Broadcast Hotshot 2022
Sex, drugs and illegal raves: it’s all grist to the mill for Tir Dhondy, who has won audiences of millions due to her fearlessness in getting thrown in at the deep end in alternative communities and controversial sub-cultures.
Her first Vice investigation pulled no punches in exposing the ease with which children are buying drugs over Snapchat. Dhondy took a deeper dive into the drug culture as producer and host of docs for Vice’s High Society strand, including Guerilla Growers, about large-scale cannabis firms hiding in plain sight, and met older users of recreational drugs in Gravers: The UK’s Geriatric Ravers.
Her highest-profile report was an episode of Crimewave exposing how thieves use Snapchat and Instagram to rob influencers – including a member of the gang who robbed Kim Kardashian during Paris Fashion Week in 2016. The interview made waves across major online and print news outlets across the UK and US.
Dhondy also produces YouTube show Cooking With Amelia, which uses celebrity cooking demonstrations to raise awareness of the work of food surplus distributor FareShare.
Next up for Vice is a one-hour doc filmed with a ‘conscious tantric sex community’ in Thailand, described as Dhondy’s most ambitious, immersive and impressive work to date.
Vice Media Group head of video Milène Larsson says: “From producing to presenting, she continues to go from strength to strength and has the rare gift of knowing how to make content that engages a young audience.”
HUNTING THE ROLEX RIPPERS PRESS
“Dhondy skilfully gets her subjects to open up to her with a Louis Theroux-esque anti-Socratic line of questioning that makes them feel comfortable confessing their greatest sins (albeit with their faces concealed and voices distorted).
What money cannot buy you is time and, sadly, that is what is truly lacking in this programme. In a mere half hour, it’s hard to pack in enough substance. A few interesting titbits flash on the screen: one in 10 convicted watch thieves is a teenager. Dhondy and her crew are impressively committed, and willing to put themselves in the line of fire to uncover this story. They meet up with anonymous insiders who contact them on Instagram, and stick with them even when they are heavily armed, and violence seems imminent. But when the credits roll, it feels as if we have barely got started.”
“In a new BBC documentary, Hunting the Rolex Rippers, journalist Tir Dhondy gets exclusive access to the gun-toting gang members behind the crime wave, who train kids as young as 12 to snatch watches from innocent victims.”
BBC journalist Tir Dhondy recently made the documentary Hunting the Rolex Rippers exposing the modus operandi of organised gangs in London where, according to data collected by The Watch Register and shared with Dhondy, over $63 million worth of watches were stolen in 2022 with 3190 reported stolen in the first six months of 2023.
Dhondy hopes her film will raise awareness about the issue. “There will always be a risk if you are wearing an expensive watch walking around on the streets,” she told me, “so if you do have an expensive timepiece, you can be slightly more vigilant.”