Audible launches Foul Play podcast
May 28, 2026
Audible, a provider of spoken word entertainment, has launched Foul Play, an investigative serie that asks an extraordinary question: could the CIA have poisoned legendary England goalkeeper Gordon Banks during the 1970 football World Cup?
Spanning seven episodes, Ed Jervis – grandson of the 1966 World Cup hero and only goalkeeper to ever win the Jules Rimet trophy for England – is joined by investigative journalist Gabriel Gatehouse (BBC’s The Coming Storm) as they seek to uncover the truth behind a bout of food poisoning that saw Banks miss a crucial match and sent England crashing out of the tournament, setting the stage for decades of hurt for its national football team.
Foul Play takes listeners into a world of spies, secrets, and sporting skullduggery, as Gabriel and Ed quiz former England teammates and track down ex-spies, comb through forgotten medical records and unearth secret CIA documents. Their investigation takes them from Stoke on Trent in the English Midlands, to Mexico and the United States.
What begins as a search for answers to unresolved questions about a beloved family member, escalates into something far more extraordinary, as Ed and Gabriel uncover evidence of a secret CIA poisoning programme and find Gordon Banks’ story entwined with the dark underbelly of Cold War politics, including a link to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Gabriel Gatehouse, co-host and executive producer of the podcast, said: “When I first heard this story, I thought it sounded utterly ridiculous. Surely, this couldn’t be true? But the more I dug into it, the more plausible it seemed. Ed and I spent three years investigating, and we’ve uncovered more evidence than I could ever have imagined.”
Foul Play co-host, Ed Jervis added: “What started out as a journey to find out the true facts of a family tale, turned into something much more serious and unsettling. Our attempt to solve this mystery on behalf of my grandad, took me into the murky world of cold-war politics and Latin American dictatorships; and what we uncovered was beyond my wildest imagination!”
Foul Play is a story about heroes on pedestals, a family drama wrapped in a Cold War detective story at the intersection of sport and espionage.
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