THE PREMISE
In December 1999 Fiona Mont, a secretary from Hove on police bail over an alleged computer fraud, left her car near Beachy Head and vanished with Graham Hesketh, a pilot the papers would soon call the Baron.
For the next three years she was Britain’s most wanted woman. They lived in a caravan not much bigger than a garden shed, worked for cash, had a baby, and Graham filmed nearly all of it. The Cat and the Baron is the story his camcorder saw.
PART ONE · 1999–2008
Put together from press reports, broadcasts, and Fiona and Graham’s own public accounts. Where the accounts disagree, we say so, and the sources are listed at the end of the page.
England, graded coldThe Continent, graded warm
Fiona Mont, 29, is selling cheap computers through a newspaper advert. One Friday a buyer calls at her basement flat: Detective Constable Steve Skerrett of Sussex Police, after a bargain for himself. He picks a machine and says he’ll be back with the cash. At the station, a colleague recognises the model from a fraud complaint.
The Observer, 3 Feb 2002 · BBC Radio 4, 2008
He comes back without the cash. Officers come in through the back patio window and search the flat for six hours. They find more than a dozen computers and paperwork for equipment they value at over £300,000. She makes everyone tea. The allegation is that she and two others ordered computers from big companies and never paid the invoices. She is arrested on suspicion of fraud and bailed.
The Observer, 2002 · West Sussex County Times, 26 May 2000 · Fiona Mont, Life on the Run
“I take it you haven’t come to buy a computer, Steve.”
Two days later detectives open two storage containers she rents on a farm, expecting the missing computers. Inside are two torn sheets of A4 with smiley faces drawn on them. Then Skerrett’s mobile rings. It’s Fiona, inviting him round for a glass of wine. He says no.
DC Skerrett’s account, The Observer, 2002
After an identity parade she is bailed a second time, to come back on 12 January 2000. Skerrett later said he meant to charge her when she did. Fiona says her solicitor told her there was no harm in going abroad for Christmas.
The Observer, 2002 · BBC Radio 4, 2008
Her Rover is found near Beachy Head, the chalk cliff known for suicides. The papers report a two-day air and sea search that ends when her mother tells police Fiona has phoned. Skerrett never believed she was dead. Fiona says there was no note and no staged suicide: the worn-out car had broken down with flat tyres, and she left it in a parking bay.
The Observer, 2002 · Sussex Express, 16 Nov 2001 · BBC Radio 4, 2008 · Life on the Run
It is reported that she left the country in a light aircraft flown by Graham Hesketh, who ran the flying school at Shoreham where they had met. He was called the Baron after the First World War ace Manfred von Richthofen, and by the couple’s own account had a conviction for conspiracy to smuggle cannabis from about ten years earlier. How and when they actually left, they have never said.
Sussex Express, 16 Nov 2001 · The Observer, 2002 · Life on the Run
On their first morning in Amsterdam Graham tells her to relax, and she notices she is still looking over her shoulder. They see in the millennium in Rhenen, a small Dutch town, living on about £24,000 from her flat and his savings. Without Dutch papers, neither of them can work.
BBC Radio 4, 2008 · Life on the Run
With the trail cold, Steyning detectives appeal on Crimewatch on 24 May 2000, and her photograph goes out across the country. By August ITV’s Britain’s Most Wanted has staged a reconstruction, with Skerrett, himself a pilot, at the controls of the plane. The tabloids borrow the programme’s title as her nickname. Skerrett later said the police never used it.
Shoreham Herald, 25 May 2000 · Eastbourne Herald, 4 Aug 2000 · Shoreham Herald, 31 Jan 2002
Police trace the couple to Emmeloord, a small town in the north of the Netherlands, and plan an arrest. They are a couple of days too late. After that, Skerrett admits, the trail goes cold.
Sussex Express, 16 Nov 2001 · Evening Standard, 25 Jan 2002 · Shoreham Herald, 31 Jan 2002
Down to about £2,000, and with Fiona newly pregnant, they drive south in an old white Land Rover Defender towing a tiny 1960s caravan with a broken door. Fiona says they bought it from a Dutch police officer. They call it the Egg, and sometimes the TARDIS. She waits tables for £2 an hour and he lays bricks. She says it is the first time in years she has had real friends.
BBC Radio 4, 2008 · The Observer, 2004 · The Argus, 2007 · Life on the Run
In September 2000 she emails the Daily Mail, which reports that she has no intention of giving herself up. Fiona says she was pleading her side of the story. In 2001 a site called the-baron.50megs.com appears, full of press cuttings and extracts from a planned book about the couple, pitched as an outlaw love story. The papers say she is taunting the police. Skerrett thought she was keener to sell her story. Fiona says she never taunted anyone.
Daily Mail, 2002 · Sussex Express, 16 Nov 2001 · Shoreham Herald, 31 Jan 2002 · Life on the Run
Their first child, a girl, is born while they are on the run. Fiona had kept waitressing until she was seven months pregnant.
The Observer, 2002 · Express & Star, 25 Jan 2002 · Life on the Run
Police find her on a campsite about ten miles from Málaga, living in the caravan under the name Jacqueline Mayhew. Spanish officers arrest her on an international warrant, with two Sussex detectives there to identify her. She still has not been charged with anything. Sussex Police thank the Daily Mail for its help. After a court appearance in Marbella she is held in a Spanish prison while the extradition case goes to Madrid.
Telegraph, 26 Jan 2002 · Shropshire Star, 25 Jan 2002 · Shoreham Herald, 31 Jan 2002 · Sussex Express, 1 Feb 2002
In prison she keeps a diary addressed to God and counts the days towards forty, the time limit for the extradition papers. After about a month her name comes over the tannoy and she is let out late at night: the formal paperwork has not arrived in time. Fiona believes it had been lost at the Ministry of Justice under a storage box.
BBC Radio 4, 2008 · The Argus, 2007 · her prison diary, published on the couple’s website · her 2022 videos
They move to a campsite near Gibraltar. For months, Fiona says, the British press has no idea she is out. When strangers start turning up at the campsite they move again, to the western Algarve in Portugal. In October 2002 the papers report that she has missed an extradition hearing in Madrid and is on the run again. Soon her face is on the front of the local English-language paper.
Shropshire Star, 10 Oct 2002 · Daily Mail, Oct 2002 · BBC Radio 4, 2008 · Life on the Run
Worn down, Fiona flies from Faro to Gatwick alone, on her own passport, to see what happens. It is checked for a few minutes longer than everyone else’s. Nobody stops her. She flies back to Portugal the next day, and over the following year the family moves home to Sussex.
The Observer, 12 Sept 2004 · BBC Radio 4, 2008
Their second child is born in Sussex.
The Observer, 12 Sept 2004
The Observer reports that Britain’s most wanted woman is living in a caravan near Brighton. Sussex Police say the file is still open, but there is no warrant for her arrest in force. The same weekend a Sunday tabloid runs its own story. Graham complains to the Press Complaints Commission that it was inaccurate, named the children and used one of his photographs without consent. The paper hands his pictures back.
The Observer, 12 Sept 2004 · Press and Journal, 13 Sept 2004 · Press Complaints Commission, Report 68
Sussex Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide together to drop the case. Fiona Mont was never charged or tried. Graham takes newspapers to court over the use of his photographs; the couple say the papers settled.
The Argus, 2007 · BBC Radio 4, 2008 · Life on the Run
Fiona and Graham marry.
Life on the Run
Fiona sits down with Steve Skerrett, who has since left the police, and Graham films their conversation. Skerrett tells her he never saw her as a danger to the public. She says he has apologised, and that they forgave him long ago.
The Argus, 17 Oct 2007
On Beyond These Walls, presented by Ritula Shah, Fiona and Skerrett tell the story in the same programme. Their accounts contradict each other, and each insists theirs is the true one.
BBC Radio 4, 2008
MY VERSION · THEIR VERSION
Fiona’s own website split her story under two headings: her version and theirs. The film keeps both. These are the points where the press account and hers part company.
DEC 1999
Their version
She fled because she knew she would be charged when she answered bail in January.
DC Skerrett, BBC Radio 4, 2008
Her version
She believed the detective wanted her remanded in custody over Christmas and the millennium. She had fallen in love with Graham and wanted one chance at being happy.
Life on the Run
15.12.1999
Their version
She faked her own suicide on a notorious cliff and set off a two-day air and sea search.
Sussex Express, 2001 · The Observer, 2002
Her version
No note, no cliff edge. Her clapped-out car broke down at Birling Gap with flat tyres, so she parked it in a bay. She says the search that night never happened.
Life on the Run · BBC Radio 4, 2008
THE NAME
Their version
She was nicknamed the Cat because she kept slipping through the detectives’ fingers.
The Observer, 2000 and 2002
Her version
Her dad called her Pussycat, because he loved cats.
Life on the Run
2000–2001
Their version
She mocked the police online and sent emails daring them to catch her.
Sussex Express, 2001 · Daily Mail, 2002
Her version
She never sent a taunt. She emailed a newspaper to say the police weren’t telling the whole story, and the website was there to defend her.
BBC Radio 4, 2008 · Life on the Run
THE ALLEGATION
Their version
Police valued the computers and the paperwork at more than £300,000. Later estimates went as high as £350,000.
The Observer, 2002 · BBC Radio 4, 2008
Her version
There was no £300,000. If they’d had that kind of money, she asks, would they have been living in a £400 caravan?
Life on the Run
FEB–OCT 2002
Their version
A Spanish bungle freed Britain’s most wanted woman, and she skipped her court hearing and vanished again.
Daily Mail, Oct 2002 · Shropshire Star, 10 Oct 2002
Her version
The extradition papers never arrived within the legal time limit, so the court let her go. She went to her hearings in Madrid until strange faces started appearing at the campsite.
Life on the Run · BBC Radio 4, 2008
Fiona Mont has always denied the fraud allegations. She was never charged or tried, and the case was closed in 2005.
HOW A PERSON BECOMES A STORY
The story ran in the papers for five years, then turned up in a school textbook, a book of Sussex villains, an American humour almanac and a regulator’s report. The film treats the press as a character in its own right.
TELEVISION
BBC One · 24 May 2000
The first national appeal. Her photograph goes out across the country and the local story becomes a national one.
TELEVISION
ITV · summer 2000
A reconstruction with the detective flying the plane. The papers took the title as her nickname; the police, he said, never used it.
NEWSPAPERS
2000–2004
Catwoman, the Cat, Britain’s most wanted woman, the Baron. The names came from the tabloids, and they stuck.
RADIO
BBC Radio 4 · 7 Nov 2008
Fiona and the detective in the same programme, telling two different stories.
REGULATOR
Report 68
Graham’s complaint about a Sunday Mirror article that named their children. Resolved when the paper returned his photographs.
TEXTBOOK
Nelson Thornes · p. 96
Her arrest in Spain became a classroom exercise: write contrasting headlines for the same story.
BOOKS
2003 onwards
A 2003 book of Sussex villains included her while she was still abroad. An American humour almanac listed her among politicians’ problem children, because of her mother.
THEIR OWN
2000 onwards
Video diaries, two websites, YouTube films and even a Pussycat T-shirt. They have been telling their version for more than twenty years.
THE PEOPLE
The film is inspired by real people, and some names and details will change on screen. This is who they were in the record.
“THE CAT”B. 1970
Later Fiona Hesketh. In Spain, Jacqueline Mayhew.
IN THE FILMFunny, stubborn, frightened and devout, and far more ordinary than the woman in the papers. The film stays with her, so it only sees what she sees.
“THE BARON”PILOT
Named after the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen.
IN THE FILMThe man behind the lens. He had filmed skydives long before he filmed her. He left his flying school behind, and almost everything we know about their private life, we know because he kept filming.
“THE DETECTIVE”SUSSEX POLICE
Detective Constable, Steyning CID. Also a pilot.
IN THE FILMNot a villain. A detective who found the case of his career while trying to buy a cheap computer, and couldn’t let it go.
“THE CHORUS”2000–2004
Television appeals, tabloids, doorstep photographers.
IN THE FILMThe noise outside the caravan. We see how a person becomes a story, one front page at a time, and what it is like to read about yourself and not recognise who you are reading about.
PART TWO · THE FILM
Sussex, 1999. On bail over a fraud she has always denied, Fiona Mont flies out of England with a pilot the papers will call the Baron. For three years the tabloids hunt Britain’s most wanted woman across Europe. Inside a tiny caravan, his camcorder records two people falling in love.
The film opens on a cliff road in December 1999: a worn-out car, a woman walking towards the edge, a taxi horn in the wind. Then a small plane climbs out over the Channel and the title comes up.
From the air we cut back to a knock on a door in Hove, where a detective has come to buy a computer. From there the film moves between the chase and the life the couple make on the Continent: a rented house in a Dutch town, a Crimewatch appeal watched from abroad, a caravan in the Spanish hills, cash-in-hand work and a pregnancy. Graham buys a camcorder, and more and more of the film is seen through it.
It ends with a morning raid, a month in a Spanish prison, a release nobody in England knew about for months, and a quiet return home. When the case is finally dropped, the picture cuts from the actors to the real tapes.
PROLOGUE
Birling Gap and the flight out, December 1999
PART ONE
Hove, autumn 1999, told in flashback
PART TWO
The Netherlands and Spain, 2000–2001
PART THREE
Málaga and Madrid, 2002
PART FOUR
Portugal to Sussex, 2002–2005
EPILOGUE
The real footage
I’ve been thinking about this story for years. Every version I read was a crime story: a public-school girl, a fake suicide, a drug smuggler with a plane. Then I watched their footage. They were broke, scared, often ridiculous and very much in love, and Graham filmed nearly all of it.
I want the film to feel like that footage: close, handheld and funny, then suddenly frightening. England is cold, Spain is warm, and nobody on the run has clean clothes. We learn about Fiona’s past the way she did, from the papers and the police, and the film never pretends that their version and hers are the same story.
At the end, the actors hand the picture back to the real people.
Joe Carey
THE DEVICE
For the whole time they were on the run, Graham kept video diaries: the places, the rows, the jokes, the baby. The couple say the papers spent years trying to get hold of those tapes.
In the film his camcorder is a character. We recreate it on period Digital8 cameras with a fisheye adapter, move in and out of its point of view, and at the end cut on a matching movement from the actors to the real footage.
The couple say the full, unedited tapes have never been released.
Twelve moments in running order. A red dot means we see the scene through Graham’s camcorder.
Her hands on the wheel, the wind, two flat tyres. She walks to the edge and the camera waits at her feet, then whips round to find her already running back to the taxi, where Graham has told the driver to lean on the horn.
Night flying, purple sky turning to orange. She watches him fly. As the English coast disappears behind them, the title comes up.
A hard cut to a bright doorstep, months earlier. A detective has come about the computer in the paper. He likes the price. He says he’ll be back.
Detectives force open two storage containers. Inside: two sheets of A4 and two drawn smiles. His phone rings.
Graham haggles for a camcorder in a language he doesn’t speak. The first recording is completely black. We only hear them: a squabble about getting a dog, the lens cap, laughing.
On the floor by the fire she asks how a tape actually works. He explains far too much. The sound falls away and the light turns from evening orange to morning blue.
They watch the appeal in their rented Dutch house and she hates the photo they’ve used. She switches it off and goes out into the garden to scream. We hear it through the glass.
We push into the television and into the studio. Between takes, Skerrett tells a runner the whole smiley-face story while she stands there holding five empty coffee cups.
A dress from a charity shop, friends waiting inside, a police car pulling into the car park. They eat a takeaway in the caravan, still in their best clothes.
Police at the caravan door, the baby in her arms, a photographer at the window and Graham standing in front of the lens.
A prison diary addressed to God. She counts the days towards forty and copies out a psalm about the people hunting her.
The post drops through the door and she reads it with toast in her hand. It’s over. At golden hour the actors pick up the camcorder one last time, and the picture cuts into the real footage.
LOOK AND SOUND
Two temperatures and two cameras. Drag the grade from Sussex to Spain, then switch from the drama to the tape.
England, December 1999. Low grey light, chalk and wet tarmac. Cold blues and no sun.
The drama is shot wide, in scope.
Temp tracks for mood only. Nothing licensed.
THE RESEARCH FILE
Everything in the true story comes from these. Accounts of the same events often differ, which is part of the point.
This film is inspired by true events.
While based on real experiences, certain characters, incidents, locations, and dialogues have been fictionalised for dramatic purposes.
Names and details have been altered to protect the identities of those involved.