Ep. 45 Strings attached
The Tip Off
The Tip Off
4.7 • 650 Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
BBC journalist Ellie Flynn is nervous, she is about to go undercover to meet a man who is offering a bed in his flat, but there is a catch…
For weeks Ellie travelled the country meeting men who were advertising rent in exchange for sex. This is how she produced a documentary for BBC Three about this shockingly prevalent practice.
Read all about it:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y93q5
Hosted and produced: Maeve McClenaghan
Production support: Alice Miliken
Theme music: Dice Muse
This series of The Tip-Off is brought to you with support from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and funding from Charities Aid Foundation. Thanks to our Patreon supporters who make these stories possible - you can support us at: https://www.patreon.com/thetipoff
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name's Ellie Flynn. I'm an investigative journalist and I make documentaries for the BBC. |
| 0:10.3 | Our story today starts back in 2017. |
| 0:14.3 | Ellie had been working for years in journalism at that point, but always online. |
| 0:19.5 | TV was new to her. |
| 0:21.6 | But she'd found herself pitching an idea for a TV series to BBC 3. |
| 0:26.6 | It would be a series of investigative documentaries that uncovered shocking stories. |
| 0:31.6 | And there was one story which she immediately knew that she wanted to tell. |
| 0:36.6 | Months earlier, she'd been working at a tablo newspaper. which she immediately knew that she wanted to tell. |
| 0:41.3 | Months earlier, she'd been working at a tableau newspaper when she'd spotted a story in the local press. |
| 0:45.3 | Intrigued, it was an idea that stayed with her. |
| 0:49.0 | I'm Mawke McClendigan. This is the tip-off. |
| 0:58.7 | Music this is the tip-off. I just saw a local news report that said that there were these adverts on Craigslist that were |
| 1:03.2 | advertising free accommodation in exchange for sexual favours. |
| 1:06.9 | And I remember thinking that's really concerning. |
| 1:09.0 | I wonder if it's happening outside of just this one town. |
| 1:12.1 | That story had sparked her interest. |
| 1:14.5 | And so while she was thinking of ideas for the TV show, |
| 1:17.5 | she found herself digging in a bit deeper, |
| 1:20.3 | trawling through Craigslist postings for other examples |
| 1:23.4 | of people offering accommodation in exchange for sexual favours. |
| 1:27.9 | There were a couple of other websites that we started looking at the Craigslist pretty quickly |
| 1:32.7 | established itself as the main place to find these adverts. |
... |
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