Charlie Brooks (racehorse trainer)

Charles Patrick Evelyn "Charlie" Brooks (born 3 March 1963) is a British socialite, newspaper columnist, racehorse trainer and former jockey. He is best known as the husband of Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News UK. The couple are seen as leading lights of the so-called 'Chipping Norton set', a politically influential clique close to the former leadership of the Conservative Party. On 15 May 2012, Brooks and his wife were charged with perverting the course of justice. On 24 June 2014, the High Court found Brooks and his wife Rebekah not guilty.

Brooks was born Charles Patrick Evelyn Brooks on 3 March 1963 in Chipping Norton, the third and youngest child of Robert Noel Brand Brooks and Caroline Diana (Todd). His father died when he was 12. Educated at Eton College, where he was a friend of future Prime Minister David Cameron, Brooks became an amateur jockey and assistant racehorse trainer to Fred Winter. In 1987 he won the Christie's Foxhunter Chase on Observe, and in 1989 he took over the Uplands stables at Lambourn from Winter.

Among Brooks's successes as a trainer were Suny Bay, runner-up in the 1997 and 1998 Grand Nationals, and Couldn't be Better, winner of the 1995 Hennessy Gold Cup.

After a break of more than thirteen years, Brooks was reinstated as a licensed trainer in late 2011.

During 2011 and 2012 Brooks became drawn into the Phone-hacking scandal by Rupert Murdoch's News International. In July 2011, fearing a "Jacqui Smith moment", Brooks hid a pornographic magazine called Lesbian Lovers and seven DVDs of lesbian porn in a Jiffy bag behind some bins in the underground car park of the couple's Chelsea home. Other concealed items said to be part of Mr Brooks' property included an Apple laptop, iPad and iPod as well as a Sony laptop and other documents. They were discovered by cleaner Fernando Nascimento on a routine rubbish collection the day after Brooks’ wife Rebekah was arrested at a south London police station in connection with the phone hacking investigation. "I envisaged 20 policemen coming in and emptying every drawer and looking under every nook and cranny, and I did think about my DVDs," Brooks later explained. One of the laptops "had a bit of smut on it too", he added.

...
Wikipedia