Avoids the breathless hype of so many podcasts: Finding Mr Fox reviewed

We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a charming new holiday friend to bring back what they’re told is an innocuous package, only to end up on the sharp end of drugs smuggling charges. The latest series of the BBC’s World of Secrets somewhat inverts those expectations: it tracks the fortunes of three innocent young Brazilian sailors and a French captain who were allegedly duped by a Norwich businessman into sailing a rackety yacht across the Atlantic with £100 million worth of cocaine hidden in the body of the ship.

The boat was called the Rich Harvest, a title which suggests a hand-rubbing anticipation of financial reward. Sadly, the unsuspecting crew reaped the whirlwind. The podcast’s presenters, Yemisi Adegoke and Colin Freeman, chart a compelling course through a twisty, novelistic tale which begins with two of the Brazilian sailors, Daniel and Rodrigo, describing how they were lured into the voyage to start with: their desire to gain documented sailing experience; a respectable-looking advertisement; and confidence-building encounters with the ‘trustworthy’, likeable Englishman known as Fox, who had been renovating the yacht in Brazil and was now asking them to help sail it to Europe.