Chris Atkins (born Christopher Walsh Atkins) is a British journalist, documentary film maker and best-selling author. He has made several fiction feature films, feature length documentaries and television documentaries, which have received three BAFTA nominations.
His work is noted for causing controversy and has faced legal action as a result of his films. He gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry into the ethics of the British press. In 2016 he was sentenced to five years in prison for tax fraud. He published a book about his time in jail entitled A Bit of a Stretch which became a bestseller in the UK.
Early life and career
Atkins was educated at Bromsgrove School from 1989–1994. His early career involved making low-budget dramas with director Richard Jobson, including Jobson's debut feature film, 16 Years of Alcohol, which was nominated for five British Independent Film Awards in 2003, winning two. He also produced The Purifiers with Jobson in 2004, a martial arts film set in the future, which was acquired by Working Title and released in the USA by New Line Cinema. In 2005, he produced Jobson's A Woman In Winter, starring Jamie Sivves, Julie Gayet and Brian Cox. It was nominated for two Scottish BAFTAs, including best film.
Documentaries
Taking Liberties
In 2007, Atkins directed his first feature documentary Taking Liberties, which criticised the Blair government for undermining civil liberties since the war on terror. While making Taking Liberties, Atkins was held under anti-terror laws when he tried to speak with the Home Secretary John Reid at the 2006 Labour Party conference. The film was released in over 50 British cinemas shortly before Blair stepped down in 2007. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave the film 4 stars, saying "there's something exhilarating about this thoroughly enjoyable and worthwhile docu-blast against Tony Blair's insidious diminution of native British liberties." The film was BAFTA nominated for the "Carl Foreman award for special achievement by a British director, writer or producer in their first feature film" in the 2008 British Academy Film Awards.
Starsuckers
In 2009, Atkins directed his second feature documentary, Starsuckers, which heavily criticised the media for the negative effects of celebrity culture. The film gained wide notoriety for selling fake celebrity stories to several British tabloid newspapers, and for secretly filming journalists from Sunday tabloids, who were attempting to buy celebrity medical records. The Guardian newspaper published two front page stories about Starsuckers in October 2009, and the News Of The World quickly contacted the filmmakers to threaten legal action for secretly filming their journalist but this was not pursued.
Atkins also secretly filmed the celebrity publicist Max Clifford boasting about how he kept embarrassing stories about his clients out of the media. Clifford also tried to legally block the film's release. (Coincidentally, both men would later be imprisoned at HM Prison Wandsworth.)
The film criticised Bob Geldof over the negative consequences of both Live Aid and Live 8 charity concerts, leading Geldof to write Atkins a 6,000 word letter, attacking the film days before it was screened on Channel 4 in 2010. Thirty minutes of footage from Starsuckers were shown as part of Atkins' evidence to the Leveson Inquiry. His evidence was quoted extensively in Leveson's final report.
UKIP: The First 100 Days
In 2015, Atkins wrote and directed UKIP: The First 100 Days, a mockumentary drama for Channel 4. The film was set in an imagined future where UKIP won the 2015 general election, and mixed real news reports with fly on the wall style footage of a fictional MP, Deepa Kaur. The film was broadcast on 16 February 2015 and caused considerable controversy, leading to over 6000 complaints to the broadcasting regulator Ofcom. UKIP supporters were upset that the film portrayed the party's policies in a negative light so close to the general election. Ofcom rejected all of the complaints and ruled that the film had not breached the regulations.
Work for Channel 4 and BBC
Atkins went on to make TV documentaries for the Channel 4 television series Dispatches. In 2012 he spent a year undercover investigating the illegal trade in confidential data, in which Atkins bought private information on volunteers from unwitting private detectives to illustrate the ease with which data is bought and sold on the black market. The film culminated in Atkins being unmasked by two private detectives who chased him down a street.