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hi I'm mccendigan and this is the tip-off, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes of some of the UK's best investigative journalism.

When you start an investigation, you don't always know where it's going to lead.

Some end in failure.

This is one of those stories.

Well, at least it starts that way.

My name is Billy Kenber and I'm an investigation reporter at the Times.

This is a story about pharmaceuticals. investigations reporter at the times.

This is a story about pharmaceuticals.

It's not an area that Billy was particularly interested in.

No, not at all. I hadn't never done anything on it before.

Not especially, I don't have any background in science. I was never particularly my thing.

As an investigations reporter, Billy was used to turning his hand to a lot of things.

In the past, he'd dug into students cheating at university exams or charity bosses pocketing huge sums.

But at the start of last year, he had begun thinking about the pharmaceutical industry,

and one potential money-making scheme had caught his eye.

It's something called pay-for-delay, which is a phenomenon that's been seen a little bit in the UK,

but largely in the US, and it's essentially where a drug company has invented a big new blockbuster drug.

...