Tommy Robinson on Holiday

Our photograph of Tommy Robinson stoking the flames of the post-Southport race riots from the safety of a Cypriot sunbed became one of the defining images of this summer’s disorder.

Robinson’s track record of stalking, abusing, and attempting to intimidate the journalists who cover him meant that we embarked upon this story knowing that it came with a significant degree of personal risk for those involved.

Our investigation started when Daniel Sanderson noticed that Robinson was still enjoying a Mediterranean climate while posting about the Southport riots in the manner of someone on the front lines.

For days, we monitored every post of his – waiting for that one selfie or video rant that would reveal his location.

When he claimed to be on a seven-hour airport layover, Jacob Dirnhuber identified the airport as Vienna from a freeze-frame of a departure gate and a video from a restaurant in Terminal 3.

He then used the seven-hour claim and tidbits from other posts to make a shortlist of potential destinations, one of which was Larnaca International Airport. This was backed up after Robinson’s flight, when he posted a video showing Cypriot Greek confectionery on a shop shelf.

The next morning, Robinson posted a video from what appeared to be a hotel gym, in which Jacob spotted a series of waterslides through one of the windows. He then made a shortlist of every hotel in Cyprus with an on-site water park, and soon found a match for the gym in Aiya Napa’s five-star Atlantica Mare Village.

The decision was made to send freelancer Andrew Young and a photographer to Aiya Napa with instructions to photograph Robinson on holiday. Andrew discreetly obtained iPhone pictures of Robinson on Saturday 3 August, but we held our nerve and waited another day for the killer shot that would tell the story best.

When we published the sunbed photos on Sunday afternoon, the overwhelming initial response of Robinson’s fans on Telegram was fury – not towards us, but at him for abandoning them in their hour of need.

Though Robinson responded by instructing his thugs to photograph our reporters, editors, and their families at home before sharing their personal data online and forcing them into hiding, we would do the story again without hesitation – if you’d rather take the easy road than tell a story that matters, then your claim to be a journalist is no more valid than his.

The story was read by 913,825 people and viewed an astonishing 13.9 million times on X.