The Crown season 4 leaves out some very important
details about Michael Fagan
"
I was scareder than I'd ever been in my life."
BY DAVID
OPIE
18/11/2020
https://www.digitalspy.com/tv/a34652544/michael-fagan-now-the-crown/
The Crown
prides itself on revealing the humanity of its royal subjects, unveiling what
really went on behind closed doors in Buckingham Palace. For the most part,
season four continues this tradition in typically impressive fashion, but
there's one episode in particular that flips this dynamic entirely, smashing
through those doors to explore the humanity of the Queen's subjects at large.
At the
start of 'Fagan', the Royal Family reluctantly agree to meet members of the
public. Princess Margaret is particularly resentful of this, but as a relative
points out to her, it's "good for you to meet someone normal – to tell you
how it is". Two worlds brush up against each other in formal, courteous
fashion here, reminding us how detached the royals really are when it comes to
the people they're supposed to serve.
Of course,
that's all just preamble to the episode's true focus, a bizarre security breach
where the worlds of royal and working class people collide in far more unsettling
fashion.
On July, 9,
1982, a London-born decorator named Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace
(for a second time!) and entered the Queen's bedroom while she slept. According
to The Crown's dramatisation, Fagan and Her Majesty discussed the dangerous
impact of Thatcherism on working class Britain, and while yes, an arrest was
eventually made, the pair parted in fairly cordial fashion: "I shall bear
in mind what you said."
It's a nice
sentiment, one that's perhaps more relevant than ever in 2020, but
unfortunately, it's also far more fictionalised than even the most cynical of
viewers might expect.
Speaking to
The Telegraph ahead of season four's launch, a 70-year-old Fagan revealed that
The Crown writer Peter Morgan "used a lot of artistic licence" to
tell his story, choosing to not even ask Michael for any input. And that whole
conversation with the Queen? It didn't really happen, or at least, not in the
way that Morgan wrote it.
Fagan first
broke into the palace a month earlier, in June 1982. While that escapade is
featured in the episode, he recalled some more bizarre details that didn't make
the cut of the Crown episode during a 2012 interview with The Independent:
"I
found rooms saying 'Diana's room', 'Charles's room'; they all had names on
them. But I couldn't find a door which said 'WC'. All I found were some bins
with 'corgi food' written on them. I was breaking my neck to go to the toilet.
What do I do? Pee on the carpet? So I had to pee on the corgi food. I got into
Charles's room and took the wine off the shelf and drunk it. It was cheap
Californian."
It seems
that Peter Morgan thought urine-soaked corgi food might be a tad distasteful
for Netflix's more prestigious clientele. However, that scene where Fagan
popped his butt on the Queen's throne did actually happen!
"I was
loving it," he recalled. "It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears;
I tried one throne and was like 'this one's too soft'. I was having a laugh to
myself because there was one right next to it, so I tried another... I liked
the picture and thought I'd look at it till someone comes, but nobody
came."
Eventually,
Fagan just left, evading Buckingham Palace security with relative ease. So much
so, in fact, that he decided to break in again on July 9.
According
to Scotland Yard's report (as reproduced in the New York Times), Fagan climbed
the railings near the Ambassadors' Entrance at around 6.45am. Hidden behind a
temporary canvas awning, he then entered the palace itself through an unlocked
window on the ground floor. The room he climbed into housed King George V's
multimillion-pound stamp collection. Alarms were triggered twice by Fagan's
arrival, but the police turned them off, assuming that it was just a mistake.
Who would want to steal some old stamps, eh?
Fagan then
decided to seek higher ground, so he shimmied up a drainpipe outside the room
and onto the flat roof above. A narrow ledge provided him with access to an
office of the Master of the Household, Vice Adm. Sir Peter Ashmore. Just like
on the show, Fagan was spotted by a member of the domestic staff soon after,
but for whatever reason, she wasn't suspicious enough of him to raise the
alarm.
By
following the pictures on the wall, Fagan eventually found his way to the
palace's private apartments. Before meeting the Queen, Michael entered an
anteroom first where he broke a glass ashtray. At 7.15am, he then entered Her
Majesty's bedroom, carrying a piece of the broken ashtray with him. According
to the Scotland Yard report, Fagan told police that he planned to harm himself
in the Queen's presence, something which The Crown skipped over in its version
of events.
In his
aforementioned 2012 interview with The Independent, Fagan described opening the
Queen's curtains with much theatricality. "I was scareder than I'd ever
been in my life," he said. "Then she speaks and it's like the finest
glass you can imagine breaking: 'Wawrt are you doing here?!'"
Not only
did Fagan take great delight in describing the royal chamber, he also shared
some surprisingly intimate details about the Queen's nightwear:
"It
was a double bed but a single room, definitely – she was sleeping in there on
her own. Her nightie was one of those Liberty prints and it was down to her
knees."
To be fair,
The Crown doesn't deviate from this part of the story much either. And just
like on the show, real-life Lizzy did try and raise the alarm, but the police
sergeant stationed outside had already clocked off when domestic staff arrived
at 6am, leaving the Queen alone with her intruder. When a call to the palace
telephonist didn't lead to the police arriving, the Queen called again six
minutes later.
According
to the Scotland Yard report: "Before police officers arrived, Her Majesty
attracted the attention of the maid, and together they ushered Fagan into a
nearby pantry on the pretext of supplying him with a cigarette. They were
joined there by the footman, who had returned from exercising the dogs.
"While
Her Majesty kept the dogs away as the man was getting agitated, the footman
helped to keep Fagan in the pantry by supplying him with cigarettes until first
one and then another police officer arrived and removed him."
Where real
life and The Crown deviate most is when it comes to the conversation that
followed. On the show, Fagan implores the Queen to "save us all" from
Margaret Thatcher, arguing that her brutal policies are "destroying the
country". And by the end of their chat, Fagan and our country's sovereign
come to some sort of understanding, despite the awkward circumstances of their
encounter.
In reality,
few words were actually exchanged, at least, according to Fagan's 2020
interview with The Telegraph: "I pulled back the curtain and she said,
'What are you doing here?'" he said. "She talks like me and you,
normal. Well, I sound a bit common so maybe not like that. But very
normal."
He must
have made this observation rather quickly though, because the Queen didn't hang
around for long. "I'll be back in a minute," she said, according to
the Telegraph interview with Fagan, before darting out of the room. "She
walked out on her little legs. Then a footman comes in and goes, 'You look like
you need a drink, mate'."
The
footman, Paul Whybrew, took Fagan down the corridor for some whiskey, and then
the police arrived. "They were all over the place – they hadn't arrested
anyone for years, they were on a retirement posting, on guard duty," Fagan
recalled to The Telegraph. "One of them was fumbling around for his
notebook."
Why did
Fagan break into the palace?
During his
2012 interview with The Independent, Fagan explained that drug abuse played a
key role in these events:
"I
went back because I thought, 'that's naughty, that's naughty that I can walk
round there'... I forgot you're only supposed to take a little handful [of
magic mushrooms]," he recalled. "Two years later I was still coming
down. I was high on mushrooms for a long, long time."
Alcohol has
also been blamed to some degree. And then there was the break-up of Michael's
marriage to also consider. His wife, Christine, left him just weeks earlier,
which must have had a huge impact on his mental state.
According
to Charlotte Hodgman, editor of BBC History Revealed, Fagan told his wife that
he was visiting a girlfriend in SW1 named Elizabeth Regina (via The Sun).
Apparently, this "Elizabeth" had four children, and she was a little
bit older than him...
It wasn't
until Fagan spoke to BBC Radio 4 as part of its Famous for Fifteen Minutes
series in 1993 that the biggest reasons behind his behaviour became apparent:
"The
Queen, to me, represented all that was keeping me down and [my] lack of voice.
I just wanted her to know what it feels like to just be an ordinary chap trying
to make ends meet." Presenter Jenni Mills asked Fagan if he had wanted to
be caught, to which he said, "Yes, just to make that statement: I am, I
am…"
In this
sense, The Crown actually nailed the conversation scene, weaving Fagan's
thoughts from this radio interview into his encounter with the Queen,
maximising their impact.
What
happened to Michael Fagan?
Following
both intrusions, then-home secretary Willie Whitelaw offered his resignation to
the Queen, but she refused. Maggie Thatcher also visited the palace to offer
her apologies, an event which we see play out in The Crown.
But what
happened to Fagan himself?
In
September 1982, Fagan was tried for burglary at the Old Bailey after he drank a
bottle of wine in the palace. He wasn't tried for trespassing too as back in
1982, that was only a civil offence. In 2007, Buckingham Palace became a
'designated site' under section 128 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police
Act 2005, which makes trespass there a criminal offence.
The jury
took just 14 minutes to acquit Fagan of his burglary charge, but the judge then
committed Michael for psychiatric evaluation. This led to a three-month stint
in the top-security Park Lane psychiatric hospital in Liverpool. After a
seven-hour mental health tribunal in January 1983, Fagan walked free, much to
the chagrin of Conservative politicians who feared the impact his release may
have.
Upon his
release, he recorded a cover version of the 1977 Sex Pistols song 'God Save the
Queen' with a punk band called the Bollock Brothers, because why the hell not?
It failed to set the charts alight. Fagan then had further brushes with the law
– in 1997, he was sentenced to a four-year stint in prison, for three charges
of supplying heroin.
Since The
Crown's fourth season dropped on Netflix, the real Michael Fagan has responded
to his portrayal on the show in a brand new interview. Speaking to The Sun,
Fagan criticised The Crown for making him "too ugly", adding that the
actor who plays him, Tom Brooke, has "no charisma".
According
to Michael, the way his on-screen counterpart creeped around corridors was
"complete fiction". Fagan recalls: "I wasn't avoiding anyone – I
was looking for the Queen. If anyone had turned up, I would have just said I
wanted to talk to her."
While
Michael says he didn't knock over a vase – "That's totally made up" –
he admits that the show did get it right when it came to the break-in itself:
"It's true I got in the window after climbing a drainpipe. But I only drank
half a bottle of red wine in the office of Prince Charles's private secretary –
and I have to say it wasn't anything special."
Fagan says
that it's also not true that he woke the Queen up: "She was wide awake
when I got in there." And according to Michael, he definitely did not ask
ol' Lizzie for a cigarette. "That would have been cheeky and disrespectful
and something I just wouldn't do."
Discussing
the episode as a whole, Fagan expressed further dissatisfaction with how The
Crown portrayed him, explaining that Brooke's version of him was "much
more ill-mannered and threatening than I was. I was a bit dumbstruck after
walking in on her like that."
He
continued: "I was taken aback when I saw Brooke playing me. They could
have surely found someone who looks a bit like me. I'm actually better looking
and he seems totally charmless."
2020 hasn't
been particularly kind to Fagan (or anyone else for that matter either), but
he's still here, after suffering a heart attack and contracting COVID-19. The
Queen is here too, continuing to serve now as Britain's longest-reigning
monarch. What we'll perhaps never know is what Elizabeth II thinks when she
looks back at her encounter with Fagan. Did it help open her eyes to
working-class struggles, or was it merely an unsettling chapter the Queen would
rather forget?
In his 2012
interview with The Independent, published a few months before the Queen's
diamond jubilee, Fagan wished Elizabeth all the best. "I hope she lives to
be a hundred. If she does, I'll send her a hundredth-birthday telegram."
As kind as that is, something tells us that he won't be invited to the royal
party. But then again, that probably wouldn't stop Fagan. It's not like he
needed an invitation to pop by before.
Michael Fagan on Buckingham Palace break-in: ‘Her
nightie was one of those Liberty prints, down to her knees’
The man who, 38 years ago, climbed a drainpipe and
broke into Buckingham Palace, not once but twice, recalls the moment he came
face to face with the Queen. Emily Dugan meets Michael Fagan
The fourth
season of The Crown, released on Netflix on 15 November explores one of the
biggest security breaches in modern history - how Michael Fagan was able to get
into the Queen’s bedroom at Buckingham Palace, totally unchallenged. In 2012,
The Independent met the man himself to ask how he did it, and why.
Michael
Fagan makes an unlikely criminal mastermind. The architect of the biggest royal
security breach of the 20th century – sitting in a Wetherspoon's pub, sporting
socks, sandals, an oversized parka and a winter hat with ear flaps – is more of
a contender for the title of Britain's Most Embarrassing Grandpa.
Nevertheless,
in 1982, a 32-year-old Fagan scaled the barbed-wire-topped, 14ft wall of
Buckingham Palace and shinned up a drainpipe before wandering into the Queen's
bedroom and a place in history.
As the
Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, it is unlikely she'll want to dwell on
the memory of the security debacle that allowed the unkempt, bare-footed and
slightly tipsy Fagan to pull back the curtains of her four-poster. It has been
decades since he gave an interview, but he agreed to meet The Independent last
week at his local pub in north London's Holloway Road.
He says he
doesn't like giving interviews, but warms to telling his tale pretty quickly.
"I was scareder than I'd ever been in my life," he says, widening his
eyes theatrically as he recalls the moment he pulled back the curtains to see
the Queen staring up at him. "Then she speaks and it's like the finest
glass you can imagine breaking: 'Wawrt are you doing here?!'"
He insists
he has "great respect" for the Queen. Not apparently as great as the
pleasure he takes in sharing the details of his moment in the royal chamber:
"It was a double bed but a single room, definitely – she was sleeping in
there on her own," he giggles. "Her nightie was one of those Liberty
prints and it was down to her knees."
Reports at
the time suggested the Queen had a long conversation with Fagan to stall him
while security was summoned. Fagan tells it differently: "Nah! She went
past me and ran out of the room; her little bare feet running across the
floor."
Why he also
had bare feet has long been a mystery. He clears this up: "I got my
sandals returned to me two years later by the security guard. 'These are
Michael's sandals, we found them on the roof,' they said."
Before
pitching up rudely at the Queen's bedside, Fagan wandered around the palace,
via King George V's multimillion-pound stamp collection, triggering the alarm
twice. Police turned it off – assuming the warnings were errors. The resulting
scandal prompted the then Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, to offer his
resignation to the Queen.
When,
finally, the Queen managed to summon help, it was an unarmed footman who stood
watch until the police came. Fagan recalls, with increasing licence: "The
footman came and said, 'Cor, fucking hell mate, you look like you need a
drink'. His name was [Paul] Whybrew, which is a funny name for someone offering
you a drink, innit? He took me to the Queen's pantry, across the landing, where
I presume she cooks her baked beans and toast and whatever – and takes a bottle
of Famous Grouse from the shelf and pours me a glass of whisky."
He says the
night of his arrest was not the first time he had sneaked into the palace: a
month earlier he broke in and managed to spend most of the night inside before
leaving again undetected. His wife, Christine, had just left him. He climbed in
through the window of a shocked maid's bedroom; she ran straight to security.
But when they found nobody in her room they thought she'd imagined it, leaving
Fagan free to explore undisturbed.
He didn't
make it as far as the Queen's chamber on that occasion: "I found rooms
saying 'Diana's room', 'Charles's room'; they all had names on them. But I
couldn't find a door which said 'WC'. All I found were some bins with 'corgi
food' written on them. I was breaking my neck to go to the toilet. What do I
do? Pee on the carpet? So I had to pee on the corgi food. I got into Charles's
room and took the wine off the shelf and drunk it. It was cheap Californian.
"I was
loving it... It was like Goldilocks and the Three Bears; I tried one throne and
was like 'this one's too soft'. I was having a laugh to myself because there
was one right next to it, so I tried another. He demonstrates how he reclined
on a chair to view the Queen's art, putting his feet up on the pub table:
"I was sitting like this – see. I liked the picture and thought I'd look
at it till someone comes, but nobody came.
"It
was harder to get out than get in. I eventually found a door and walked out
into the back gardens, climbed over the wall and walked down the Mall, looking
back and thinking 'ooh'. I hadn't thought about going in there until that last
second when it came into my head to do it, so I was shocked."
Days after
the first break-in he was arrested for stealing a car in London, driving it to
Stonehenge in search of his wife. He was sent to Brixton prison and after three
weeks was released on bail. The next day he went to the palace for the second
time. He has no regrets. "It's brought me adversity, but I can laugh about
it and that's the main thing. I wouldn't do it again. I think security is tightened
up now."
Even all
these years later, he cannot explain his motivation. "I don't know why I
did it, something just got into my head," he says, breaking into a Pink
Floyd song: "There's someone in my head and it's not me..."
Describing his second visit, he adds: "I went back because I thought
'that's naughty, that's naughty that I can walk round there'." He suggests
the whole incident stemmed from putting too many magic mushrooms in his soup
five months earlier. "I forgot you're only supposed to take a little
handful. Two years later I was still coming down. I was high on mushrooms for a
long, long time."
Drugs have
played a big part in his life, one way or another. The oldest of three
children, he was brought up in north-east London by his mum, Ivy, and dad,
Michael, who was a steel erector and a "champion safe-breaker".
He left
home at 16 and started working as a painter and decorator, but never really
developed an accommodation with the world of work. Before the palace break-in,
life revolved around petty crime, drugs and getting up to mischief. When the
brief flare of fame in the Eighties after the break-in – he released a version
of "God Save the Queen" with the Bollock Brothers – sputtered, he went
back to what he knew.
In the past
three decades he has been charged with – among other things – assaulting a
police officer, dealing heroin and indecent exposure. The last was a
"misunderstanding" while smoking dope and fishing with friends.
Diving into the water to retrieve a net, he took his trousers off because they
were wet and was seen by a woman from a distance. He is indignant: "It was
said in court 'he had a huge erection', but this woman can't have been from
this planet! Her husband must be like that," he says, measuring a tiny
distance with his thumb and forefinger.
In truth he
is more prankster than gangster. He blames his heroin-dealing conviction – his
most serious – on getting back together with his ex-wife, Christine, "When
she came back I got into it. I had to try it and it did cause me a bit of
grief. I got four years for dealing. The people I was serving, one was a
company director, the son of a lord. They were all business people and they
liked coming to me."
Though he
talks about drug dealing in the past tense he seems high during our interview:
his pupils like pinpricks as he leaps constantly up and down on his seat. I ask
if he still does drugs? He sniffs and allows his mouth to stretch into a
knowing grin.
As we take
our leave, I ask if he has a message for Her Majesty in her Diamond Jubilee
year. "Yeah, 60 years – that's fucking great! I hope she beats Victoria. I
hope she lives to be a hundred. If she does, I'll send her a hundredth-birthday
telegram."
Curriculum
vitae
1950 Born
in Clerkenwell, London, to Michael and Ivy Fagan; two younger sisters, Margaret
and Elizabeth.
1955
Attends Compton Street School, London.
1966 Leaves
home at 16. Works as a painter and decorator.
1972
Marries Christine, with whom he has four children.
1982 Breaks
into Buckingham Palace twice in a month; the second time he makes it into the
Queen's bedroom and speaks to her. Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw offers his
resignation over the security breach; the Queen refuses. Fagan is sent to
Brixton Prison and Park Lane secure mental institution on unrelated offences of
taking a car and assault.
1983
Releases a version of "God Save the Queen" with the Bollock Brothers.
1984
Attacks a policeman in a café in Fishguard, Wales, and is given a three-month
suspended jail sentence.
1987 Found
guilty of indecent exposure after a woman motorist saw him running around with
no trousers on at a waste ground in Chingford, Essex.
1997 Fagan,
his wife and their son Arran, 20, are charged with conspiring to supply heroin.
Fagan goes to prison for four years.
2002
Witnesses Uri Geller and Michael Jackson board a train at Paddington Station.
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