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Episode details

Radio 4,31 Mar 2026,44 mins

The Scrooge Identity

Drama on 4

Available for over a year

Hamburg, 1992. A pipe-bomb goes off in a department store at one in the morning, and a ransom note arrives shortly after, demanding a million marks and signed "Uncle Scrooge". The police are baffled. The press are delighted. And a nation starts rooting for the wrong side. A cat-and-mouse thriller based on an extraordinary true story, about a lone eccentric who seems to be running his criminal campaign straight from the pages of a Donald Duck comic book, and the police team who realise the only way to catch him is to make him feel understood. Warm, witty and surprisingly tender, it might just be unlike any true-crime story you've heard before. Based on real events with imagined scenes. Narrator . . . . . Clare Corbett Funke . . . . . Blake Harrison Daleki . . . . . Ben Crowe Brockmann . . . . . Amaka Okafor Springborn . . . . . John Macmillan Blashke . . . . . Sam Swann Weber . . . . . Sam Dale Writer: Simon Scardifield Sound design: Sharon Hughes Technical producers: Keith Graham & Jenni Burnett Casting Manager: Alex Curran Production co-ordinator: Luke MacGregor Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

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