One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[DirectorDave]

DirectorDave,

Could you clarify for the good readers of this thread when Mike Barrett had a stroke, please?

Cheers,

Ike

Yes I'll be delighted to enlighten you.



MB: I’ll ask you a question. I’ll ask
you an honest question. I can have one pound
in your pocket or you can have one million
pounds in your pocket O.K., but can it buy
you health? Well thank you very much because
I’ve had a stroke in between and it can’t buy
you health. And all the money in the world
can’t buy you health. And I mean that. It
just can’t buy you health.

MH: When did the pressure really start for you?

MB: When? I think the pressure started eighteen
months ago when I first had it.


So it was in the eighteen months previous to the interview which was September 1993....so that would make it March 1992 onwards.

Certainly the whole point is you have critiqued this man's intellect and competence without acknowledging he was recovering from a stroke.

Certainly, the mumbling and repeating himself is indicative of such.

Really it's all in there ico...you should be doing your own homework.

[Iconoclast]

You need to keep up.

I think I do need to keep up because I genuinely can't follow the inanity of your argument here! 1993? 1994? Does it matter??????

The news of Mike Barrett's stroke is news to me so I do need to tred carefully. If he had a stroke prior to giving that interview then that might well indeed explain a great deal. I think it would be useful if someone who knows this for a fact could confirm the details. It has been said many times before about Mike that he was a Walter Mitty - a fantastist of ever-changing story. I find it hard to believe that he would make up something as serious as a stroke so we will assume he did have one. It would certainly help to explain how he was a journalist one minute, possibly wrote a rather brilliant hoax journal of James Maybrick making him appear to be Jack the Ripper the next, then gave the sadly rather incoherent and not always on-point interview that he did in 1993.

I'm going to pin my colours to the mast here. Given what I have read about Mike Barrett's Walter Mitty ways, I'm going to very very reluctant to accept that he had had a stroke at all. Harsh? Of course. Based upon what? Well, based upon what I have read about Mike Barrett and the fact that I can recall no other occasion that he ever mentioned this fact, and he wasn't short or shy of going on the record. Oh, and the fact that no-one else has ever mentioned it before either, of course.

[Iconoclast]

Yes I'll be delighted to enlighten you.

Really it's all in there ico...you should be doing your own homework.

Well obviously I read it, DD!

Reading that he claimed it and then relying on that as evidence that it ever happened - now that's two very different things.

Hey, by the way, I know a horse race that's running next week and there's only one horse running. Honestly. Could you punt me a quick million pounds and I'll bet on it for you? You can't lose - honest, I've said it so it must be true!

[DirectorDave]

I'm going to pin my colours to the mast here. Given what I have read about Mike Barrett's Walter Mitty ways, I'm going to very very reluctant to accept that he had had a stroke at all. Harsh? Of course.

Good, I was hoping you'd suggest that.

So what you are saying is he was faking having a stroke...he was actually trying to appear less intelligent than he actually was....and he has fooled many people for the past 25 years?

Are you sure you don't wish to go back to him actually having a stroke?

[Iconoclast]

Good, I was hoping you'd suggest that.

So what you are saying is he was faking having a stroke...he was actually trying to appear less intelligent than he actually was....and he has fooled many people for the past 25 years?

Are you sure you don't wish to go back to him actually having a stroke?

Honestly, rarely have I laughed so much at such bizarre and twisted logic!

I don't imagine he said he had had a stroke in order to appear less intelligent than he actually was. I think he was less intelligent than he wished he was (whether he had had a stroke or not).

By the way, I'm not sure I like the inference that a stroke necessarily makes you less intelligent. It massively interferes with your motor function but does not necessarily equate with diminshed intelligence. Dangerous line you're taking there, mate.

[DirectorDave]

By the way, I'm not sure I like the inference that a stroke necessarily makes you less intelligent. It massively interferes with your motor function but does not necessarily equate with diminshed intelligence. Dangerous line you're taking there, mate.

But it's Mike who is making a big deal about his stroke...not me.

And you are too late to take the matter up with him.


There are plenty of other loony suspects out there....have you thought about Dr Bernardo or the Elephant man?

[Iconoclast]

But it's Mike who is making a big deal about his stroke...not me.

And you are too late to take the matter up with him.

There are plenty of other loony suspects out there....have you thought about Dr Bernardo or the Elephant man?

Almost every suspect for Jack the Ripper is 'loony' based solely on the fact that they are put forward in all earnestness without any evidence whatsoever to realistically support their case.

Tony Williams made a good case with his 'Uncle Jack', but James Maybrick wrote a journal of his crimes, and it ain't been disproven so James Maybrick is your man.

[DirectorDave]

Almost every suspect for Jack the Ripper is 'loony' based solely on the fact that they are put forward in all earnestness without any evidence whatsoever to realistically support their case.

Yeah so when you are finally red pilled on Maybrick you have a whole basket of deplorables to choose from.

[David Orsam]

I think I do need to keep up because I genuinely can't follow the inanity of your argument here! 1993? 1994? Does it matter??????

Of course it does.

Mike was quoted in the Liverpool Daily Post of 27 June 1994 as saying "Yes, I am a forger. The greatest in history".

This seems to be the straw man you are trying to knock down.

I say straw man because within a few months Mike changed his story by claiming that his wife actually wrote the diary (so that she must have been the great forger). That's what he put in his affidavit of January 1995.

So you are having an argument with Mike Barrett of June 1994! No-one else is saying he is the greatest forger in history. That's because the story has changed. But you don't seem to be able to keep up.

[David Orsam]

The news of Mike Barrett's stroke is news to me so I do need to tred carefully. If he had a stroke prior to giving that interview then that might well indeed explain a great deal.

Have you not read Inside Story then?

It's right there on page 67:

"Barrett in particular had not been bearing up very well. Harold Bough, who had first contacted him back in April [1993], had seen a dramatic change, as he reported in the Liverpool Daily Post of 28 September 1993. Only forty-one, Barrett had aged visibly over the last few months and now walked with a stick, the result, he told Bough, of a stroke which left him with limited use of his right side and which blamed on the stresses and strains involved in living with the Ripper story."

[David Orsam]

I'm going to very very reluctant to accept that he had had a stroke at all. Harsh? Of course. Based upon what? Well, based upon what I have read about Mike Barrett and the fact that I can recall no other occasion that he ever mentioned this fact, and he wasn't short or shy of going on the record. Oh, and the fact that no-one else has ever mentioned it before either, of course.

Memory fail?

[John G]

I think I do need to keep up because I genuinely can't follow the inanity of your argument here! 1993? 1994? Does it matter??????

The news of Mike Barrett's stroke is news to me so I do need to tred carefully. If he had a stroke prior to giving that interview then that might well indeed explain a great deal. I think it would be useful if someone who knows this for a fact could confirm the details. It has been said many times before about Mike that he was a Walter Mitty - a fantastist of ever-changing story. I find it hard to believe that he would make up something as serious as a stroke so we will assume he did have one. It would certainly help to explain how he was a journalist one minute, possibly wrote a rather brilliant hoax journal of James Maybrick making him appear to be Jack the Ripper the next, then gave the sadly rather incoherent and not always on-point interview that he did in 1993.

I'm going to pin my colours to the mast here. Given what I have read about Mike Barrett's Walter Mitty ways, I'm going to very very reluctant to accept that he had had a stroke at all. Harsh? Of course. Based upon what? Well, based upon what I have read about Mike Barrett and the fact that I can recall no other occasion that he ever mentioned this fact, and he wasn't short or shy of going on the record. Oh, and the fact that no-one else has ever mentioned it before either, of course.

Hello Ike,

According to Shirley's book Mike once claimed, falsely, to have had cancer. As I've said before, I think we need to consider any statement made by Mike with extreme caution.

[John Wheat]

Hello Ike,

According to Shirley's book Mike once claimed, falsely, to have had cancer. As I've said before, I think we need to consider any statement made by Mike with extreme caution.

So we have a man who is a published journalist and a proven bullshiter. The smart money is on Mike having fabricated the diary.

[caz]

But wouldn't a "master hoaxer" be sufficiently clever and cunning to speak without revealing himself to be one?

In fact, wouldn't a "master hoaxer" be able to give the false impression that he was not a master hoaxer?

In any case, he didn't claim in his 1995 affidavit to have created the diary on his own. Are you forgetting that?

Hi David,

Not sure this is worth pointing out, but...

Assuming you don't actually believe Mike was a 'master' hoaxer, but just a co-conspirator in an average-to-poor attempt at forgery, do you nevertheless think that the man talking to Martin Howells in September 1993 comes across as clever and cunning enough to give the false impression of someone incapable of being involved in any way?

Less than a year later, in June 1994, was he similarly clever and cunning enough to give the false impression of someone who was not just capable, but had managed to forge the whole thing unaided?

I don't personally believe Anne had nothing to worry about when Mike came out with that particular claim, regardless of her own role in the affair. If he had needed her help to forge the diary two years earlier, and he was now beside himself with grief and rage because she had left him and taken their only child with her, surely she'd have feared it was only a matter of time before his 'unaided' claim was seriously challenged [on the grounds of general incredulity that he could have pulled it off all by himself] and he would then have to admit to having her help with the project.

Even if Anne had nothing to do with its creation, Mike's claim to have written the diary himself would have put her in a very awkward position if people who knew nothing then about his strange relationship with the truth simply accepted it at face value. She had not contradicted Mike's original claim to have got it from Devereux in 1991, so any other story coming out that was incompatible with this would leave her vulnerable unless she could think of some way to maintain Devereux's place in the story by supporting it, and to come over as more credible than Mike.

If Mike was pretty much forced into dropping his June 1994 'one man band' boast and dragging Anne into things by January 1995, because of credibility issues and Anne's 'in the family' counter claim, how is it possible to tell if Anne really was involved, or if this was the only way Mike could see of attracting more serious attention and more followers to his cause at that time?

Finally, if Anne thought for one second that Mike could have proved anything in June 1994, or January 1995, or at any other time, with hard evidence, didn't she go exactly the right way about pushing him into doing so, by effectively threatening to strip him of his diary associations, whether one believed his claim to have masterminded it, or his claim to have been gifted it by his grateful best mate? By claiming it had come from her family all along, Anne was taking everything away from Mike, so why wouldn't he have proved she was lying, if he'd had the means? And why would she have taken that risk, if there was any possibility of him giving a full and coherent account of their joint enterprise? Assuming her own story was made up, in an effort to rescue the situation for herself, for Feldman's film, for Shirley's book and for Doreen's reputation as an agent, she'd have known the only way it could be disproved was if the diary's true origins could be proved. She'd have known there was nothing real there for Feldman to find in her family background, but maybe she could stop him digging if she gave him a story that couldn't be proved or disproved in its own right.

It must have seemed to Anne a risk worth taking, that someone might, one day in the future, be willing and able to show how Mike really came to have the diary in his possession. But I seriously doubt she thought there was any risk at all of Mike being able to show once and for all that it had been forged by himself or any other named person.

Here is Anne, from July 1994, giving, I now personally believe, an insight into her motivation for supporting the basic Devereux story with one of her own:

'Robert, I give you your paperback; Shirley, I give you your story; Paul, I give you your film; Doreen, I hope I give you back the occasional night's sleep'. [Inside Story, page 129]

It would have been worse than useless as damage limitation if she knew Mike had the goods to blow it sky high.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Mike was quoted in the Liverpool Daily Post of 27 June 1994 as saying "Yes, I am a forger. The greatest in history"...

...within a few months Mike changed his story by claiming that his wife actually wrote the diary (so that she must have been the great forger). That's what he put in his affidavit of January 1995.

Why do you think Mike lied in June 1994, David?

Why do you think he changed his story?

Why do you think he was telling the truth in January 1995?

Why didn't he tell the truth in the first place, given that he was angry with Anne for leaving him and angry with Feldman for everything?

Love,

Caz
X