[5][4] The investigation began when he discovered a series of compensation payments authorised by Essex County Council for "alleged abuse" linked to its children's departments between the 1970s and the 1990s.

[1][6] His campaign for transparency over the payments led to a whistleblower coming forward with concerns about how authorities had handled an investigation into a 1980s paedophile ring in Shoebury.

[1][8] Thomson discovered a link between the Shoebury ring and the sex offender Lennie Smith, a member of the "Dirty Dozen" paedophile gang, which was responsible for the deaths of Jason Swift, Barry Lewis and Mark Tildseley in the 1980s.

[citation needed] The documents included a confession by a police officer that the leader of the paedophile ring had been a "registered informant", despite decades of sexual offending against children.

[9][better source needed] In 2008, Thomson interviewed James Brown's former co-writer Fred Wesley for Wax Poetics magazine.

[14] His work was also cited in other Jackson biographies including Joseph Vogel's Man in the Music, Mike Smallcombe's Making Michael and J. Randy Taraborrelli's The Magic and the Madness.

[verification needed] Thomson won a 2009 "Special Commendation" in the Feature Writer of the Year category at the Guardian Student Media Awards, 2009.

The commendation was created in 2009 especially to acknowledge the strength of Thomson's article, "James Brown: The Lost Album", which pieced together the final recording sessions of the so-called "Godfather of Soul".