This whole saga has been pretty crazy.
On Tuesday night the 5 of us (me Richard H, Grant, Stuart and Peter) were recording the next podcast episode (episode 32) which is due out on Sunday or Monday (hopefully). News of this broke just before we were going to record. We all instantly realised that this was a big deal, who wouldn't. It was a big story which was big news. I actually suggested that maybe we should delay recording for a week to let everything sink in and figure out whats what.
Having said that the others suggested that we record our show anyway and I was happy to go with the flow. That said, we were all massively distracted. Two members of the podcast even commented on this thread and Facebook whilst I was recording my NA section, the cheeky buggers!
So there we are: an episode recorded, but with no reference to the scandal and crimes being mentioned in it through fear of being out of date or inaccurate when it is eventually edited and released. Our release date wasn't due until Sunday or Monday as previously mentioned. A lot can happen in a few days.
Fast forward a few hours (early Wednesday morning), Grant announces that he has spoken with Jeff and he is prepared to come on and be interviewed/interrogated. The 5 of us then have several discussions regarding, if this is a good idea or not. If we even need to get involved, if this should be part of the next episode or a stand alone podcast. Speaking for myself, I was massively cautious about this tack but we ultimately decide that no harm can come of recording it. If it's not worth it then we forget about it, but if it's interesting then we can release it.
For a few hours we were discussing who it should be doing the interview. At this point we didn't have a structure, a question bank and had lots of reading to do (every post on this thread). Up until about 7.30pm last night I thought it was going to be Grant and Pete, as Stu was not available, Richard was doing another (Rebel Briefing) interview at 7.15pm and I had been in work all day and out of the loop until about 4pm. It was then suggested that as Grant knows Jeff (a bit), he shouldn't be involved and it should be me, Richard and Pete (Richard had now finished his other mini interview). I copied several of the key questions from this thread that everybody kept asking and wrote down several of my own. We had about 5 minutes to hatch out a plan.
We rolled with it. This is the scrappiest interview we have done. This is raw. There is no fancy editing, no sound effects, no laughs, no TVR podcast stuff or format. This is just our intro and the interview. This is how we can get it out so quick. I'm not even sure if we need to rerecord a small segment for episode 32, we haven't even discussed that yet. It'll be odd releasing 32 with no mention of this whatsoever.
This has been a crazy 60+ hours for the community and there are a lot of pissed off people. I have one baggie. It is a SW B baggie. It is a fake baggie. I'm a bit pissed off about that.
We are standing by to have the accusers on (as Frank alone or all of the chaps involved in the claim) to reply to what has been said.
The recording has now been listened to by Grant and Stu and will get uploaded onto our podbean account as soon as Richard is home from work.
Not our best work by far. It highlights our weaknesses as interviewers (especially me as the most inexperienced) but it's important to get this message out there.
There is no question that Frank is one of the main authorities, if not the main authority on baggies. His identification of fakes is a 'knowledge and passion' fuelled discovery that has rocked the collecting world. Without contributors like Frank, the collecting community would be nothing.
This interview is an opportunity to get the guy who has been publically vilified as a manufacturer and distributer of fake baggies to get his side of the story over. We went into the interview agreeing that the baggies that were shown on the thread were fake as Frank has identified. We wanted to know if he was the faker as is claimed. We had questions and we wanted answers.
I think this will be uploaded by about 2.30PM UK time (less than 3 hours).
