N-Dubz star Tulisa Contostavlos this week opened up to her I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here campmates about how her life fell apart after being “set up” in a tabloid drugs sting by the notorious Fake Sheikh.
The disgraced investigative journalist – real name Mazher Mahmood – was jailed for 15 months in 2016 after being found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
This came two years after the drugs trial of Ms Contostavlos collapsed over the former News of The World and The Sun reporter’s lies.
Mahmood was later found to have altered evidence.
But the man infamous for his celebrity stings, including the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson and late England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, was rumbled by one high-profile figure.
Dundee’s George Galloway.
And the politician was not quiet about his discovery.
Attempted sting from Fake Sheikh happened at London’s Dorchester Hotel
Galloway claimed Mahmood, in March 2006, tried to implicate him in illegal party funding and unsuccessfully encouraged him to make anti-Semitic remarks.
The Lochee native, who became the secretary and organiser of the Dundee Labour Party in 1977, was the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow at the time.
He said he was targeted by Mahmood – dressed in his Fake Sheikh disguise and going by the name Pervaiz Khan – and a colleague called Sam Fernando.
All of it was a sham.
Galloway went public following the meeting which happened at the Dorchester Hotel in London after he finished his Saturday evening show on TalkSport.
He then wrote a letter to Met Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair and House of Commons speaker Michael Martin following the botched undercover sting.
“They sought to implicate me in what would be illegal political funding and sought my agreement to anti-Semitic views, including Holocaust denial,” he said.
Galloway said he was “immediately suspicious”.
Pervaiz and Fernando began to ask him “ludicrous leading questions” about sponsoring members of parliament.
“They then made offensive statements about Jewish people and invited me to agree with them,” Galloway said in his statement.
How did George Galloway know they were imposters?
Mahmood’s sham character Pervaiz told Galloway his chauffeur wanted a selfie with him.
The politician said: “His driver was built like a bodyguard, had a mouthful of gold teeth and when I asked where he was from he answered, enigmatically: ‘From up north’.”
The MP said he was now convinced Pervaiz was the Fake Sheikh thanks to another City of Discovery connection – former Dundee High School pupil Andrew Marr.
Galloway later explained: “In Andrew Marr’s book [My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism], he interviews the ‘fake Sheikh’ Mazher Mahmood.
“He describes the Sheikh’s ‘minder’.
“Marr says he has a mouthful of gold teeth.
“From another source I’m now looking at a picture of the Fake Sheikh.
“It is, as I suspected, ‘Pervaiz’.”
Marr interviewed Mahmood, who left the Sunday Times in 1988 under a cloud, for his 2004 book on the media.
He made mention of the “giant with the golden smile”.
Galloway afterwards obtained two pictures of undercover operator Mahmood.
He told Met Police chief Sir Ian he was considering circulating them to “all MPs and more widely in order to protect others from this unscrupulous individual”.
‘It’s time for the last sheikhdown’
The picture of Mahmood briefly appeared on the Respect Party website only to be taken down following an injunction from the Murdoch-owned News of the World.
Galloway said: “The time has come to expose this man to the wider world.
“I call on the News of the World to retire him. It’s time for the last sheikhdown”.
The News of the World urged papers not to publish the picture.
A statement said: “As you will know, Mahmood works undercover.
“He is responsible for the conviction of more than 130 criminals.
“Both Mahmood and his family are the subject of death threats, which police regard as serious and credible.”
The News of the World eventually lost a High Court action to prevent publication.
But this didn’t stop his undercover work, with the Birmingham-born reporter revelling in his moniker as the self-proclaimed king of sting.
He has been accused of ruining the careers of several showbiz stars.
When the News of the World closed in 2011 in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal, the Fake Sheikh reappeared at its tabloid stablemate The Sun.
What happened to the Fake Sheikh?
It was not long before he created headlines again, with his ‘expose’ on N-Dubz star Tulisa setting Britain’s showbiz agenda.
However, in July 2014, her trial only lasted a week and the charges against the singer were dismissed after Mahmood was found to have tampered with evidence.
His driver Alan Smith was handed a 12-month suspended sentence while the shamed reporter was jailed for 15 months.
The Crown Prosecution Service later dropped a number of live cases which had involved Mahmood and reviewed 25 past convictions.
In court, as the Fake Sheikh prepared for life in prison, a voice from the public gallery shouted: “Your turn now, Mazher.”
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