languages, despite an attempt by Herr Blatter using FIFA funds in Switzerland to persuade a Zurich court to impose a global ban (Yes, global, really!)
After 20 years elsewhere Andrew was welcomed back into the bosom of the BBC and the accompanying Panorama programme has violence and bad language – all off the pitch, by FIFA officials and directed at him.
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At other times he’s been traumatised by Syrian artillery in Beirut, charmed by the Sandinistas, devoured illicit lumps of caviar with Chechen freedom fighters in the Caucasus mountains and been disgusted by a Utah polygamist parading his five teenage brides in a trailer park at the end of 100 miles of dirt track. The sixth was sulking and wouldn’t come out to be interviewed.
Andrew Jennings has won lots of awards in Europe and America. He writes for media everywhere, tabloid and highbrow, his television films are shown globally, he delivers polemics at academic conferences and urges journalism students to write investigations stylishly and humorously.
Some books ...
1989: Scotland Yard's Cocaine Connection. The story of the strange relationship between London's top gangster and the city's top detective - and how the cop never arrested the crook who was organising Britain's biggest ever cocaine importation.
1992: The Lords of the Rings was a smash hit translated into 13 languages. The Lords and its disclosures of Olympic corruption and the fascist background of the IOC president changed world perceptions of the organization forever. Published in USA as Dishonest Games.
Sports Illustrated lists it as one of the Top One Hundred Sports Books of all Time.
1996: The New Lords of the Rings: Olympic Corruption & How to Buy Gold Medals. Top of the UK best-selling sports books list for five weeks and in top ten of all sports books published that year. Translated into German, Danish, Norwegian, Japanese and Spanish. Pirated in Chinese - twice, Hong Kong and Taiwan, and in Korean.
2000: The Great Olympic Swindle. The explosive story of organised crime and the Olympics, how the IOC fooled the world into thinking it reformed itself after the cash-and-sex-for-votes scandals - and the secret documents revealing how the IOC spent USD2 million on American spin-doctors to mislead a pliant media.
2006: Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-rigging and Ticket Scandals. Harper Collins (in English – lots of translations)