SPOILER ALERT: This story discusses main plot developments within the podcast “Hooked on Freddie,” at the moment obtainable on Wondery, in addition to the true story it’s primarily based on.
Has there ever been a greater elevator pitch than “dolphin intercourse scandal”?
On the face of it, Wondery’s new podcast “Hooked on Freddie” is about exactly that. However the six-part collection goes deeper, delving beneath the sensational headlines to analyze how a scurrilous rumor within the early Nineties almost got here to destroy a person’s life.
Hosted by journalist Becky Milligan, the podcast tells the story of a wild bottlenose dolphin who turned up off the coast of Amble, an English city by the North Sea, within the mid Eighties. Nicknamed Freddie by native college kids, the mammal quickly turned a nationwide sensation, with folks travelling throughout the nation – and even from the U.S. – to try to get near him.
Certainly one of them was Milligan herself, then a scholar journalist in her early 20s, who was making an audio documentary. The early ‘90s was a time when folks have been “dolphin nuts,” Milligan recollects when she sits down for an interview with Selection, citing the proliferation of dolphinariums and movies corresponding to 1996 hit “Flipper.” She determined to do a narrative about how swimming with dolphins might assist folks affected by scientific despair. A supply urged she head to Amble the place she discovered a sailor to take her out into the freezing and uneven North Sea. “He threw me within the water after which I noticed this fin coming in direction of me,” Milligan recollects. “I actually thought I used to be going to throw up.”
Remarkably, the journalist retained all her recordings from the documentary (“I maintain most of my previous cassettes,” she says. “I’ve baggage and baggage and baggage.”) which have now been repurposed for the brand new podcast. In addition to capturing the sounds of Amble within the early Nineties, the recordings tackle a higher poignancy since lots of the sources she spoke to on the time – together with the sailor who threw her into the water – have now died.
“It was simply so pretty to listen to these voices come again to life,” she says. “And it jogged my memory of how a lot I had barely dismissed swimming with a dolphin. I assumed I wanted to do it for the documentary however, the truth is, it simply punches the air out of you. It takes your breath away.”
The story of Freddie the dolphin and the way he revitalized an previous, depressed coal mining city within the North of England stayed with Milligan over the a long time, whilst she moved on to onerous information and battle reporting, together with a stint at The Sunday Instances of London. “It was one thing that bubbled away.”
So when she joined Blanchard Home, a podcasting outfit based by Rosie Pye and Kimberly Jung in 2021, she pitched the story of Freddie as a type of redemption story about Amble and its residents. “I assumed it was a fantastic story of this city, down on its heel, and a dolphin modifications its fortunes,” she recollects. “After which it obtained actually wild.”
After stumbling throughout the “wild” half, the main focus of her story shifted and a brand new protagonist emerged alongside Freddie: Alan Cooper, an animal rights activist who had developed an unusually shut relationship with the dolphin. Within the early Nineties Cooper would steadily go to the North Sea to swim with Freddie. In return, the dolphin would at all times bathe Cooper with consideration every time he was within the water. However occasions took a flip when Cooper turned embroiled in a feud with Peter Bloom, a dolphin coach from a close-by zoo, who was additionally a daily Freddie customer.
Though the origins of the rumor are nonetheless in dispute, in some unspecified time in the future somebody claimed to have seen Cooper masturbating Freddie. The fabrication swept by means of the city earlier than materializing right into a felony cost. In 1991, Cooper stood trial for sexually assaulting a dolphin, sending Britain’s tabloid press right into a frenzy. Though it took the jury lower than an hour to return a unanimous not responsible verdict the expertise – which included briefly being locked in a jail cell after his arrest – stayed with Cooper for all times.
“Mud sticks,” says Milligan. “When you’re accused of one thing, how do you ever rub that clear and get well from it?” The accusation was all of the extra painful as a result of Cooper, who even now, in his seventies, stays a dedicated vegan, was a passionate advocate of animal rights. “It was the worst factor he could possibly be accused of in his thoughts.”
Unsurprisingly, when Milligan first approached Cooper about taking part within the podcast, he was lower than enthusiastic. “He didn’t significantly need to speak about it, he doesn’t belief anybody within the media, doesn’t belief any journalists. He felt very suspicious as a result of he was laughed at a lot,” she recollects. However the animal rights activist additionally harbored a need to set the file straight (in 2013 he self-published an autobiography about his relationship with Freddie and subsequent arrest.)
For Milligan, dredging up the main points was a fragile process. “I used to be very cautious,” she explains. “I felt I had an unlimited obligation of care to verify his story was advised actually fairly intently to what his memoir is, however we wanted to again it up with all of the details.” There was additionally the truth that the accusation was, regardless of the injury it did, plain humorous. “It’s actually humorous,” acknowledges Milligan, saying that typically she and Cooper would discover themselves laughing (within the podcast, even Cooper’s lawyer admits he thought the cost was “hilarious” when it first landed on his desk).
“It’s loopy. It’s wild. It’s simply mad. However I believe it’s additionally that critical aspect, it may well flip very simply out and in of that,” she explains, referring to the very actual horror Cooper skilled as his trial approached in addition to the knock-on impact the accusation had on his life. “This factor that’s so humorous really was kind of weaponized to be able to damage somebody.”
Wondery have turned a variety of their podcasts into high-end drama collection, amongst them “WeCrashed” starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway and “The Shrink Subsequent Door” with Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell. Will “Hooked on Freddie” be subsequent? Rosie Pye, who can be Blanchard Home’s inventive director, declines to touch upon discussions a few display adaptation however emphasizes that the podcasting outfit particularly appears to be like for tales with character and plot.
“And ‘Hooked on Freddie’ has that in spades,” she says. “What the crew tried to give attention to was doing justice to fairly an advanced story which is wild and absurd and humorous but in addition very profound and really common and human.”
