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Huw Edwards touted himself as a bastion of righteousness and good but behind closed doors he led a depraved double life that destroyed the lives of those around him

Huw Edwards presented himself as the trusted voice of the nation, but off-screen he lived a secret life of depravity.

Married for 31 years, the Welsh BBC newsreader was welcomed into homes each night and anchored some of the country’s most seismic events – including the death of the late Queen Elizabeth. He reported on downfalls, scandals and abuses of power. But little did viewers know that he, too, was guilty of his own trangressions.

It started with a report in The Sun alleging he had paid a you for sexual pictures. The Met Police investigated but found no evidence of crime. Then came accusations that he inappropriately messaged a freelance journalist, a sixth-form student and other staff at the BBC. Finally, he was arrested after police learned indecent images of children had been sent to his phone by convicted sex offender, Alex Williams. He pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children and was given just six months imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a requirement to complete a sex offender programme.

Slowly, a picture began to emerge of a middle-aged man who became obsessed with social media and its ability to bring him both adoration and sexual connection with men and women. As his wife Vicky Flind struggled to care for her ailing mother, Edwards – who was described as a ‘volatile’ man with a ‘history of agitation’ – instead looked to his phone for cheap thrills.

In a report, Dr Appleyard, a Forensic Psychosexual therapist, told a September 2024 court hearing: “His social media engagement presented as an easy way to manage his low mood and provided him with a number of men and women who were motivated to be sexual with him which not only boosted his fragile self esteem but allowed him to re-engage with his sexual interest in men which had been managed since 1994.

“The feelings of being desirable and unseen alongside Mr. Edwards’ unresolved sexual orientation created a perfect storm where he engaged in sexual infidelities”

Now, the sordid saga is being retold in Channel 5 drama, Power: The Downfall Of Huw Edwards. Martin Clunes stars as Edwards, and executive producer Sam Anstiss has compared reading the raft of text messages sent by Edwards to “going into the heart of darkness.”

“Because here in these messages was, in the most visceral, disturbing way, a very imbalanced relationship of power. They were so disturbing. It was, ‘I love you, but you kill me’,” she told The Sun.

Here, the Mirror explores the damning texts Edwards allegedly sent…

‘Payments to young man’

Known in the drama as Ryan Davies, the young man says he was highly vulnerable when Edwards allegedly first asked him for explicit photos and messages.

The scandal erupted in the summer of 2023 when it emerged the man’s mum and stepdad had claimed that Edwards paid £35,000 in return for ‘sordid’ pictures. He later told the Mirror he feels the newsreader took advantage of him. “I want to tell the truth about what happened… I’ve stayed silent for so long to protect Huw, but I feel sick at what has happened,” he said.

The young man, now aged 23 and who wishes to remain anonymous, says he feels like Edwards, 64, ‘groomed’ him after they first connected in 2020. At first, Edwards was not named publicly, but within days his identity was revealed by his wife and he was admitted to hospital due to serious mental health concerns.

The man said he was in a very troubled state of mind when he first contacted the television newsreader. Having fallen out with his mother and step-father, he was sleeping on friends’ sofas and had spent a few nights at a homeless shelter, which he described as ‘scary’. He began sending messages to famous people asking for help. He was in a burger bar in Cardiff when he happened to see Edwards on the TV, so decided to message him on social media.

Edwards was the only person to reply to any of the messages. The man said he didn’t ask for money, but Edwards deposited £500 into his PayPal account, which went towards hotel costs for a few days. The man told the Mirror: “Although it was a friendship at the beginning, it did change. He would say things like, ‘Are you going to do something for me then?’ I needed help, so I did. I feel like he sort of fed on my vulnerability… as he knew I needed the money. I felt like I was being groomed.”

Messages seen by The Sun and shared in its documentary, Huw Edwards: Unmasked, are harrowing reading. In one, he allegedly says, “I want a pic of you totally naked head to toe.” After transferring the fan £2,000, he then rages after receiving only a picture of the young man’s naked top half.

“F*** that. F*** that. Really not impressed by you. I believed you were serious. But you’re not. You chase me for cash. But you then ‘forget’ to deliver. F*** that,” he wrote, according to the publication.

After paying for the young man’s train ticket to London, he allegedly teased: “Then you really would owe me.” But the texts take a dark turn. On New Year’s Eve 2022, the documentary states that he sent a string of abuse to the man. “Stop being a kn*b and talk to me tomorrow when you’re sober.”

“Now listen to me. If you want help in future stop this cr*p OK,” he is said to have raged. “You’ve disappointed me… I regret helping you so much… I should have known… You should know better.”

In the February, the film claims that Edwards unleashed another tirade on the young man after worrying that his payments for sexual images could be exposed. “You’re a disaster area,” he is said to have raged. “Why does this happen all the time??!??… Im with family stop being a pain… I’m sick of you getting into a mess all the time… Don’t be stupid… My Monzo is easily traceable. I can do PayPal nothing else.”

“You are really really really trying my patience,” he allegedly continued. “I don’t need this f***ing sh*t… Delete these messages if it’s not your phone OK???… Send me your Monzo details you idiot… You make me so angry… WTF you talking about you f***ing disaster… Go f**k yourself. Get f***ing real. Tell you what. I’ll stop helping you then you can see what no care is. F**k you. You’re an ungrateful t**t.”

Edwards then seemingly softens, apparently adding: “I f***ing love you…but you kill me x” and “I love you seriously x… I will never end you. You idiot. You know that. X… Next time in Cardiff you need to see me x… Good boy… Don’t forget. I love you x”

But there was yet another alleged outburst after the young man called him in the night. “I can’t trust you to respect my situation,” the News at 10 anchor reportedly fumed. “Now leave me alone. Actually calling me at 2am? F**k that. Calling me at 2am even when I told you to stop ?????? You’re so f***ing out of order. Grow up. Just grow up. And when someone helps you – show respect.”

The man told The Mirror how Edwards messaged on an unknown number In October just one month before he was arrested – but was left “staggered” by his reaction. The man said: “I think it was about two weeks before he got arrested. The message said ‘guess who’ or something like that.

“The message said ‘don’t say my name on here… just call me’. So I phoned him and he said download the messaging app Signal. And he said we can catch up on there.” The man said he was staggered by Edwards’ demeanour on the call, adding: “He said, ‘What’s been going on? I really care about you’. He had no remorse for anything at all.”

It was the final time they spoke. A month later Edwards was arrested over the indecent images on his phone in an unrelated case. He stood down from the BBC in April 2024.

‘Strange messages to journalist’

The Express’ assistant politics editor Sam Stevenson has shared his experience of a message exchange with Edwards.

When Sam started his journalism career five years ago, he was keen to make contacts and keep up-to-date with the rolling news cycle. His first port of call was to follow as many “leading industry figures” as he could on Twitter, now X. He said he wanted to follow those he “respected” and “hoped to one day emulate”.

Sam claimed that within minutes of following Edwards, he was followed back “much to his delight”. He stated that he “couldn’t have been more thrilled” to have “perhaps the most famous news anchor in Britain” acknowledge him. Edwards is said to have sent Sam a message just “seconds later”.

It reportedly read: “Latecomers are welcome, Sam” followed by a praying hands and a yellow smirking face emoji. Sam recalled being on holiday at the time and excitedly sharing the news that Edwards had sent him a direct message to his family. He admitted to wondering why “a high-profile celebrity 32 years my senior, with almost 200,000 followers versus my measly 1,000, want to speak to me”.

Sam replied: “Haha, thanks for the follow, Huw! Big fan of your work” alongside a thumbs up emoji. Edwards is said to have reacted to Sam’s message with a thumbs up emoji and added: “Thanks, Sam. Keep in touch. H.”

Writing in the Express, Sam said: “At that moment, I was not sure what to make of it. My immediate thought was what an excellent new contact I had just made. But, knowing what we do now, perhaps the reality was something more sinister. On reflection later that day, it was clear from his playful and casual manner, the coquettish nature of his initial message, the liberal emoji use, the over-familiarity coming seemingly at random, and the plea to ‘keep in touch’, that something was off.”

Sam admitted to feeling “somewhat uneasy” that the “playful tone” had “came from somebody who was so well-respected”. He said: “It did not feel right. Then, the penny dropped. Huw Edwards, the Huw Edwards, was privately flirting with me. Looking back, it makes my blood run cold.” The journalist ended by writing: “For my part, I am relieved I managed to avoid him. Others were not so lucky.”

Sixth-form student ‘exchange’

Welsh TV channel SC4 launched its own investigation into the scandal and interviewed a young man who said he met Edwards while he was performing in a concert. He was an 18-year-old sixth-form pupil and Edwards was the compere.

“I was in my school uniform. He came up to me at the end of the concert and said hello, that the performance was really good. He told me I was very talented. He was interested to have some sort of contact with me,” the student claimed. “He told me if I wanted to come to London to meet him, he could give me a tour of the BBC and maybe meet a couple of musical contacts.”

The pair connected on Instagram and the teen travelled to the London to visit the BBC but began to suspect that Edwards’ intentions were not admirable. In messages shown by the channel, Edwards signed off messages with a kiss or a heart. In one, Edwards wrote: “Yeah, OK big boy, we believe you.”

“I think it’s clear he was trying to groom me, trying to pull me in,” the young man said. After a few months, however, Huw stopped answering his messages and stopped following him. “He just lost interest in me, I wasn’t giving him what he was looking for,” the student added.

Junior BBC employee ‘sickened’

Victoria Derbyshire shared details about how an ex junior staffer – whose story featured on Newsnight – “felt sick” upon hearing Edwards had child sexual abuse images on WhatsApp. According to Derbyshire, the former employee was in their mid 20s when Edwards allegedly messaged then on Instagram.

Posting on her X account, Derbyshire wrote: “Here’s what they told me IN FULL today: Huw Edwards messaged me on social media several times, despite us having never met and not knowing each other. Many of these messages were clearly inappropriate, including telling me unprompted what he was doing in the early hours of the morning, asking that I take him for food, and including several kisses at the end of his messages. I was quite junior in the BBC at the time, so just tried to play them off and not pay too much attention to them.

“At the time I was confused as to why he was sending such messages to me, but I had heard stories of other younger employees in the BBC having similar experiences with him. That is why I first got in touch with Newsnight: when the original Sun story came out, I felt like the extent of this inappropriate behaviour was likely more widespread than I knew. I didn’t contribute to the subsequent internal BBC inquiry, mostly as I felt I had already come forward and told the important parts of my story to Newsnight and was very busy at the time. It was not because of a lack of trust in the BBC.

“I didn’t report the inappropriate messages at the time when I was working at the BBC, mostly because I had other important things going on in my life that year, not because of a lack of confidence over the efficacy of raising such concerns.”

Freelance reporter ‘bedroom invite’

He was in Windsor at the height of lockdown restrictions to report on the funeral of Prince Philip when Edwards allegedly tried to get a freelance BBC reporter to his hotel room.

The anonymous employee claims he had initially connected with Edwards on Instagram before switching to WhatsApp, where he says they sent hundreds of messages between April 2021 and August 2022.

The reporter claimed that when told he lived in a house-share, Edwards said: “So I could pop in to have some tea?” and a few days after the funeral, he tried again, suggesting, “‘Or I can come to yours.”

On the eve of the funeral – where the late Queen was forced to mourn her husband alone because of Covid restrictions – Edwards allegedly sent him a picture of his hotel room, featuring just one bed, with the caption: “Missed a good night. You could have stayed here.”

The BBC worker told the Daily Mail: “He sent me a picture of his hotel room. I felt it was very suggestive. There were lockdown restrictions at the time. The Covid rules about households not mixing were still in force, the Queen was all alone on the pews at Philip’s funeral, and then Boris [Johnson] got a hammering for the parties in No.10 – and that was the same night Huw Edwards suggested I stay in his hotel room.

“Afterwards he said I had missed a good night.”

The U.S. Marine Corps is aiming to acquire a new single “capability” to fill gaps left by the retirement of its AV-8B Harrier jump jets, AH-1Z and UH-1Y helicopters, and legacy F/A-18C/D Hornet fighters. Dubbed the Future Attack Strike (FASt) plan, the current vision is to have the ability to attack targets kinetically and non-kinetically, and to work together with future uncrewed aircraft.

The first public mention of FASt appears to have come in the most recent annual Marine Corps Aviation Plan, released earlier this month. At this early stage, the Expeditionary and Maritime Aviation-Advanced Development Team (XMA-ADT), part of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), has been leading the work to refine the FASt plan.

“FASt capability is being developed to provide long range fires and Close Air Support (CAS) to the ground force and to be a Joint Force kill web enabler. FASt continues to evolve through Weapons Integration Risk Reduction (WIRR) trade studies to drive innovation and experimentation,” per the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan. “Conceptual solutions are being analyzed to inform requirements and acquisition pathways. Enhanced capabilities such as kinetic/non-kinetic launched effects, long-range precision fires, advanced survivability, DI [digital interoperability], and EW [electronic warfare] will be further developed.”

“Future Attack Strike (FASt) is a capability being developed to fill a Marine Aviation attack & strike mission gap posed by sundowning F/A-18, AV-8B, AH-1Z, & UH-1Y aircraft, with an initial operating capability being fielded in the mid-2040s,” a Marine Corps spokesperson also told TWZ directly after we reached out for more information. “FASt will employ kinetic and non-kinetic weapons, be capable of Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T), be interoperable with the Joint Force to close long-range kill chains in contested environments, and deliver offensive air support to affect all-domain threats.”

It should be noted here that the previously stated plan for replacing the AV-8B and F/A-18C/D fleets has been the acquisition of a mixture of short takeoff and vertical landing capable F-35B and carrier-based F-35C variants of the stealthy Joint Strike Fighter. We will come back to this later on.

Though not explicitly stated, supplanting the fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters mentioned above with a single platform would require a short, if not vertical takeoff and landing (S/VTOL) capable design. The Marine Corps has said in the past that it is at least monitoring U.S. Special Operations Command’s progress with its High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) program. HSTVOL is paired with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) effort.

Last year, DARPA selected Bell over Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to move to the next phase of SPRINT. The core goal of SPRINT is to demonstrate a concept for a VTOL aircraft that can cruise at speeds between 400 and 450 knots. Bell’s design centers on wingtip proprotors with blades that fold away after the transition from hover to level flight, as you can read more about here.

HSVTOL Sled Transition Test

HSVTOL and SPRINT have both focused heavily on designs capable of transporting cargo and personnel, but Bell says its design concept is scalable. The company has shown renderings of multiple crewed and uncrewed variations, including types that could be configured for missions more in line with FASt.

The Marine Corps could look to other emerging S/VTOL designs for FASt, as well. The possibility of a Marine Corps derivative of Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor, which serves as the basis for the U.S. Army’s new MV-75, has been put forward in the past. The company’s uncrewed V-247 Vigilant tiltrotor was aimed originally at a Marine requirement, as well. FASt could also end up intertwined with a separate Marine Corps plan to replace its MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors, currently called the Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) platform.

Speed and range, on top of runway independence, will be key considerations for the Marines when it comes to FASt. The service’s current core vision for future conflicts centers on hub-and-spoke-type expeditionary and distributed deployments with forces positioned at far-flung sites across a broad area. Those units are expected to be able to rapidly deploy and redeploy from one operating location to another, which could be within range of enemy standoff strikes, to disrupt an opponent’s targeting cycles and reduce vulnerability. Island-hopping in the Pacific during a high-end fight with China is a principal scenario.

This all has raised questions, in particular, about the future utility of slower, lower-flying, and shorter-ranged helicopters like the AH-1Z and UH-1Y, and, by extension, how to fill the gaps in close air support and other capabilities they provide. The Marine Corps has already slashed the size of its AH-1Z and UH-1Y fleets, but is also taking steps to ensure the continued relevance of the remaining helicopters. This includes the acquisition of a new standoff strike capability for the AH-1Z in the form of L3Harris’ Red Wolf miniature cruise missile. The UH-1Y is regularly used as an electronic warfare platform when paired with the podded Intrepid Tiger II system, and other future roles for those armed utility helicopters are still being explored.

AH-1/UH-1 “investments also inform Future Attack Strike (FASt) capability development, which will help fill critical gaps in Marine Aviation’s future ACE [air combat element of the Marine Air Ground Task Force],” the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan notes.

“Coming back to that interoperability, it’s multiple pathways and multiple waveforms. I don’t think we say kill chains anymore, because it’s not a linkage of nodes, it’s a linkage of webs,” Col. Nathan Marvel, then commander of Marine Aircraft Group 39 (MAG-39) based at Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendleton in California, told TWZ in an interview back in 2023. “We may very well be an enabler where you’re pushing data through us via voice and or data, and we may very well be the end of that kill web or that kill chain enabler as well. We may tell someone where something is so they can go kill it or we maintain custody, or someone may tell us where something is so we can go kill it like we have traditionally done. Interoperability is a huge focus for us.”

Col. Marvel had outlined a case to us for the continued relevance of the AH-1Z, as well as the UH-1Y, in a future major fight in the Pacific, which you can find here. Much of what he detailed at the time is in line with how the Marine Corps is now talking about FASt.

“We are going to be able to carry a potpourri of weapons. It would not be unheard of to hang some exquisite fixed-wing fighter weapons on the wing-stub of a Cobra and bring that to a fight,” Marvel also told us last year. “It may be a loitering weapon or maybe an exquisite pod that does only certain things that we’re used to seeing on fixed-wing aircraft and bring that to the fight and put that down at the rotor wing level to enable the battlespace commander and the maneuver element commander to do things that they may or may not have thought they could do before. So that’s kind of where we are with capabilities buildup.”

The expectation that FASt will fill gaps left by the retirement of the AV-8B and the F/A-18C/D may also point to new interest in a future high-low capability mix. As mentioned, the Marine’s primary plan has been to replace both of these types with variants of the F-35, and this looks to still be the case, at least in part. However, FASt could offer a valuable lower-tier companion to the F-35s, which are highly capable, but also very expensive and complicated to operate and maintain, especially in more austere locales. Just in general, the Marines have many day-to-day tactical aviation requirements that do not demand a very costly high-end fighter, as well. TWZ has highlighted the value of high-low mixes in the context of future U.S. Air Force tactical force structure plans on several occasions in the past.

F-35B

With the explicit mention of MUM-T capabilities for FASt, that platform also looks set to benefit from Marine efforts now to acquire fleets of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) type drones. The first Marine CCAs will be variants of Kratos’ stealthy XQ-58 Valkryie configured for operations from traditional runways, as well as at least runway-independent launches, as you can learn more about here.

The service is also looking at future ‘spiral’ development cycles that could result in purchases of different uncrewed aircraft designs. The Corps just recently announced plans to use General Atomics’ YFQ-42A, one of two drones now in development under the first phase of the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program, as at least a surrogate for future uncrewed tactical aviation capabilities.

It is possible that FASt could turn out to be a family of systems that itself includes uncrewed capabilities in the end, as well. Shield AI has notably been describing its runway-independent X-BAT stealthy jet-powered ‘autonomous fighter,’ which TWZ was first to report on last October, in terms that could be of interest to the Marines for this emerging requirement.

X-BAT: Earth Is Our Runway

All this being said, the 2040s timeline outlined for FASt now means that this platform, however it might evolve, will not be an immediate replacement for the AV-8s or the F/A-18C/Ds. Marine Harriers are set to fly their last sorties in June of this year. The service’s goal now is for the legacy Hornets to be retired around the end of the decade. The AH-1Zs and UH-1Ys are currently expected to serve into the 2040s.

Regardless, the vision the Marines have laid out for FASt points to a very different-looking tactical aviation ecosystem now on the service’s horizon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com