BBC host Laura Kuenssberg has revealed the interview that “sticks” with her the most is when Michelle Mone confessed to being a liar.
Scots bra tycoon Mone spent two years fiercely denying through an army of lawyers any involvement with the firm PPE Medro, which had earned over £200million worth of Government contracts to supply face masks and surgical gowns during the Covid pandemic.
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But in 2023 it was revealed that the Tory life peer and her three adult children had received £29million from the company via her second husband Doug Barrowman.
That led to a “Prince Andrew-style” TV showdown with the politics presenter on her weekly show Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
Appearing alongside Barrowman, 60, Baroness Mone, 53, made the jaw-dropping confession: “I can’t see what we’ve done wrong. Lying to the press is not a crime.”
Now in a two-part BBC documentary The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone to be shown next week, Laura, 48, said: “In the end they were bizarrely quite honest about not having told the truth. Which is quite a strange experience.
“Then as she so memorably said, ‘But Laura, it’s not a crime to lie’ That’s a phrase that will always stick with me.”
The controversy started when Lady Mone had used her government links to access a VIP Lane for fast track PPE procurement.
But the former owner of bra company Ultimo then aggressively denied for three years that she and Barrowman had any connections to the company PPE Medro.
When it was revealed that Mone and her family had personally benefitted from the contracts she announced she was stepping down from the House of Lords.
Questions were then asked in parliament by the then leader of the opposition Sir Keir Starmer about how nearly £30million had ended up in the bank account of the Scottish businesswoman.
Recalling before the build-up to the car-crash interview, Laura said: “They obviously knew they had been lying at the beginning of it. So they felt they were in this trap.
“On the day (of the interview) the whole experience was eerily calm. There’s no question Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman became the pantomime villains in the story of the huge shambles of what went wrong with PPE.
“For Michelle, being able to grab public attention was always something she had in spades during her business career but things went wrong for her and you can’t turn that attention off.”
Mone and Barrowman are currently being investigated by the National Crime Agency.
The couple continue to deny any wrongdoing.
*The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone begins on BBC Scotland on Monday May 26 at 10pm and BBC Two on May 28 at 9pm. Both episodes are available on BBC iPlayer from Monday.
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