The messy side hustle of London’s new reality TV star
We want our £15 back, Daniel Daggers
Morning — Netflix’s new reality series on selling London homes for millions may have bombed with critics this week, but the show has embraced the hate. That includes its frontman, the self-styled ‘Mr Super Prime’, who the Spy can reveal already has plans to capitalise on his new-found infamy: a school for estate agents. And, foolishly, we’ve enrolled as students. Daniel Daggers’s messy side hustle is after your Sunday round-up below.
Plus: an infected water scare in London, TfL’s diplomatic incident, and a £156.73 Uber trip from Soho.
🗳️ Coming up: the battle for Islington, round two in Uxbridge, a wave of MPs standing down — stay tuned next week for the Spy’s ultimate guide to the general election in London. All the key races, predictions and goss on the genny lec in the capital, landing in your inbox imminently.
👀 In case you missed it: on Thursday we published an investigation into who owns London’s pubs, looking into what tycoons and companies are doing to the capital’s boozers. One such tycoon — Asif Aziz — featured prominently, and in fact a Spy reader was already acquainted with his work:
The Gladstone Arms in Borough has been saved, thanks to Meg and Guarav's hard work turning it into a great Desi Pub, but the White Swan in Charlton is in a sorry state, despite having been a much-loved and successful hub for the community. I can't see that coming back. Aziz's companies are cultural vandals sucking the life out of London pub life. It's hilarious he paints himself as a philanthropist.
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What we’ve spied
🛀 Thames Water says it’s found no evidence of water contamination after dozens of people reported becoming unwell in southeast London. Stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea were among the symptoms being reported by whole families in Beckenham, prompting London’s water company to send off water samples to the lab for testing. One four-year-old boy was reportedly suffering days of vomiting, while an adult woman was so unwell she went to hospital with stomach pain, vomiting and dehydration. The story broke in the Observer on Saturday morning, but by the afternoon a spokesperson for Thames Water said it found no problems in its tests. “We can confirm there are no failures from the Central Sydenham water zone,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. It follows the discovery of more than 100 cases of a waterborne disease — cryptosporidium — in Devon earlier this month, which led to locals being told not to use their tap water for drinking without boiling it first.
🌐 TfL has found itself in the middle of an international incident, after figures revealed diplomats in London have racked up huge sums of unpaid congestion charges. Topping the list is the American Embassy, which was shown to owe more than £14m since 2003, while the Embassy of Japan owes more than £10m and the High Commissioner for India nearly £9m. On the opposite end is Togo, which owes TfL £40 for the scheme, which involves a daily £15 fee for driving within central London during the day. TfL and the diplomats are now at loggerheads over who’s paying the total £143m debt — the American Embassy has said in a statement that it believes it was exempt from the charge, claiming it is a tax. TfL and the UK government disagree, insisting its a service charge, not a tax, and a spokesperson for the transport has now said: “The majority of embassies in London do pay the charge, but there remains a stubborn minority who refuse to do so … We will continue to pursue all unpaid congestion charge fees and related penalty charge notices, and are pushing for the matter to be taken up at the International Court of Justice.”
💚 Grenfell Tower survivors and families have been told they will have to wait until at least late 2026 before those suspected of being responsible for the disaster face any criminal charges. On Wednesday the Met Police and the Crown Prosecution Service announced it’ll take a further two years at the earliest to announce charges due to the “complexity” of their investigation into the 2017 tragedy, in which 72 people died in the blaze at the west London tower block. Grenfell United, a group which represents survivors and the bereaved, has responded by pointing out late 2026 would be a decade after the fire. The group said in a statement: “10 years until we see justice. 10 years until we see prosecutions. 10 years until those responsible for the murders of 72 people are held to account for their crimes”. Meanwhile, it’s been announced the public inquiry into Grenfell, which is examining the adequacy of the regulations and safety measures, will publish its final report this autumn.
👮 LONDON’S FINEST 👮 News of two more Met Police sackings this week, both in dire circumstances. The first was the firing of an officer who filmed himself masturbating in Peckham police station, in the toilets and locker room. The incidents came to light when he was arrested by Surrey Police “for an unrelated matter” last year, and he’s now been let go after a misconduct hearing. The second sacking is a Croydon police officer, who had called his colleague “a daft Romanian c**t” while trying to help her with her computer. A misconduct panel was unconvinced of his defence that other members of the station had previously jokingly called him a “posh” or “Welsh c**t”, and he’s now been dismissed without notice. Elsewhere for the Met: the force deployed its live facial recognition technology in west London on Tuesday, resulting in seven arrests, including a registered sex offender breaching a court order and three men wanted for common assault.
🎥 An intense week for one cinema in north London, which has been rocked by protests and counterprotests over its decision to host an Israeli state-sponsored film festival. On Thursday, the Phoenix Cinema in East Finchley held a private screening of a documentary telling the story of the attack by Hamas on the Nova music festival on October 7, as part of the international Seret film festival. Both pro-Palestine and pro-Israel supports had demonstrated outside the Phoenix, while the front of the cinema was graffitied with the words “say no to artwashing” in red paint. Filmmakers Ken Loach and Mike Leigh also resigned as patrons of the cinema in protest against the screening.
⚽ Locals suffered a defeat in their battle to stop Tottenham Hotspurs from using a rewilded golf course in North London as a football academy. A court has ruled Enfield council is allowed to hand over half of Whitewebbs Park to Spurs, which has submitted plans to build a new facility for its women’s and girls’ teams on the site. Campaigners say the precedent set by the ruling means other public parks across London might now be at risk.
🛵 Deliveroo drivers held a protest over working conditions in central London on Thursday outside the company’s annual general meeting. The drivers held up placards outside the AGM, held at the offices of White & Case law firm on Old Broad Street, before staging a motorcade protest, driving through the City.
🎭 A theatre in Camden has come under fire for advertising for a chief executive from the “working-class, benefit class, criminal class and/or underclass”. The Camden’s People’s Theatre has now removed the job advert, after facing anger and mockery online.
🎤 Questionable claims from City Hall — that Sadiq Khan is truly a Taylor Swift fan. Last week the mayor described himself as a “proud Swiftie” when welcoming news the pop star is bringing her Eras Tour to London next month, adding that her eight gigs will provide “a more than one billion pound boost to our hospitality sector & wider economy”. Yet Khan appeared unable to name a single Taylor Swift era when he was grilled at mayor question time at the London Assembly on Thursday. He was asked four times by Conservative assembly member Emma Best for his favourite album — he refused, though he did manage a butchered pun of one of Swift’s biggest hits: “Oh listen, I think we’re not going to ‘shake it out’ today”. Perhaps more importantly: Khan also reiterated his commitment to protecting London’s green belt at the session. It puts him at odds with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who’s been discussing opening up some of the land for housing.
🗺️ FROM THE BOROUGHS 🗺️ Out in northwest London, a judge has ordered Brent council to pay a family of six more than £3,600 after they were left living in a “severely overcrowded” two-bedroom property. The council says it’s now apologised to the family and offered suitable accommodation. More legal trouble for Tower Hamlets, after a judge criticised the council for supporting a ‘rapist’ father in a custody case, despite him having been found to have committed “very serious domestic abuse” against his wife. Meanwhile, Lewisham council has accidentally published personal details of some of its residents online, and Newham councillors have rejected a plan to build 72 homes in east London for the third time. Finally, Tom Dewey, the ex-Hackney councillor whose child porn scandal brought down the borough’s mayor, has had his child contact ban lifted following an appeal.
🔍 And finally, we leave you with:
The London teenager being made a saint by the Catholic Church
A short film on Mario’s Barbers, one of Leytonstone’s oldest businesses
The water being tested in Canary Wharf ahead of the return of public swimming
Academic paper of the week: Heritage in and of the Housing Crisis: the Case of the Aylesbury Estate
A chicken shop in a corner shop in south London, via Pengest Munch
On travelling to London from Newcastle by plane instead of the train
The Natural History Museum’s new exhibition on birds evolving from dinosaurs
GET READY TO WIN!
“Probably the most hateable TV show ever made,” is how the Guardian headlined its zero-star review of Buying London, the British version of Selling Sunset that came out on streaming this week. The show follows a team of estate agents and their boss, Daniel Daggers, as they make a killing in London’s ‘super prime’ market, flogging homes worth tens of millions in locations like Westminster, Belgravia and Holland Park. The first episode features Daggers trying to get the commission on a mega mansion in Mayfair, which its developer recommends should be listed for an eye-watering £500m. While some liked the show — the Evening Standard gave it four stars — others have criticised its displays of property luxury in the capital as “tone-deaf” and “shamefully crass” at a time when ownership of even a modest home is a distant dream for many Londoners.
Daggers, or ‘Mr Super Prime’ as he likes to be called, was no stranger to the media before Buying London’s debut, having told his rag-to-riches story countless times in interviews. After growing up on a council estate in Maida Vale in west London, Daggers worked for a few big corporate estate agencies, like Knight Frank, before setting up his own company, DDRE Global, which features in the show. He now boasts he’s overseen “$5bn” in property sales throughout his 25+ year career.
But keen to know more for ourselves, we found Daggers’s profile on the UK’s official corporate register, Companies House. Aside from DDRE Global, which most recent accounts show holds £2.6m in net assets, another entry caught our eye: the Daniel Daggers Academy, incorporated in 2022. It turns out Daggers has identified another revenue stream from his life orbiting London’s mega-rich. “GET READY TO WIN!” bellows the academy site’s ‘coming soon’ page, alongside a flashy promo video of Daggers and promises “you too” can become “one of the world’s leaders in real estate” by enrolling in his courses. Testimonials from Daggers’s clients also feature prominently — from Tej Lakvani, a dragon on Dragon’s Den, Ruth Parasol, CEO of gambling giant PartyGaming, and His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, CEO of Emirates Group and a member of Dubai’s ruling family. Al Maktoum was particularly complimentary, describing how Daggers “went out of his way to keep everything discreet” in their dealings.
While snooping around, we somehow stumbled on a page that let us join Daggers’s ‘Exclusive Members Community’, for £15 a month. It turns out DD Academy had actually opened its doors to students for a brief spell in 2022, before shutting shop again, presumably to get ready for a post-Buying London bounce in clout. Foolishly, we handed over our card details, and with great excitement received our bundle of learning materials: a selection of old Zoom calls with Daggers and his class. We were slightly underwhelmed. After some stilted moments of Daggers trying to build rapport, asking how everyone was doing to no response, the Q&A calls featured a lot of blue sky thinking — on the big trends affecting London’s super-prime market and how best to deal with the capital’s high-net-worth individuals. Though, it was also a bit hard to focus. As Daggers started drawing graphs on a whiteboard, other estate agents on the Zoom call were in their cars driving along with their cameras on.
Things didn’t get much better when we started reading the two ‘industry insights’ newsletters that Daggers had written for his students. “People are starting to take social media very seriously,” was one of his prescient points made in, er, September 2022. Another tip, from our super-prime man of the people: “If you don’t have an office in a particular neighbourhood you are selling in, you should spend time where the locals spend their time. That could either be a coffee shop, a certain restaurant, local gym, house of worship, or private members’ club”.
Keen to hear what our fellow students made of the curriculum, we joined the academy’s private WhatsApp group via the link we’d given in our introductory email. Unfortunately, we spent a couple of hours being ghosted by the 37 other members in the chat when we asked if the academy was still running. That was until an admin replied to tell us though things had “been a bit quiet” recently, “we are working towards some new and exciting things”.
As for Daggers — we noticed a few inconsistencies while looking at archives of the academy’s website, via Wayback Machine. Back in 2022, he was claiming he had “started my career selling studio apartments in London for £117,000” and had “over $4B of managed sales”. Yet just two years later, he’d apparently made an extra $1.5bn, with “over $5.5Billion of managed sales”. And somehow the price tag of his first-ever sales had gone down: “I started my career by selling studio apartments in London for £80,000”. Oh well — what’s a few pounds here or there?