One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[Iconoclast]

Is it also a 'coincidence' that a month after Barrett bought the word processor, bits from his interviews started appearing in Chat magazine, such as the one that David Barrat found in the 26 May 1986 issue: "'Emmerdale Stephen's Naughty Mail'?
The Amstrad wasn't a 'coincidence,' Markus. It was a career move!
And one that the Barretts kept hidden from both their own literary agent and collaborator as well as the public.
You're a very forgiving sort if that doesn't give you pause to reflect.
Happy Holidays.

I think we can all agree that the word 'prosser' was purchased as part of Mike's literary ambitions and that - therefore - it would have coincided with the emergence of his magazine articles which, to give him credit, he managed to get published (regardless of what state they were in when they first passed to Anne and then from Anne to a sub-editor or two). The fact that his literary ambitions did not emerge for some time after he brought James Maybrick's scrapbook to London is not particularly screaming guilt, however hard you try to make it so. Unless you know for certain that he did not mention it to Rupert Crew, Robert Smith, Shirley Harrison, the general public, etc. then I think we should just agree that nothing about it was publicised on the record until it was first published; and - if we can agree that - then we can agree that we can't be certain whether he 'and Anne' were 'at it', secreting that knowledge away in case it revealed some mooted hoax for which Mike Barrett never once produced any evidence (and for which his wife Anne obviously denied ever happened).

I don't think Mike has anything to be forgiven for on that count nor do we need any time to pause to reflect on his silence about his literary 'past'. By his own admission, it amounted to very little and it was as likely that he would want to keep schtum about it as it was that he would want 'credit' for it.

Happy holidays to you too, but we haven't got any.

[Iconoclast]

Let me just stop you there, Ike, before you get too carried away and end up in fantasy land.

I agree with you, Caz, wholeheartedly - I was just looking for an excuse to talk about Hearts and Edinburgh, if I'm honest.

And that is fantasy land, though not of the ilk to which I think you were referring ...

[rjpalmer]

Unless you know for certain that he did not mention it to Rupert Crew, Robert Smith, Shirley Harrison, the general public, etc. then I think we should just agree that nothing about it was publicised on the record until it was first published

.

Oh my. You really do crack me up, Ike.

You're now suggesting that Mike and Anne alerted Robert Smith and Shirley Harrison to Mike's career as a freelance writer in the 1980s and that Shirley and Robert made a convenient editorial decision keep this relevant fact from the public during an 'investigation' into a questioned document?

That's quite an allegation. I'll be interested to see if Caz lets this go unchallenged. Had I suggested it, my head would already be rolling across the floor.

Please flip your first-edition copy of The Diary of Jack the Ripper to page 7, but I encourage you to first read the three preceding pages.



Mike didn't buy the Amstrad to pursue a writing career--the public is told---he bought it to study the diary and write its story sometime after 1991!!

And you're okay with the public being fed this misinformation and have no curiosity about how it came to be in Shirley's book?

Do you similarly theorize that Smith and Harrison knew that Barrett had actually bought this word processor in the 1980s, and had worked as a freelance journalist and interviewer, but decided to keep this from the public and portray it as a more recent purchase?

No, Ike.

It was clearly Mike and Anne who kept this back.

The funny thing is, even early on there were at least two ladies in Liverpool who knew there was something not quite right about this portray of Barrett.

The Devereux Sisters.

Based on information they had gleaned before their father's death in 1991, they "thought of Barrett as a journalist who had contributed features to a magazine, so the sisters were consequently surprised to see him described as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke." (Inside Story, p. 88)

Subsequent research by your good friend Lord Orsam proved that the Devereux Sisters were not wrong.

It would appear, Ike, that the Devereux Sisters were less forgiving about this sort of thing and more capable of smelling a rat than you are. And more capable of being "surprised" at misinformation. Perhaps it's your lack of surprise that is preventing you from seeing the writing on the wall. And I don't mean the illusory 'FM.'

Happy Holidays.

[rjpalmer]

the emergence of his magazine articles which, to give him credit, he managed to get published (regardless of what state they were in when they first passed to Anne and then from Anne to a sub-editor or two).

This is somewhat coyly written, Ike---a slight tip of the cap in the direction of Robert Smith's imagination---but that is a small complaint, and I congratulate you on refusing to pretend, as others pretend, that you know the exact state of Barrett's manuscripts when they were handed over to Chat or Celebrity magazines. You weren't there, and neither was I, and neither was Smith, and a vast career as a publisher, no matter how impressive it is, doesn't come with a Phantom Tollbooth.

We do know from Martin Fido, who read a research paper written by Anne Graham, that he was shocked that it was "not the work of a professional," so if Anne was helping Mike in the 1980s, which seems plausible, there is no reason to invent an "inhouse writer" composing Mike's articles for him.

Nor does it take a Sigmund Freud to theorize that Anne was projecting her own writing ambitions onto a less capable husband in need of employment.

I don't know if you have been keeping up on Lord Orsam's "diary," but he mentions something that I forgot. Alan Gray had seen, first-hand, a cassette of one of Barrett's interviews from the 1980s, so it would be incorrect for Smith to conclude that they were "not interviews per se" but just a collection of random quotes. Clearly, Barrett interviewed people (and possibly even Ms. Minogue!). Did you see that your friend found an account of Mike's daughter and nephew, complete with photographs, giving their opinions about Kylie Minogue's music? Do you think it was Mike himself who interviewed them, or this mysterious inhouse writer?

And now, I once again bid you farewell. I heard a rumor that 2024 might be quite a year on the Maybrick front. Buckle up.

[Iconoclast]

This is somewhat coyly written, Ike---a slight tip of the cap in the direction of Robert Smith's imagination ...

You do so love to read a great deal into a very little, RJ.

Shirley Harrison printed that "Mike bought a word processor and launched himself into extensive research ...". Now, I read that and I think, "Okay, she didn't know that the word processor was purchased in 1986 to support his nascent 'journalistic' career". You read into this, "That's it, proof positive that Mike and Anne Barrett were intentionally keeping schtum that between them they owned a word processor as early as 1986 because - to reveal that they did - would reveal that they had hoaxed the scrapbook of James Maybrick".

Martin Fido was surprised that Anne was eloquent and articulate and I think "That's probably because she had a relatively privileged upbringing", but you read it into that "There's the smoking gun which proves she wrote the James Maybrick scrapbook".

Nor does it take a Sigmund Freud to theorize that Anne was projecting her own writing ambitions onto a less capable husband in need of employment.

So "tidying up" Mike's embarrassingly bad written English suddenly becomes the profound psychological drive of a woman torn apart inside by her failure to be Virginia Wolff. I, on the other hand, imagine she took Mike's mess (of which we have plentiful cringeworthy examples) and re-wrote them into the language they both spoke.

There are so many examples of where you have done this, RJ, but I'll stop there for now as I want a nice cup of tea.

You weren't there, and neither was I.

I so wish you'd bear this in mind when you expand the known into the unknown but imply that actually it's still the known because many of my dear readers have no idea of the difference between the two and I need to protect them from their own lack of grasp of the subject matter.

Ike

[caz]

I find it remarkable that you are still paying homage to the same misinformation that was fed to the public nearly thirty years ago but has been subsequently exposed as a lie.

In Harrison’s bestseller, the public was indeed told that Mike bought the word processor after being given the diary by Tony Devereux in 1991 in order to write the “story of the diary” himself, but Barrett, an ‘umble scrap metal dealer, lacked the skill. Fortunately, the purchase wasn’t a total bust because Anne instead used it to type-up Mike’s research notes and create a typescript of the diary. Just as you suggest.

Except that it was mainly a lie. The research notes were bogus, and Barrett bought the Amstrad in 1986–long before he had ever met Tony Devereux—and immediately afterwards he began submitting articles for publication. The ‘umble scrap metal dealer, in reality, was a struggling freelance journalist—a fact that Mike and Anne failed to reveal to Smith, Harrison, and Montgomery.

There was never a peep said about it until these facts were revealed to the diary believers by outside critics, namely Chiitteden, Gray, Harris, and Barrat.

But don’t let that bother you, Markus. Nothing to see here!

I'm not sure how repeating that the Barretts were not always as truthful concerning the diary as they should or could have been [really? who knew?] helps to prove that they profited from fakery, or to disprove that they profited from theft.

For what it's worth, the word processor bought in 1986 and the articles Mike had published under his own name, are a fairly good example of cause and effect, before the diary enters the story or needs to do so. Mike wanted to try his hand at writing for magazines and such, and the word processor represents the means to that end. He achieved limited success, but it's doubtful if his earnings exceeded the cost of the word processor, and not clear who would have lost out financially assuming that was the case. I can't see Mike paying anyone back for their original investment, and from what we know about his later carelessness with his own and other people's money, I'd be very surprised if what modest sums he did earn from those articles were not pissed up against the wall before he could say: "Sugar lumps!".

It was Mike himself who linked the purchase of the word processor directly with the diary - an odd lie to tell if it had been used for creating the content, but understandable if he was just grandstanding, to show how committed he was to getting his diary out there. He had personally splashed out hard cash on a word "prosser" to get it transcribed - except that this wasn't true if the machine had been sitting there redundant since his last article was submitted. We don't know what Anne knew, if anything, about the various bold claims Mike was making to Doreen, Shirley and Robert in those early days [Anne wasn't there], or whether she was even asked to confirm or deny them. Was she given the chance? Did she back Mike up over any of his lies that went on to be disproved? Or was she more careful than that?

Given the claim that nobody, including the Barretts, could have created the diary before 1987 at the earliest, because of certain ripper information it contains, it would follow that the word processor was bought before all the sources supposedly needed for the diary were in existence. Clearly the machine was not acquired in anticipation of books that might come out in the future, which might contain new information useful to a nascent plan to fake JtR's diary. It was purely an aid back in 1986 to Mike's wishful thinking, that he could express himself in writing if only he was given the right tools and a favourable wind. He was kidding himself.

And if anyone imagines that the Barretts' diary transcript existed before Mike took possession of the guard book, they are kidding themselves.

[rjpalmer]

Well Ike, I said I was leaving and must do so, but let me correct some of your wrong assumptions as the door once again slaps my backside.

I suggest that you don't read enough into the patently obvious and that's why you've convinced yourself that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.

Martin Fido was surprised that Anne was eloquent and articulate and I think "That's probably because she had a relatively privileged upbringing", but you read it into that "There's the smoking gun which proves she wrote the James Maybrick scrapbook"

Wrong. I'm not saying that Anne's research paper is a "smoking gun."

I am suggesting, however, that it is a good indication that the relatively snooty attitude that Mike and Anne couldn't possibly have written something as insubstantial as the Maybrick Hoax is so much hokum. Subsequent events proved she was a capable writer. Those with a 'relatively privileged background' refuse to believe they could be fooled by Mike and Anne, so you've grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick. Fido was under no such delusion. Or at least wasn't once he had seen her work.

So "tidying up" Mike's embarrassingly bad written English suddenly becomes the profound psychological drive of a woman torn apart inside by her failure to be Virginia Wolff.

You do not comprehend. I always forget that I must spell everything out.

I'm not suggesting that Anne "tidying up" Mike's writing proves she was a wannabe Virginia Woolf. (Correct spelling, Old Boy).

What I am suggesting is that her dumping £458.85 to jump-start the writing career of a man who you claim is illiterate is an odd thing and requires some psychological explanation. According to Caz, Anne may have even convinced her father to help with this purchase. I don't know about you, but Mike would not have been my first choice to be Liverpool's future incarnation of Ernest Hemingway, so Anne's remarkable optimism in helping purchase this Amstrad is an odd thing.

Coupled with Anne talking to her work friend Audrey Johnson about "books," and the remarkable ease which with she later slipped into the role of a biographer of Florence Maybrick (and was reportedly working on a second book about Victorian baby farming) makes me suspect that, yes,---she was projecting her own ambitions onto a less talented husband.

But I understand that psychological insight isn't everyone's strong suit, Ike, so I'm always happy to help with a guiding hand.

[caz]

Who is under this “impression”? No one suggested anything of the sort, but the thought must have crossed your own mind, since you brought it up.

What was actually pointed out is that Barrett is described by the publican himself as coming in at around lunchtime, and Barrett stated he came in before picking up his daughter from school. Either way, he’s there mid-afternoon.

Unless you have evidence to the contrary, Eddie was 14 miles away at a job site during those same hours in February 1992; you can’t place him in Fountains Road before that date; you can’t place him in the pub; and Eddie denies meeting Barrett until the following year when that “weirdo” showed up on his doorstep.

Gone is the famous “onus” that you project onto all accusers to prove their point; you’re now content to argue that no one can prove that it DIDN’ T happen!

I don't know what this post is meant to achieve, because I have never claimed that Eddie might have been free to sup a pint in his local, the Saddle, on any weekday lunchtime session in February 1992 - or January, or December. I wasn't trying to 'place' him in Fountains Road before that date; I posted the information that categorically shows he wasn't. When I did this, Palmer even called it 'putting on a great show', but now claims I was challenging others to prove that Eddie wasn't there.

In case anyone else is still struggling with this one, Eddie was provably working over in Skelmersdale solidly right through from December 1991 to Saturday 7th March 1992. So he could not have been in the Saddle or in Fountains Road at any weekday lunchtime during that period.

From Sunday 8th March 1992, Eddie was provably not working over in Skelmersdale, because nobody was, and he never returned to finish the job there when it resumed on the Friday. The only evidence we have for Eddie's actual whereabouts in the March, after Saturday 7th, puts him in Battlecrease House for the first floor rewire work, which began on Monday 9th March 1992, but it is not known how long he was there that day, when he left or where he went. He most certainly wasn't working in Skelmersdale, 14 miles from the Saddle - and 26 miles from Aigburth.

Nobody is claiming to know that Eddie was in the Saddle with Mike on that Monday; only that there is nothing that provably places either of them anywhere else on the planet.

It could be just coincidence that 9th March 1992 is the first time since December 1991 that Eddie - the man who asked Feldman in 1993 what his confession was worth - can't provably be placed too far from his local to have popped in for a pint when Mike was in.

This whole 14 mile argument doesn't apply. It's a sham.

[Lombro2]

I’m not sure how repeating that the Barretts were not always as truthful concerning the diary as they should or could have been [really? who knew?] helps to prove that they profited from fakery, or to disprove that they profited from theft.

Yes, we should thank RJ and O for explaining to us the reason why the thieves fenced the document to Mike or more likely gave it to him to fence, thinking he’d know what to do.

If he wasn’t a writer, why give it to him? Why that and not the gold watch? Oh right! Now I get it, Roger. Should I also thank Orsam? Thank you Professor.

You guys are better Barrett Hoax theory debunkers than Caz is a Maybrickian!

[Lombro2]

Even if he was a liar, I don’t think Michael was under any delusions about his writing ability.
Magazine writing is half way between report and creative writing.

Maybe he was too impressed working with a real author to mention his “monkey with a word processor” experiment. It would be like me saying:

Hey Caz, you know I once wrote a novel in 1986 with my Olivetti electric. I had great literary ambitions! I even got a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue especially to cut and paste!… Lower the darkness setting on the library copier and press down hard and you hardly notice!

You are getting much warmer though, and there is a bit of a herby link.
X

Do you like to use herb snips instead of regular scissors for all your cutting needs?

[Iconoclast]

Do you like to use herb snips instead of regular scissors for all your cutting needs?

By golly, I think you've cracked the case, Lombro2!

Even though I have no idea what herb snips are, I reckon that's it, 'Mrs Snips, Case Closed'.

Now, where have we heard something like that before?

[Iconoclast]

I suggest that you don't read enough into the patently obvious and that's why you've convinced yourself that James Maybrick was Jack the Ripper.

Wrong. I'm not saying that Anne's research paper is a "smoking gun."

So which of us is the more right, I wonder? Is it the guy who just looks at the logic of the case and says "That's possible - worth considering", or is it the guy who - and here's another great example of how you constantly seek to overplay your point - who turns a short report into the semblance of an academic 'research paper'. Over here - and I'm sure over there - a research paper is a published article, ideally in a peer-reviewed journal, so (unless I have misunderstood what Anne produced) you have imbibed a simple report with the grandiosity of a research paper. I put it to you that you do this with full intent to sway the ill-informed and the plain stupid into thinking you are actually advancing an argument when - in reality - you are simply encouraging them to advance through mud.

I'm not suggesting that Anne "tidying up" Mike's writing proves she was a wannabe Virginia Woolf. (Correct spelling, Old Boy).

I put it to you, counsellor, that that was exactly what you were doing. And if it wasn't what you were doing, it was certainly what you achieved.

What I am suggesting is that her dumping £458.85 to jump-start the writing career of a man who you claim is illiterate is an odd thing and requires some psychological explanation.

He was her husband and she wanted to encourage him. There, saved you the psychologist's fee.

According to Caz, Anne may have even convinced her father to help with this purchase.

I believe that this is on the record - or at least a known claim of either Anne or Mike.

I don't know about you, but Mike would not have been my first choice to be Liverpool's future incarnation of Ernest Hemingway, so Anne's remarkable optimism in helping purchase this Amstrad is an odd thing.

Here we go again. You are imbibing a spirit of optimism into Anne for which you have no direct evidence. She has said that she wanted Mike to succeed, and I think that's as much as anyone needs to know about why a wife (or a husband) would encourage the possibly ill-founded hopes of a husband (or wife). I can't think what you would be seeking to gain by reading more and more and more into less and less and less but - there you are, dear readers - I have highlighted the threat that you face if you take RJ's numerous claims at face value.

Coupled with Anne talking to her work friend Audrey Johnson about "books," and the remarkable ease which with she later slipped into the role of a biographer of Florence Maybrick (and was reportedly working on a second book about Victorian baby farming) makes me suspect that, yes,---she was projecting her own ambitions onto a less talented husband.

Goodness me, isn't this the very thing you said you weren't saying she was doing?

But I understand that psychological insight isn't everyone's strong suit, Ike, so I'm always happy to help with a guiding hand.

Yes, I think it's fair to say that the hundreds of passionate, dedicated readers of this, The Greatest Thread of All, are also grateful for your contribution to psychological research though none of them seem to be shouting it from the rooftops. I wonder, are you a sort of 21st-century Kitty Genovese? (More so for the inaccuracies in so many of your claims?)

Right, that's me, I'm out of Dodge, never to come back, Roger over and out, see you next semester, gone fishing, bysie bye. Et cetera.

[Iconoclast]

.Oh my. You really do crack me up, Ike. You're now suggesting that Mike and Anne alerted Robert Smith and Shirley Harrison to Mike's career as a freelance writer in the 1980s and that Shirley and Robert made a convenient editorial decision keep this relevant fact from the public during an 'investigation' into a questioned document?

Well, how exactly did Shirley find out about Mike's 'journalistic' career if not from Mike? By the way, if I called myself a 'professional journalist' (as Orsam called Mike), I think I'd be having a word with myself when the pounds rolled in. Mike said he earned £120 an article and he contributed to around twenty articles in all of his brilliant journalistic career: so he earned around £2,000 in all those years. Enough to cover the cost of the word 'prosser' but not exactly enough to build a new life in the sun for the family Barrett. I don't know about you but - if that was the reward for all my ground-breaking investigations - I'd keep well schtum about it when in the company of what one could reasonably call real 'professional writers'.

Mike didn't buy the Amstrad to pursue a writing career--the public is told---he bought it to study the diary and write its story sometime after 1991!!

And the person who told the tale was Mike Barrett. Surely enough said?

On that note, I recall Caz once making the excellent observation that Mike may have re-dated the purchase of the word 'prosser' because he was hoping to add it to a list of his research expenses when signing-up to co-write the initial book with Shirley. No-one knows if this is true, of course, but it certainly fits the impression we have of the man.

And you're okay with the public being fed this misinformation and have no curiosity about how it came to be in Shirley's book?

As usual, I'm pretty sanguine about such an irrelevant detail. I assume Mike told Shirley, or one of the Devereux sisters said to Shirley that they had heard from their dad that Bongo was a journalist and therefore Shirley confronted Mike at which point she literally pissed herself when she realised the terrible exaggerations Mike had imbibed his 'career' with. Hey, who else do we know who does that sort of thing?

Do you similarly theorize that Smith and Harrison knew that Barrett had actually bought this word processor in the 1980s, and had worked as a freelance journalist and interviewer, but decided to keep this from the public and portray it as a more recent purchase?

Already asked and answered, but I would just add again that 'freelance journalist and interviewer' implies he earned some money doing it. An average of around £500 per annum might keep you in mangetout, Rodney, but I doubt it would have done much for a family of three.

No, Ike. It was clearly Mike and Anne who kept this back.

No, RJ. It was clearly Mike and Anne who didn't think there was any relevance in mentioning Mike's embarrassingly piss poor show as a 'freelance journalist and interviewer'.

The funny thing is, even early on there were at least two ladies in Liverpool who knew there was something not quite right about this portray of Barrett.
The Devereux Sisters.
Based on information they had gleaned before their father's death in 1991, they "thought of Barrett as a journalist who had contributed features to a magazine, so the sisters were consequently surprised to see him described as an ordinary 'Liverpool bloke." (Inside Story, p. 88)
Subsequent research by your good friend Lord Orsam proved that the Devereux Sisters were not wrong.

Why do you ascribe the credit for this to Lord Orsam when it appears that Mike's claims had long-since already reached the ears of anyone stupid enough to let him bend them? He had clearly told Tony Devereux who had clearly told his daughters, and we can therefore imagine that he had told a few folk in The Saddle that he was up for a Pulitzer, and the chaps at the Foreign Legion (or wherever it was that Billy went to) must have dreaded Hemingway walking in with pen and paper in hand when they were trying to get on with the doms.

It would appear, Ike, that the Devereux Sisters were less forgiving about this sort of thing and more capable of smelling a rat than you are.

Well, well, well. The Devereux sisters had smelled a rat, eh? One of them (not all of them?) said that Mike claimed to be a journalist of sorts not just an ordinary Liverpool scally and you want us to believe that the detective trio had eloquently solved all the clues that everyone else had missed. Lord, if only George Oldfield had given them a bell fifteen years earlier, eh?

And I don't mean the illusory 'FM.'

The one that was so articulate and clear in Farson's 1973 paperback? Fair point ...

Happy Holidays.

Read my lips, pally - we ain't not got no ***************** holidays!

[caz]

By the way, wouldn’t a guard book make the perfect decoy if the original pages were left in when the words were being put to the pages? Left in plain view for all to see, hidden behind pages and pages of business junk.

Hi ero,

You put it far more briefly and concisely than I did, making the point more likely to be read and to sink in.

If Mike had got his requested "diary" from Martin Earl, and had to remove pages of handwritten entries at the front, before setting to work on the 20+ unused ones, would that not have looked a damned sight more suspicious? Why would 'Sir Jim' have needed to rip out the early pages of his own diary? What could possibly have been more damning than what he wrote on the surviving pages?

However, a book that 'Sir Jim' may have had to hand, which already contained many pages of uninspiring business items, would have served him so much better than any actual diary or notebook for a handwritten record of his deepest, darkest thoughts and deeds, which he hoped to keep from prying eyes. Worse still would have been an unused diary or notebook, with 'Sir Jim' launching into his murderous thoughts on page one, for anyone to see on opening it.

The guard book, before its early pages were ripped out, would have been a neat disguise for what 'Sir Jim' was using the later pages for, and those handwritten entries less likely to be discovered and read - even if his bothersome clerk did happen to pick it up and look inside. My 19th century book of handwritten recipes and household remedies could have a murder confession secreted in there for all I know, because I have not actually sat down and bothered to read my way through all the entries from beginning to end, only picking out several here and there that particularly caught my eye and amused me - such as a cure for 'falling hair'.

The idea of a secret diary hidden away towards the end of a boring but harmless guard book puts me in mind of when Mister Brown used to pick up his mother's Daily Mail from the newsagent just across the road. He would joke that he was so ashamed that he walked back the few yards with the disgusting rag out of view, tucked inside a pornographic magazine.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

And this argument makes me smile, because you always insist you don't believe the diary is genuine and 'doubt' that Maybrick was the Ripper, yet once again you are arguing that the hoax being written in an old photo album is perfectly consistent with what James Maybrick would have done.

And once again, this misses the point. My argument is that Mike would have done so much better to look for an old guard book in the first place - or an old photo album, or an old scrapbook [anything with innocent items pasted into the early pages] - rather than an unused or partially used "diary" from 1880-90, or indeed any form of diary. The Barrett hoax theory has him asking for completely the wrong thing and ending up, by sheer dumb luck just three weeks later, on 31st March, with an old book he can literally take to the bank, after taking it to London on 13th April.

Not believing the diary is genuine, isn't your real problem explaining why your mythical old hoaxer didn't pop down to the local stationery shop and pick up something a little appropriate? Like a ledger or an actual blank diary?

I don't have an old hoaxer, mythical or otherwise. I have some yet to be identified author who had the guard book first and the idea to use it for a secret diary second. I have not speculated on dates, beyond disputing that it could have been penned after 9th March 1992, with Mike playing catch-up: he has the diary content all ready to go on his word "prosser"; he contacts Doreen; and only then does he set about trying to obtain the right kind of book for the words, but with no thought of what he actually needs, to physically reflect what is ready to be written between its covers. Maybe it's just me, but this seems completely arse about face, and to my own deeply sceptical mind, the idea that Mike asked for a "diary", thinking he had to have something recognisable as a diary, in order to fake a serial killer's most secret and intimate thoughts, and then hit on a guard book completely by accident, which provided an almost perfect cover for 'Sir Jim', is absurd. It's far more likely when taking all the evidence into consideration that Mike did hit on the old book by accident, but without having previously wished for anything of the kind, nor any expectation of what he was about to receive, and what the hell was in store for him over the next couple of decades.