Documentary fans: Netflix has dropped an unusual, heartbreaking watch. Con Mum explores the true story of Masterchef star Graham Hornigold, and what happened when a woman named Dionne contacted him out of the blue, claiming to be his mother.
The doc explores what happened next, how it impacted Graham's relationships and finances, and whether he believes that Dionne is – in fact – the scammer that so many have accused her to be, as it was discovered she hadn't been entirely truthful when she'd contacted him.
Things are about to get very, very intense.
Here's everything we know about the true story behind Netflix's Con Mum documentary, including where Graham is now.
Who is Graham Hornigold in Con Mum?
You may recognise Graham from his time on screen, as he has appeared on Masterchef: The Professionals and Junior Bake Off in his capacity as a pastry chef and has worked in some of London's top restaurants.
Now, he is the subject of Netflix's true-life Con Mum documentary, which explores what happened when a woman named Dionne got in touch with him to tell him she was his long-lost biological mother.
Graham and Dionne's true story on Con Man
The true story begins with Graham receiving an email from a woman named Dionne, claiming to be his mother. After asking her a series of questions to try and identify if she was lying, they eventually met and began to build a long-awaited mother-son relationship. Graham had never known his mother, as he was taken back to the UK by his father shortly after being born on a British Army base in Germany in 1974.
Dionne confided in Graham that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and bone marrow cancer, and had six months to live, which was the reason why she had reached out to him – she also said that she'd like to leave her wealth, which was considerable judging by her lifestyle, to him. She also told him that she was the illegitimate child of the former Sultan of Brunei. She bought him a car and all manner of gifts. Some have described this as a form of “love bombing”. Dionne even moved in with Graham, his partner Heather and their newborn son.
The pair then flew to Switzerland to prepare documents for Graham's inheritance with a banker and a lawyer. But all is not as it seems. Graham's partner at the time discovered sums of money being transferred to Dionne, with the promise of repayment, totalling to hundreds of thousands of pounds. He ended up being there for months, and when he tried to leave to rejoin his family he was guilted by Dionne about leaving her alone. He didn't see his newborn son for months, as a result. He continued to fund Dionne's lifestyle, racking up debts of around £300,000.
Graham met a friend in Zurich named Juan, who was suspicious that Dionne was a scam artist and not, in fact, dying. We see Graham do his own research into other people who had given Dionne money and not seen returns. But, it's not easy for him to define her as a scammer.
"Before you realise it was a scam or [that] she was pulling the wool over [your] eyes, [or] whatever you thought, the bottom line is, she's still my mum," he told the Radio Times.
"So to have that trauma bond but to have that realisation that you've just met her after 45 years, and she told you that she's going to be gone within six months already, you're like, 'I just want to spend as much time as [I can],' so that's really what your focus is.
"And it's just, let's try and have the best time that we can and get to know each other, and that was essentially the overriding thought in my head, up until the point where externals had tried to tell me things that happened on the sideline, and then you had that realisation that, 'You really did do that to your son.'"
As the truth came to light, including the fact that Dionne had been faking her cancer diagnosis, Dionne disappeared, leaving Graham to repay the debts. She called him from Malaysia to tell him she loved him and to apologise.
"I just want to talk to my son," she said. “I love you, son, I'm sorry for what happened... I've done what I've done, son. I cannot change, son.”
Graham is now separated from his ex-partner Heather, who moved to New Zealand with their son.
Is Dionne Graham's real mum?
Here's the twist. She is. A DNA test revealed that it is 99.9% certain that Dionne is Graham's mother. The documentary reports that she has not faced criminal charges for the allegations made against her.
“She played upon a need, an unhealed wound which manifested itself into my personality and allowed her in, which it would do anybody," Graham told The Standard.
“The one person who's supposed to come into your life and be your protector. Those are the ones that are supposed to be there. That's how I had it in my head. And to come in and eliminate everything… all the trust and everything like that, that's a difficult scar.”
Where is Graham from Con Mum now?
We discovered from the documentary that Graham was unable to reconcile with his partner Heather due to the damage caused by his relationship with Dionne, particularly the debt that she left them with. It has left him unable to afford to visit his son in New Zealand yet.
Heather opens up about their broken-down relationship in the documentary. "There was a point where I was hoping to reconcile with Graham, but a lot later when things had settled down, Graham and I had come to the conclusion that I wasn't coming back [from New Zealand]," she said.
That said, it looks like Graham is making serious moves in the food and business world. He's a co-founder of London-based business Longboys Doughnuts (which he launched with his ex-partner Heather), acquired patisserie business Pretty Sweet and also runs a consultancy called Smart Patisserie Ltd.
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It looks like Longboys is making strides, with Graham announcing their new spring flavours/fillings, including tiramisu, lemon meringue and vanilla malt. Delicious.
He has made various public appearances on TV shows such as Lorraine and given interviews around the Con Mum story, ultimately crediting his circle of friends for pulling him through his ordeal. "I realised that you can recover, dust yourself off and keep going. You have to have the closest of friends around [...] That's what I call family," he says in the documentary.
Graham is also adamant that what allowed him to be swindled by Dionne was his remote chance of having a mum. “That was my downfall,” he told The Guardian. “If you don’t receive it when you’re a kid, you have this wound you carry around ... Can you honestly tell me the bond between you and your mother you haven’t seen in 45 years and who is dying wouldn’t be stronger than anything else?”
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