Charlie Webster: Sheffield-born broadcaster and Scamanda podcast host on receiving an MBE and using her trauma to change the law

The presenter overlooks palm trees and a swimming pool from a balcony in Los Angeles, where she now spends much of her time, before an imminent return to her home city of Sheffield.

She was heading to the Lyceum Theatre – where she saw her first panto show as a child – to launch her new podcast, SPLBERG, as part of Sheffield Doc Fest last Sunday.

Set in the US in the late 1990s, the eight-part Audible series starts with a 14-year-old boy, apparently the nephew of film director Steven Spielberg, who goes to a school in Virginia to prepare for a role by getting the “all-American high school experience”.

Anyone who has ever listened to a narrative mystery podcast could have predicted that he was never Spielberg’s nephew.

"But actually, what he really is, you're not going to believe,” says Charlie. “And then what ends up happening is wild. Then I end up getting involved in the story and then it's (about) my own challenges as a storyteller, about my own complicity, and what stories get told, and it's a really interesting, layered examination. By the end of it, where it goes, you wouldn't believe.”

Charlie’s own life is a bit like that. The former Tapton School pupil started her television career with Real Madrid TV and went on to work for major broadcasters including ESPN, the BBC and Sky, covering majors sports events such as the FIFA World Cup and Olympics.

More recently, in 2022 she created Lionsgate Sound – the major entertainment studio’s audio division.

Her TV docuseries Scamanda (which aired on ABC in the US and is available on Disney+ in the UK) was nominated for an Emmy Award in the Outstanding True Crime category in May this year.

Originally launched as a podcast, Scamanda - about a Californian woman who falsely claimed to have cancer for years, documenting her supposed illness online and receiving more than $100,000 in donations from supporters - became a global hit. Its success led to Charlie relocating to LA to develop the television adaptation, as well as her following podcast, Unicorn Girl.

However, among Charlie's other notable work is the 2021 BBC documentary Nowhere to Run: Abused by Our Coach, in which she revisited the abuse she and other girls experienced at a running club, under a coach who was jailed for ten years in 2002.

In the King’s Birthday Honours last weekend, it was announced that Charlie would be made an MBE for services to broadcasting and charity.

“It was totally unexpected. I found out at the last minute because I didn't get the letter. The letter was sent – it wasn't them, it was me - I wasn't there because I'm here, there, and everywhere. They'd left multiple voicemails on my phone, but I hadn't seen them. I'm probably the only person in the world where it's like: ‘Hello, this is the King, the Prime Minister's office, do you want this MBE or what?’”

With experience of presenting true crime content, she was convinced it was all a scam at first. Eventually, contact was made and Charlie was honoured to accept.

“It’s incredible to be acknowledged in this way, for my work to be recognised, because I've given so much that people don't even see,” she adds.

“It’s not about ‘I give to be able to get an honour’ but I have that recognition for me that my work has had impact. The hours that I've spent in meetings with ministers, with civil servants, trying to basically put my trauma into a piece of paper, it is hard. It's really, really hard, and sometimes it would really trigger my nervous system.”

Charlie became an ambassador for Women’s Aid in 2010 when she ran a marathon for the charity.

Working with the organisation, she was among those who campaigned for changes in legislation to protect children from being abused. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 meant that children were recognised as victims of domestic abuse in their own right and that laws relating to coercive control were extended, for example, to recognise that a victim did not necessarily need to live with a perpetrator to experience the crime.

She is also an ambassador for the NSPCC and lobbied the government to broaden the ‘abuse of position of trust’ section of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Anyone in a position of trust (for example, a teacher or care worker) is forbidden from engaging in sexual activity with a person under 18.

Sports coaches were not officially included in the definition, but are now.

Charlie also works with the charity Malaria No More after suffering a near death experience when she caught the disease while cycling from London to Rio ahead of the 2016 Olympics, which she was due to present. She was given 24 hours to live, with multiple organ failure, and put on life support in a coma. After she survived, Charlie had to relearn how to walk.

So it has not all been palm trees and swimming pools.

“Never in a million years would my younger self have thought I would be anywhere near where I am now. I dreamed about going on a plane and being able to do some stuff in America,” she says.

“So to me, the MBE just represents such an incredible recognition of what I've done, and that it has had this impact, but it also represents like, ‘hey, look, my younger self - and all the younger people that are told that they're not enough, which I was a million friggin’ times – actually, you can (do this).

"You don't need to be an MBE to be successful in the slightest but you can have impact. One single person really can.”