The scoop on Dan! KIWI BEHIND THE SHOCKING HEADLINES

The journalist’s mum reveals why her son’s always in the thick of scandals

- Penny Lewis

A media frenzy ricocheted around the world when Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, decided to step down as senior royals in January 2020. And for Mary Wootton, the decision felt very close to home because the first news report about the controversial split came directly out of the central Wellington apartment she shares with her husband John!

The couple’s son, Dan Wootton, then the executive editor of British tabloid newspaper The Sun, was home from London for his Christmas break, and Mary and John could hear him working around the clock on the story that would shock the world.

“Daniel broke Megxit in our lounge,” Mary explains. “We heard him on the phone most nights. It wasn’t easy – he sat on that story for about 10 days.”

Mary laughs as she recalls a “bit of a disaster” when she tried to help Dan with a television interview to talk about his scoop.

“The BBC rang and said, ‘We want to do a live cross,’ so Dan gave me his phone and he sat on the couch. I had the phone and they said, ‘Yep, that’s all good’ and they did it.”

Afterwards, Dan got a text from his boss asking, ‘Why didn’t you put some pants on?’

“What had happened was we were just off to the beach because it was January,” recalls Mary. “The camera had dropped, so it looked like Daniel was just sitting there in his shirt and you just saw his legs. He got a hard time on Twitter, but I think we can all laugh about it now.”