BBC podcast series tells inside story of community leader and crime chief

A new BBC Scotland podcast series - The Ballad of Big Mags - will explore the life and times of a controversial figure who rose to prominence in the late 1990s.

Margaret Haney from the Raploch estate in Stirling grabbed headlines in 1997 as a self-styled anti-paedophile campaigner.
The media couldn’t get enough of her, and she revelled in the attention - but the high-profile coverage of ‘Big Mags’ as a protector of the community would eventually lead to her downfall.

Dark secrets lay behind the headlines because Margaret Haney was in fact the head of a notorious criminal gang while claiming she “just wanted to help folk” in the community.

Over 20 years later she still divides opinion, and, in this series, journalist Myles Bonnar reveals new insights as he speaks to people closely connected to her and intimately involved in the series of events that took place in the late 90s and early 2000s.

He also delves deep into the BBC archives to tell the definitive story of the woman known as ‘Big Mags’.

He said: “Mags Haney’s rise to prominence and her dramatic fall after revelations of her criminal activities, was a story which played out in the media over years.

“The series not only examines her contradictory life but also wider issues of mob justice, community dynamics, poverty, and the creation of the so-called media personality.

“Many people only partially know the story of this controversial figure and this series will give a full account of how she rose to fame and became a source of fascination to the media and public before her criminal life was exposed.’

The six-part series will be available on BBC Sounds from Friday 8 August.