Jason Fraser, The Independent on Sunday

Sunday, March 24, 2002

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The long-lens snapper of celebrities confesses - mostly, they are in on it - The IoS interview - Jason Fraser, tabloid photographer. By James Silver

From Carlos "The Jackal" to Princess Diana, Jason Fraser has made a career out of long-lens photography. And it has been another bonanza week for him in the tabloids. Last Tuesday's shots of Big Brother presenter Davina McCall water-skiing in Mauritius were followed on Thursday by pictures of the former soap star Danniella Westbrook honeymooning with her husband Kevin Jenkins in Florida. Fraser, who joined Westbrook by invitation, has cornered the market in "unposed portraits" like these. In the words of one national newspaper editor, his pictures capture "an intimate, inside view of stars caught off-guard".

But, he's happy to admit that, far from being caught "off-guard", most of his subjects actively collude with him by tipping him off about their whereabouts. "In a huge number of the photographs I take," he says, "the celebrities aren't exactly surprised when the picture appears in the newspapers afterwards."

Fraser, 35, who began his career in his teens as a news photographer, says that over the years he's been tipped off by personalities ranging from Princess Diana to Victoria Beckham. "I got the Geri Halliwell/Robbie Williams shots in the south of France before anyone else knew they were even together," he says. "I got a phone call and was told which beach they were going to be on." Did it come from the stars themselves? "I can't answer that."

He says: "I've always found A-list stars never complain. My relationships with a lot of high-profile celebrities is that they understand it's just business. My view is if they're accepting an award one night, and on a public beach the next day, so what? They're fair game."

We're in Fraser's South Kensington mews home, very near the spot where in 1987 he made the Princess of Wales cry. He'd been coming back from a party in his dinner jacket when he followed Diana's car into a mews. There he discovered her in a clinch with a guardsman, Major David Waterhouse. When he started taking pictures "all hell broke loose", he remembers. "Bodyguards moved in and grabbed me, one pushed me over a dustbin. But Diana, who knew who I was, sensed the heavy-handed approach wasn't going to work. So she came over, got all tearful and asked me for the film. After a while, I gave in. I got the roll back the next day, of course, but frame one was missing. Looking back, I shouldn't have handed it over."

He's now reordering his life after Richard Desmond. Despite a million-pound salary, he quit Desmond's Express group, where he was executive director, after just four months in July last year. "I don't regret joining the Express - I found it an educational ... enlightening experience. But I found being office-bound stifling. I missed being my own boss, meeting editors from other newspapers and of course the travelling, just jumping on a plane." At 35, with 20 years in the trade and a great deal of money in the bank, his is a world of exotic islands, bikini-clad celebrities and beach-front hotels. He flies planes and has dangled out of helicopters.

We head off to Paris, to the Eliot Press agency which sells his pictures in France. As we arrive, an Alain Delon lookalike greets him with a bear-hug. Sebastian Vallent has just returned from assignment in Mauritius. "I couldn't make it," explains Fraser, "so he popped out instead for three days to do Anthea Turner and her husband. I was tipped off on that. She's sort of on the wane now, but still worth doing."

Minutes later we're crowded around a computer. Pictures are coming in via ISDN from the previous night's World Music Awards in Monaco. The first few are of Kylie Minogue in a see-through black dress. "Those pictures will go down very well," mutters Fraser, "anything of Kylie in thigh boots I can't imagine isn't going to publish. We had a few photographers at the awards and then later one who was exclusive at the after-show party."

That photographer is Mario Brenna. It was he who, acting on Fraser's instructions, took the Diana/Dodi "kiss pictures", when the couple were on a yacht in the Mediterranean - a set of pictures which was said to have netted #500,000. "I was given information that she was seeing Dodi and that they were in the Med," says Fraser. "I didn't know exactly where, but I was given the name of the boat. So I discussed it with Mario, who found them and got the photos."

Sources close to Fraser say that in the final, frenzied weeks of her life, he spoke to Diana nearly every day. "After that I photographed her in Porto Fino, Sardinia, and the south of France ... right up until Paris. I didn't go to Paris. But otherwise I was always there, wherever she went. I was the person who revealed her relationship. I don't know whether that feels good or not, but I will be remembered for it."

During his early career as a news agency photographer, Fraser's biggest scoops included Colonel Gadaffi - taken "with the cold metal of a Kalashnikov literally pressing against my neck" - and the assassin Carlos "The Jackal", before he was caught. Access to figures like these and Princess Diana has led to rumours linking him to the British security services.

The rogue MI6 agent Richard Tomlinson has claimed on the internet that "one of the photographers who routinely followed the Princess of Wales was a member of UKN, a small corps of part-time MI6 agents who provide miscellaneous services such as surveillance and photography expertise." So has Fraser ever been involved with UKN? A wave of the hand. "Oh, that old chestnut," he says. "It's a load of old cobblers. Well, it may exist, but I certainly haven't had any association with them."

Material from this interview can be heard in "The Snapper King", at noon today on BBC Radio Five Live

Biography
Born in 1966
1997 Took photographs of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed holidaying in the Mediterranean.
2000 Investigated by French police for breach of privacy for taking the holiday photos. Shot photos of Camilla Parker Bowles in a swimsuit on a beach in Mauritius.
2001 Stepped down as executive director of Richard Desmond's Express group after four months. Snapped controversial photos of Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox and her husband, nude on a private island, published in the Sunday People.

(The Independent on Sunday, 15th April 2007)

Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, March 24, 2002

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