Latest news with #Mone
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Michelle Mone's spectacular fall from bra baroness to most hated businesswoman
Baroness Mone of Mayfair has an inspiring rags to riches story, but the self-made millionaire was also the architect of her own demise which left her reputation in tatters and her empire in ruins She was once hailed as a working-class heroine who built an underwear empire from scratch to become a self-made millionaire. But how times have changed. Once hailed as Britain's most successful businesswoman, whose rags-to-riches story even won her a peerage, she is now a pariah who is placed among the ranks of the country's most hated women. With her reputation in tatters, Baroness Mone of Mayfair has lost the Tory whip, is on leave from the House of Lords, and a business connected to her is under investigation by the National Crime Agency. Once the subject of gushing TV reports and newspaper stories, she is now the subject of a BBC documentary on her downfall, which concluded tonight. So, where did it all go wrong? It's a dizzying fall from grace for the self-styled entrepreneur from Glasgow's East End who smashed every glass ceiling and rose to be worth an estimated £20 million. Many, however, would say her demise is as much her own making as her success was. Born in 1971 and raised in a two-bedroom flat, Mone left school at 15 to support her family. She worked as a model and in marketing before launching what would become her multimillion-pound lingerie brand: Ultimo. She and husband Michael remortgaged their house and went £70,000 into debt to develop the idea to create a cleavage-enhancing bra that was both sexy and supportive - but it paid off. The bra captured the imagination of shoppers and the headlines alike. By the early 2000s, Mone was a regular fixture on TV and in newspapers. Jack Irvine, former newspaper editor, remembers how keen she was for the limelight. 'She had two driving forces. One was to be very rich and one was to be very famous,' he said. Media savvy Mone knew how to create headlines. One story was that her bra was used in the film Erin Brockovich, and that she had given star Julia Roberts cleavage. Another newspaper editor, Magnus Llewellin, said: "If you actually bother to check, somebody involved in the actual making of the film came out and said an Ultimo bra wasn't used in the production." But behind the scenes, cracks were already showing. Reports of toxic working environments and public spats with former staff began to surface, and there were a number of employment tribunals, including one high-profile case in which a member of staff found a recording device in his office. Ultimo had also been struggling and in 2014, Mone sold her majority stake and severed ties with the company altogether two years later. Then came the move into politics. In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron made her his government's "entrepreneurship tsar' and weeks later it was announced she was to become a Conservative peer, as Baroness Mone of Mayfair - a title as glossy as her public image. The Covid pandemic, however, would embroil her in a scandal from which she couldn't redeem herself. As PPE contracts were handed out by the Tory government, Baroness Mone was revealed to have secretly lobbied ministers on behalf of PPE Medpro, a company that made it onto the VIP list and secured over £200 million in government contracts to supply medical equipment. Initially, Mone denied any involvement. But in late 2022, the truth began to unravel. The BBC and The Guardian reported she and her children had secretly received tens of millions in profits from the PPE contracts. The House of Lords website was quietly scrubbed of her name, and Mone took a leave of absence from her role. Then, in 2023, came the dramatic confession. In a jaw-dropping TV interview, she admitted she had lied about her role in PPE Medpro, claiming she did it to protect her family. 'I made a mistake,' she said. 'I was just trying to help during a crisis.' But by then, public opinion had turned. The woman once seen as a self-made success story was now viewed as emblematic of cronyism and privilege at its most shameless. While legal proceedings are ongoing and no charges have been brought, the damage to Mone's public image is hard to undo. She now faces a civil recovery claim from the government, and questions remain over how deeply she and her husband were involved. Today, Michelle Mone is a peer in name only - absent from the red benches and persona non grata among her former allies. Her empire is gone, her honour is in question, and - like her famous lingerie - there's little support left.
Glasgow Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Glasgow Times
Who is Michelle Mone? Entrepraneur's rise and fall explained
Michelle Mone OBE, also known as Baroness Mone, is a Scottish businesswoman and life peer. One of the UK's most high-profile businesswomen, one of her businesses is now under investigation by the National Crime Agency. She is also on leave from the House of Lords and has been stripped of the Conservative whip. And this is her story. Who is Michelle Mone? Michelle Mone OBE, 53, is a Scottish businesswoman and entrepreneur. Baroness Mone is also a peer in the House of Lords, but is on leave due to the investigation. She was born in October 1971 and grew up in Dennistoun in Glasgow. Baroness Mone left school at 15 with no qualifications to pursue a career in modelling. She has a number of businesses, but set up what is perhaps the two most notable, MJM International Ltd and lingerie company Ultimo in 1996, with her former husband, Michael Mone. In 2013, after their marriage collapsed, Ultimo was transferred to Ultimo Brands International Ltd. The following year, Baroness Mone sold the majority of her stake to MAS Holdings and in 2015, she resigned from the boards of MJM International Ltd and Ultimo Brands International Ltd. In 2018, Ultimo announced it was ceasing trading within the UK. In 2010, Baroness Mone was honoured with an OBE for her outstanding contribution to business. Despite originally being a Labour supporter, she defected to the Conservatives in 2010 and became a Conservative life peer in 2015. Now the Baroness is married to Scottish businessman Douglas Barrowman. What is Michelle Mone's net worth? According to Celebrity Net Worth, the Baroness has a net worth of $120 million (£88 million). Michelle Mone made her money through various business ventures (Image: PHOTOGRAPHER:Wattie Cheung) Other business ventures of Baroness Mone include weight-loss pills, a fake tan product via Ultimo Beauty, overseas residential development and cryptocurrency. Has Michelle Mone been charged? Investigation explained Baroness Mone is being investigated for personal protective equipment (PPE) fraud by the National Crime Agency (NCA). The Baroness and her husband and Doug Barrowman, have been under fire over the pair's involvement with PPE supplier Medpro. During the height of the pandemic, PPE was low and supplies were needed quickly. In a bid to get PPE faster, the UK government avoided the normal contracts for the NHS that have to be made public and instead looked for other quicker options, with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) offering £12bn to companies with PPE. This included Medpro, who, in exchange for PPE, got two contracts, one at £80m for masks and the second for £120m for gowns. Watch our interview with Baroness Mone and Doug Barrowman here - — Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) December 17, 2023 However, only the masks were of standard and used as the gowns were found to not be suitable, seeing the NHS never used them It later emerged that PPE Medpro was controlled by people connected to Doug Barrowman, however, both he and the Baroness denied any links to the company. In January 2022, the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and the National Crime Agency launched investigations into Mone's links to the contracts. Baroness Mone announced a leave of absence from the House of Lords that December "to clear her name" amid the allegations. Shortly after, the UK government announced plans to sue PPE Medpro for £122 million plus costs over the defective items. The couple have since admitted they do have links to the company and shared they made 30% profits from the contracts, with Barrowman earning a reported £60m from the deal. To date, no criminal charges have been brought forward. Recommended reading: How to watch the Michelle Mone documentary The BBC documentary, The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, will be told over two episodes. The first part is on BBC Two on Wednesday, May 28, at 9 pm. A synopsis reads: "The rise and spectacular fall of one of the UK's most high-profile businesswoman and member of the House of Lords, Baroness Michelle Mone - from rags to riches to a possible jail term."
The Herald Scotland
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Michelle Mone: The rise and fall of Scotland's bra queen
The Conservative peer faces a standards investigation in the House of Lords, while her ties to a company tasked with producing hospital gowns for the NHS are being probed by law enforcement and the House of Lords. It's just the latest twist in the tale of a self-proclaimed one-woman success story – a story which has had plenty of twists and turns up to this point. Raised in the East End of Glasgow, Mone first came to prominence in 1999 with the launch of the Ultimo bra, which the entrepreneur said was inspired by her experience of wearing an uncomfortable cleavage-booster and realising she could come up with a better design. In May of the following year Ultimo launched at the Sak's Fifth Avenue store in New York City, and it was claimed that Julia Roberts wore one of the bras for her role in Erin Brockovich. Mone and her company MJM International would go on to launch a range of diet pills, as well as partnering with the likes of ASDA, Debenham's and doing modelling campaigns with Kelly Brook, Gemma Atkinson and Mel B of the Spice Girls. Close scrutiny Almost from the start of Mone's entrepreneurial career there have been questions surrounding the legitimacy of her much-vaunted achievements. Her business career started with Canadian beer brand Labatt, with the Scotswoman admitting that she faked details on her CV to land the role. Publicity for Ultimo went through the roof thanks to reports that Julia Roberts had worn one of the bras for her Oscar-winning turn in Erin Brockovich, though this has been denied by several of the filmmakers. A 2015 profile of Mone in European CEO stated that the actress herself had mentioned the undergarment in her acceptance speech for the Academy Award but if she did then it wasn't on stage at the ceremony – the footage is freely available on YouTube and features no mention of a bra. MJM's 'Trimsecrets' diet pills, produced in collaboration with Jan de Vries, were described as having 'no scientific basis or rationale' and while the entrepreneur had claimed their efficacy had been proven in clinical trials when questioned by The Guardian, Mone stated that the trial had in fact been a 63-person questionnaire, for which she was unable to produce the results. Ultimo losses Questions were also raised over the success of her business empire. Despite claims she was worth £50m, MJM made losses of £780,000 in the 2013 financial year before passing its assets to its parent company, Ultimo Brands, which also made a loss. A former employee, Scott Kilday, was awarded £15,000 in compensation after discovering a plant pot in his office had been bugged, ostensibly due to fears he was planning to leave and work with Mone's ex-husband, Michael. Despite those concerns, Mone began to establish herself as a political player. Setting herself up as a staunch unionist, the businesswoman threatened to leave Scotland if the SNP won the 2007 Holyrood election and was a firm advocate for a No vote in the 2014 independence referendum. Shortly thereafter she was appointed to an unpaid role as the Conservative government's 'start-up czar', which drew backlash from other entrepreneurs. Describing Mone as a 'small-time businesswoman', Douglas Anderson of Gap Group said: 'Her businesses have been no more than excessively over promoted PR minnows gaining unjustified acclaim due to the glamorous sector they happen to be in. 'There is no way, by any measure, that she is qualified to advise anybody on setting up a profitable business, because quite simply, she hasn't!'. Mone resigned as a director of MJM in August 2015. It was wound up last year with debts of over £300,000. Lording it Mone was given a peerage by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015, but in the following six years spoke just five times and submitted 22 written questions. Her appointment was criticised by both opposition and Tory figures at the time, with one branding her 'a public relations creation, a personal brand rather than a serious businesswoman'. Prevailing events tended to back that assessment. Her UTan range, launched through UBeauty Global, was claimed by Mone to have cost £1m to develop but the company's first set of accounts showed it to be worth less than £25,000. She and partner Doug Barrowman launched a cryptocurrency in 2018 hoping to raise $80m, with the baroness describing herself as 'one of the biggest experts in Cryptocurrency and Blockchain'. By August, The Sunday Times reported that the project had 'flopped' and all investors had been refunded. Mone was also accused in 2019 of sending a racist WhatsApp message describing a man of Indian heritage as 'a waste of a man's white skin', which she denies, with a representative responding that the baroness and her husband had 'built over 15 schools in Africa'. The biggest scandal of all, however, would break in October of 2020. PPE 'fastlane' In October of 2020 The Herald revealed that the British government had awarded a £122m contract to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to a company run by a former associate of Baroness Mone without going out to tender. The justification given was that the equipment was needed urgently as cases of Covid spiked, with the contract handed out to supply 25 million gowns for health workers. It was awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care just a month after the company, Medpro, was founded. The gowns were never used. A spokeswoman for Baroness Mone said that she had no comment as she has no role or involvement in PPE Medpro, which received over £200m in total via government contracts. The spokeswoman added: 'Mr Barrowman (Mone's husband) is also not involved in the company… and is not a Director or Shareholder.' Mone later admitted this had been a lie. It later emerged that Mone had referred the company to the government in March 2020. Leaked emails later suggested she had been promoting Covid tests sold by the company as late as October 2020. In 2022 leaked documents appeared to show that Mone and her children secretly received £29m from the profits made by Medpro through a secret offshore trust of which they were beneficiaries. The documents, produced by HSBC, state Barrowman was paid at least £65m by the company and then distributed the funds through a series of offshore accounts, trusts and companies. The funds landed in Barrowman's account just before he and Mone's wedding and honeymoon, while The Sun reported in August 2021 that the bra tycoon's children had spent more than £3m on property in Glasgow during the pandemic. Mone's shared home was raided in April 2022 as part of a National Crime Agency investigation into Medpro - no charges have so far been brought but some of the couple's assets have been frozen - while a separate investigation into standards is taking place in the House of Lords. For Mone you might say it's win or bust.
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Business
- Scotsman
Michelle Mone: Who is the Conservative peer? What is Ultimo and what is Michelle Mone's net worth?
Michelle Georgina Mone OBE is a Scottish business entrepreneur and is the subject of a new BBC documentary. Sign up to our Politics newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The BBC has released a new two-part documentary, The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone, tracing the businesswoman's story from 1999, when she landed a deal with Selfridges at just 28, to her more recent involvement in a government PPE scandal during the Covid pandemic. Renowned as a brilliant self-publicist, Baroness Mone of Mayfair was frequently described as one of the UK's most successful businesswomen. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Michelle Mone. Picture: PA However, Baroness Mone has now been stripped of the Conservative whip, is on leave from the House of Lords and a business connected to her is under investigation by the National Crime Agency. Here is who she is, what happened and her net worth. Who is Michelle Mone? Michelle Georgina Mone OBE is a Scottish business entrepreneur and peer in the House of Lords. She is on leave from the House of Lords due to the investigation. She was born in Dennistoun, Glasgow on October 8, 1971 and grew up in the east end of the city, leaving school without qualifications at the age of 15. She initially pursued a modelling career, before successfully applying for a marketing job with the Labatt brewing company. Within two years, she had become the company's head of marketing in Scotland, but was later made redundant, prompting her to set up her own business. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Baroness Mone had been a Labour supporter, but defected to the Conservatives in 2010. Just four years later, she was a prominent voice in favour of the union during the independence referendum. In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron made her his government's "entrepreneurship tsar", and weeks later she became a Conservative peer. How did Michelle Mone make her money? In 1996, Baroness Mone founded the lingerie company Ultimo, along with MJM International Ltd, with her former husband Michael Mone. The Tory peer has previously described her upbringing in Glasgow as giving her 'balls of steel', telling Michael Malone for his 2012 book profiling Scottish entrepreneurs, Carnegie's Call: "I thought it was normal to go to the local swimming baths to get a wash two or three times a week.' In 2014, Baroness Mone sold her 80 per cent stake in Ultimo, which went bust in 2018. She was appointed to the House of Lords as Baroness Mone by Mr Cameron to lead a review into supporting business start-ups in areas of poverty across the UK. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In 2018, she launched two businesses in the form of mentoring and lifestyle app, Connect 2 Michelle Mone, offering 'advice, guidance and inspiration' for those looking to take their lives 'to the next level', and 'tokenised venture capital fund' Equi Global Ltd. In the same year, it was revealed Baroness Mone's absence rate from the House of Lords was 88 per cent. She attended just 19 days out of a possible 157 at the House of Lords in total. She has also maintained an active interest in cryptocurrency. Former Conservative Party leader David Cameron with Husky dog Troika on the Scott-Turner glacier on the island of Svalbard, Norway | PA What is Michelle Mone's net worth? Michelle Mone's net worth is not precisely known, but is estimated to be in the region of £20 million or more. One website listing Baroness or Lady Mone as a motivational speaker cited her in-person event speaking charges as between £20,000 to £25,000, and between £15,000 and £20,000 for virtual events. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Who is Michelle Mone married to? Baroness Mone is married to Scottish businessman and founder of the Knox Group of Companies, Douglas Barrowman. The the Knox Group is worth an estimated £3 billion. Mr Barrowman was also a director of Aston Management Ltd (AML), which provided tax advice and offshore loan schemes to freelance workers, including social workers, locum doctors, nurses and engineers, before it ceased trading in 2010. Baroness Mone was previously married to Michael Mone from 1989–2011, with whom she had three children. Why is she being investigated? Baroness Mone is being investigated by the NCA as it looks into allegations of personal protective equipment (PPE) fraud. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The evidence is said to include texts and emails from senior officials and at least three ministers concerning the procurement of masks and gowns during the Covid pandemic. Baroness Mone, 52, and her husband deny all allegations against them. The UK government is also suing PPE Medpro, a company set up by Mr Barrowman, to try and recoup £122 million over an alleged breach of contract concerning PPE, which was not used by the NHS because of a claim it did not meet required standards. PPE Medpro has denied the claims. Baroness Mone has claimed 'everyone in government knew of my involvement' with the company. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When does the BBC documentary come out? The BBC documentary explores the rise and fall of one of the UK's most high-profile businesswoman, going from rags to riches to a possible jail term.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
A self-created fairy story: The rise and fall of Michelle Mone
Michelle Mone spent 25 years building her business empire and public profile through the British media. A brilliant self-publicist, she was regularly described as one of the UK's most successful businesswomen. She was the plucky underdog who, through sheer grit and a knack for a good headline, pushed her Ultimo bra concept onto the marketplace and into the high street's biggest shops. She even claimed to have given Hollywood star Julia Roberts a cleavage. The story she told time and time again to a grateful media brought her fame, riches, and even a peerage. But Baroness Mone of Mayfair has now been stripped of the Conservative whip, is on leave from the House of Lords and a business connected to her is under investigation by the National Crime Agency. How did it come to that? That's the question a new two-part BBC Scotland documentary seeks to answer. The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone begins in 1999 as the then 28-year-old talks her way into Selfridges in London, and a deal to sell her gel-filled Ultimo bra. Born in her own words "into nothing", Mone was raised in the Dennistoun area of Glasgow. She left school at 15 with no qualifications but a determination "to make something of myself". Friends from the time describe her hard work ethic, energy and "bubbly" nature. "No matter where you're from, look at me, you can do it," she would later say. She worked as a model and "ring girl" at boxing matches and moved into promotions and sales before setting up MJM International with husband Michael. They re-mortgaged their house and went £70,000 into debt developing the Ultimo Bra, which is when Mone turned up unannounced at Selfridges. Virginia Marcolin was the shop's lingerie buyer, and the person Mone had travelled to London to see. "I thought: 'This girl is not what I'm used to dealing with'. She was kind of country bumpkin and a little bit like not overly refined, just very authentic. And this was just such a fresh, new product," she says. "That was the start of it. It was her persistence." Mone's natural knack for promotion got them the deal but the cash-poor company needed funds to fulfil the order. They found an investor in Tom Hunter, who in 1998 had just sold his sportswear company JJB Sports for £280m. The man who made that introduction was Jack Irvine, former newspaper editor turned successful PR executive. He became a key figure in building Mone's early media profile. The newspapers and broadcasters were hungry for stories about her, and she was very happy to help. "She had two driving forces," Irvine says. "One was to be very rich and one was to be very famous." Coverage from that time stressed her humble roots, battle to succeed, new-found wealth, and the global success of her bra. Magnus Llewellin, now editor of the Times newspapers in Scotland, remembers one infamous story from the time. "Stories would circulate around Michelle Mone. One of those was that her bra was used in the film Erin Brockovich, that Julia Roberts wore one of her bras," he says. "If you actually bother to check, somebody involved in the actual making of the film came out and said an Ultimo bra wasn't used in the production." The truth is that the media, especially the Scottish media, helped create the Michelle Mone myth. And she had a gift for using that. "The story was almost too good to debunk. A young woman fighting in a male-dominated business world, making a way for herself. That was a great story to tell," Llewellin says. After more than 20 years together as a couple and more than a decade in business, the Mones very publicly separated, divorcing in 2011. Michelle bought Michael out of the business and became the face and body of the brand, modelling her own lingerie. Behind the scenes at the company there were a number of employment tribunals, including one high-profile case in which a member of staff found a recording device in his office. Despite her legal challenges, Mone remained in the public eye, a regular feature on television programmes. And her knack for publicity led to her next move - into the world of politics. She had been a Labour supporter but defected to the Conservatives in 2010. Four years later she was a prominent voice in favour of the union during the independence referendum, going so far as to say she would leave Scotland in the event of a 'Yes' vote. In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron made her his government's "entrepreneurship tsar". Within weeks it was announced she was to become a Conservative peer, as Baroness Mone of Mayfair. By then she had sold her interests in the company she had built. But her new roles brought increased scrutiny over her business record. Magnus Llewellin points out that MJM International never turned over more than £10.1m a year, and in 2012 lost more than half a million pounds. "By that time the company was in real trouble," he says. Businessman Donald Anderson runs the Gap Group, a plant hire company which in 2024 had a turnover of £302.3m, employed more than 2,000 people, and made a pre-tax profit of £43.9m. He wrote to the prime minister at the time of Mone's appointment. "Miss Mone is not a successful entrepreneur, she is a small time businesswoman with a PR exposure far in excess of any actual success," he wrote. He now says: "If the only thing she achieved was self-publicity, I don't think that's a very good reason to put you into the House of Lords. If you follow that logic then the House of Lords will be full of influencers in the next 10 years." In 2016, Mone announced she was in a new relationship with Doug Barrowman, a billionaire businessman. They settled in the Isle of Man, and worked together in the booming crypto-currency sector. In 2020, the Covid pandemic struck. As the death toll rose, UK ministers sought out firms to urgently supply Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), even setting up a VIP lane to give priority to some suppliers. A company called PPE Medpro made it onto the VIP list. This caught the eye of campaigners who were concerned that firms on the list were run by people with connections to the Conservative Party. It emerged that PPE Medpro was controlled by people connected to Doug Barrowman. Mone, a Conservative peer, repeatedly denied any involvement in the business, the deal or the subsequent profits. But the Guardian uncovered a connection to government ministers. The paper's David Conn says: "We did our own freedom of information request, and we got the emails that she'd sent to Michael Gove and Lord Agnew saying that she was offering to supply PPE through 'my team in Hong Kong' and that it had gone through the VIP lane. "And we also got some WhatsApp messages which Michelle Mone had sent about the PPE deals and she said she was sitting on the jet and it was about to take off, which we assumed was their jet, their private plane." The National Crime Agency (NCA) launched an investigation into PPE Medpro. Several of the couple's properties were raided. Two years into his investigation, David Conn received a leaked document showing Barrowman made at least £65m from the deals, with £29m of this paid into a trust of which Mone and her three adult children are beneficiaries. Throughout this time, Mone was uncharacteristically quiet. But that changed at the end of 2023 when she and Barrowman - by then married - released a PPE Medpro-funded documentary in which she admitted being a "conduit" between the company and ministers. They also agreed to appear on the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme. On camera, Mone admitted she could one day benefit from the trust, and said they had done nothing wrong. When asked about lying to the press, she replied: "That's not a crime. "Saying to the press I'm not involved, to protect my family, can I just make it clear, it's not a crime." Laura Kuenssberg says: "That's a phrase that will always stick with me. "When she said that, I thought: 'There's a thing. There's a headline'." Michelle Mone lost the Conservative whip and has taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords. She has made no further media appearances. PPE Medpro is still under investigation by the NCA and the government is suing the company for £122m plus costs, claiming the medical gowns the company supplied "did not comply with the specification in the contract". The peer declined the offer to be interviewed for The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone. In response to the programme, a statement said the couple had provided "full and detailed statements to the NCA and cooperated with the investigation throughout". It said they had never been arrested and no charges had been brought against them. The statement also defended PPE Medpro's delivery of PPE equipment to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). It continued: "Baroness Mone, along with the whole of the Mone/Barrowman family, were beneficiaries of trusts... never direct recipients of PPE Medpro profits. "The DHSC was fully aware of their involvement from the outset. It was a mistake to have misled the press." Michelle Mone's public life was a self-created fairy story which many in business, politics, and especially the media, bought into. For Magnus Llewellin, there's a clear moral to this tale. "What it does tell us about modern Britain is, we still like fairy tales. We want to believe those rags to riches tales. "But once you step into the world of politics, things can get a bit trickier. "It's a parable of excess, hubris, and then eventually nemesis." Laura Kuenssberg says: "For Michelle Mone, public attention, knowing how to grab public attention, is an ability that she obviously always had in spades during her business career. "But things went wrong for her and you can't turn that attention off." The Rise and Fall of Michelle Mone is available on iPlayer and is on BBC Scotland at 22:00 on Monday 26 May and BBC Two at 21:00 on Wednesday 28 May. Michelle Mone-linked PPE firm evidence to be heard in private Ex-Tory peer Michelle Mone's assets frozen Mone admits she stands to benefit from £60m PPE profit
