Getting sacked is his entire business model, and the numbers keep going up.
At a glance
- Known for
- British tabloid editor turned TV presenter and YouTube provocateur
- Before fame
- Wrote about his village cricket team for a local paper at 15
- Off-screen
- Lifelong Arsenal season ticket holder who publicly feuded with the club's own manager
Rise to Fame
The breakthrough was speed and nerve. At 29, Rupert Murdoch made him editor of the News of the World, the youngest person to run a British national paper in over half a century. He lasted a year before publishing photos that violated the editors' code of conduct. The Daily Mirror hired him anyway.
He ran it for nine years, won Newspaper of the Year in 2002, bought £67,000 in shares right before his own paper tipped them as a buy, survived the investigation, and got sacked in 2004 for publishing fake photographs of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. Two firings before 40. Most editors would disappear after one. He went on television.
In the Spotlight
The Meghan Markle walkoff was the best career move he's made since getting fired. He told 1.89 million Good Morning Britain viewers he didn't believe "a word she says," stormed off set, and drew 57,000 Ofcom complaints, breaking the regulator's record. Ofcom cleared him, calling restrictions on his views a "chilling restriction" on free speech.
News UK signed him to a reported £50 million deal. He moved Uncensored to YouTube in February 2024, ahead of TalkTV closing as a linear channel, bought the brand from News UK, and now runs it through Wake Up Productions, which pulled £17.1 million in revenue in 2024 with a staff of three. He's raising $30 million at a roughly $130 million valuation. The man who keeps getting fired from other people's networks is building his own.
Side Notes
The phone hacking question follows him like a debt he won't settle. At the Leveson Inquiry, he admitted hearing a recording of Paul McCartney's voicemail to Heather Mills but wouldn't say where he got it. Lord Justice Leveson called his testimony "utterly unpersuasive." In 2023, a High Court judge ruled he "knew about" hacking at the Mirror and was "involved in it." Prince Harry won £140,600 in damages against Mirror Group Newspapers.
He built a brand on saying what everyone else won't. That pitch works better when your own paper trail doesn't suggest you also listened to things you weren't supposed to hear.