Picture the scene. It's 1987, and a seaside town of Amble in the north of England has seen

much better days. It's cold, tired, and run down.

So when a wild dolphin appears in the harbor, it's the miracle everyone's been waiting for.

He's like a ray of light. The locals in Amble love him and name him Freddie.

Freddie loves them all back, but his favorite playmate is Alan Cooper, a committed animal

rights activist. Alan and the wild dolphins swim together for hundreds of magical hours

and a beautiful friendship is born. But when Alan is accused of taking his friendship

with the dolphin too far, he finds himself at the center of a tabloid scandal that grips

Britain and ends in one of the most bizarre court cases in legal history. You're about

to hear a clip from the new podcast Hooked on Freddie. If you'd like to hear more, search

for Hooked on Freddie wherever you get your podcasts.

September the 28th, 1990, is a fine day in Amble, a small coastal town on the tip of North

East England. But we're not in the town. We're about a quarter of a mile out in the North

Sea. A man's in the water wearing a wetsuit with yellow arms and he's just hanging there alone.

His name is Alan Cooper. And at first yes, he is all alone, but then something dark moves

at speed under the water. Circles, disappears and then resurples. Now we can see him.

It's a wild dolphin, a bottle nose and he wants to play. He twists onto his side, inviting

Alan to take hold of his dorsal fin. He will start to dive. Just go straight down

for about 20 feet and then come swiftly back up and you both explode out the water. It's

just out of this world, you know. I was in this time and I'm alright. Just something special.

That's when 10 hours didn't get worse than that. Yeah, if you could buckle up feeling and

sell it, you'd be a millionaire. Then Alan hears something in the distance, a boat coming

...