Simon Regan

Simon Regan (7 August 1942 – 8 August 2000) was a British journalist best known for founding Scallywag magazine, which deliberately took risks with libellous articles about public figures. He also worked on the News of the World and late in his career focused on criminal convictions he believed were miscarriages of justice.

Regan was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, in a home for single mothers. He was brought up in Hampstead in a mansion owned by his grandmother, where many of the rooms were rented out. His parents were supporters of the Communist Party of Great Britain and were visited by many East European intellectuals. Regan attended Haverstock Comprehensive School, and wrote poetry for John O'London's Magazine while in his teens.

Having moved to Winchester, Hampshire, Regan became a journalist for a local paper before moving to London as a freelance. In March 1967, the Press Council criticised him for a piece he contributed to The Sun about a woman who had become pregnant after a sterilization operation.

He landed a staff job on the News of the World in 1967 where he specialised in writing stories exposing cannabis-taking, Trotskyite student conspiracies, a world he was close to as a user of cannabis himself. Despite often attacking senior staff at the News of the World, Regan was popular with readers and wrote his pieces in line with the newspaper's view. He also worked on police corruption stories.

After leaving the News of the World, Regan wrote biographies. He started with his former proprietor Rupert Murdoch, and then followed with two royal biographies. A reviewer found the biography of Murdoch "disgracefully ill-written and ill-constructed". Regan's biography of Prince Charles, "Charles, The Clown Prince", was based on letters and paintings by the young Prince which had been stolen from Buckingham Palace, and the Royal solicitors wrote to the publishers to remind them of the law of Copyright. His second royal biography, "Margaret - A Love Story", claimed to reveal details of Princess Margaret's love life.

Meanwhile, Regan became a freelance editor and public relations adviser. He founded a journal which he called "Butterfly News", chiefly to attack personal targets including Coca-Cola, the National Farmers Union and the main figures in butterfly collecting.

In April 1981, Regan obtained transcripts of telephone calls made by Prince Charles in Australia to Lady Diana Spencer, then his fiancée. In addition to revealing their intimate conversation, Charles could be heard making disparaging remarks about Malcolm Fraser, then Prime Minister of Australia, and about some aspects of Australian culture. They were bought by Die Aktuelle, a German magazine; the Prince and Lady Diana obtained an injunction preventing Regan from disclosing or publishing the contents of the transcripts, but Die Aktuelle was not affected and published the transcripts on 8 May despite a German court having also injuncted them against publication.

The Prince's lawyer later insisted that the tapes were forgeries, while Regan insisted they were genuine.