One Incontrovertible, Unequivocal, Undeniable Fact Which Refutes the Diary

[rjpalmer]

That's not good enough for me, nor is the tangent of attempting (as RJ does) to shift the source to Anne as a means of adding validation where validation is patently absent.

Let me just stop you right there, Tom.

I didn't "try to shift the source to Anne." That's a false allegation.

I was responding to your unsourced and unproven claim that the Barretts were under no financial strain in 1992.

Knowing that the authors of Inside Story were working closely with Anne, I wrote that "presumably" Anne was the source for saying the exact opposite, or at least Anne had been consulted--with presumably being an admission that it wasn't entirely clear.

I then further noted, in a second post, that the authors also appear to have been working, in part, from statements made by Barrett to Alan Gray, in the tapes that are still off-limits to anyone not in the inner sanctum.

By contrast, you have insisted most vigorously--without a single citation--that all of this is nothing but a falsehood that Barrett told to Shirley Harrison. If you didn't pull this out of thin air, where did you pull it?

Meanwhile, your colleague Caz writes:

"We do have Anne complaining that Mike was sent out with money to do the food shopping and came back with little to show for it and that, together with his increased drinking, while she was paying the mortgage, home insurance and other household bills, would undoubtedly have caused friction. If he spent money as soon as he got it, and was resentful when he didn't get it, one can imagine the financial pressure on Anne to try and keep everything on an even keel."

There's that pesky phrase again: financial pressure.

Or as Linder has it: crippling financial pressure.

I think you'll be hard-pressed to convince your readers that an unemployed and heavy-drinking Barrett, having lost his audience when Celebrity went under, and with a new mortgage hanging over his head, wouldn't have been under financial pressure in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy wasn't exactly booming and when the interest rates were going up.

It now appears you were wrong; the house was purchased in 1988 and not 1989. What does that do to the interest rates?

RP

[caz]

Hi Ike,

The evidence to support this is "Inside Story", so I guess that's not a reliable source now? It wasn't an unreasonable point RJ made. The authors state the Barretts were under financial pressure. If that's an unfounded assumption the fault doesn't lie with RJ. Without irony though, the rest of your post is an assumption of what Mike Barrett would do to better manage his financial situation other than create a hoax for profit. But woe bedite someone uses Inside Story for reference and assumes the information is A) accurate and B) came from Anne since Mike was a hopeless liar and consistently drunk. But, as you point out, if there's no evidence the Barretts were under financial pressure then I'll have to assume it's just hyperbole Linder chose to throw in there. Of course, if Caz can confirm Anne as the source, then you've jumped on RJ's case for nothing. If she's not, then we do need to know the source as you yourself are questioning the validity of the statement.

âÂÂâÂÂâÂÂâÂÂBut it's not really about Inside Story, it's about suggesting Mike Barrett might actually have been responsible for the hoax. That's where visitors to the greatest thread go wrong. You can suggest some convoluted three diary theory, you can safely talk about an old hoax with little push back, but suggest that the Barretts of Goldie Street might actually have pulled a fast one....

I'll sign off with a point Caz raised:

"There is always wriggle room for those who have invested more time and effort in following their fixed beliefs than in an unbiased assessment of all the evidence in contextâ"

I'd say that's spot on. Personally, I wouldn't say I've got a rigidly fixed belief. I am however missing all the evidence and what little bits I see are missing the context. Where evidence is absent, theory will thrive. If what's needed to kill the Barrett theory is all the evidence, then, well, you know the rest.

Cheers.

Afternoon Al,

The 'little bit' Palmer quoted from Inside Story was missing the context, but I note he came back with a page number - 153 - so it took me all of five minutes to grasp that Seth's source was very obviously Mike Barrett in conversation with Alan Gray in November 1994, and had bugger all to do with Anne.

Perhaps Palmer can explain to you how he missed the context.

The whole passage, starting on page 152: At Barrett's house... describes the claims Mike is making to Alan Gray at the time, and Seth puts quote marks round some of the actual words used by them both, for example: 'Don't start grinning at me,' Gray cautioned him...

It is a common theme throughout our book to represent the claims made by various sources, with the use of paraphrasing and direct quotes, and letting the reader decide who they believe and who they don't in the absence of our ability to provide any clear supporting evidence. The authors were not 'working' with Anne on the book, as Palmer presumed and implied, any more than we were 'working' with Mike, or any of the others who kindly granted us an interview in 2002/3, which we cover in the last chapter.

The top of page 153 gives a rather large clue about the context in question, in case Palmer only began reading from that point: Barrett now provided Gray with a more detailed background to his forgery claim...

Just seven lines down in the same paragraph, Seth is still referring to what Mike is telling Alan and writes that, following the move to Goldie Street: Not only was there now a 'crippling' financial pressure but Barrett was not happy in the new neighbourhood...

Note the quote marks round the word 'crippling'. It is Mike's adjective and therefore Mike's claim - unless Seth misheard what Mike was saying on the tape. The tapes are not very easy listening, unfortunately, but then Palmer would know this, as he once listened to them himself and has claimed that he made his own notes before the tapes disappeared. I can never quite recall whether Palmer said he had lost them or sent them on to an unidentified recipient.

I don't suppose it makes much difference though, because Mike either used the word 'crippling' to describe the financial pressure he claimed to be under or he didn't, which makes it a bit difficult to argue that both Barretts were indeed 'crippled' by their mortgage.

Interestingly, I have just checked my timeline for the earliest reference to the word 'mortgage', and it comes from Mike in June 1994, when he was claiming to have forged the diary because he could not pay the mortgage. This was six months after Anne left their Goldie Street home, leaving Mike to fend for himself.

Mike makes various later references to the struggle to pay his mortgage, claiming this had been his motive for faking the diary. I can find no earlier reference to confirm who was actually paying it during the crucial period from 1988 to January 1994, but if it was coming out of Anne's salary at least up until that point, it would beg the question why Mike refers to it from June 1994 as his mortgage and his struggle to pay it. If he only had to pay it after Anne left him, or face the house being repossessed, then without her salary the financial pressure on Mike might indeed have seemed 'crippling' if he was pissing all his book royalties up the wall as soon as they reached his bank account, but that would have been long after it could possibly have been a motive for him to fake the diary with his wife.

On 12th May 1994, Mike's bank account was overdrawn by £3,249.00.

On 13th May 1994, the account showed a 'credit by post' for £8,886.38.

On 17th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, 25th and 27th May 1994, unexplained payments were made from Mike's account totalling £5,500, leaving him overdrawn again by the close of the banking period to the tune of about £284.

My sources were Peter Birchwood and John Omlor, who were in possession of the relevant bank statements back in 2002. I don't know if either is still with us in this world, but they vanished from Diary World many years ago.

On page 265 of Inside Story, we refer to being shown round 12 Goldie Street by its new owners, who bought the house after the bank had repossessed it from Michael Barrett...

So despite the many thousands of pounds Mike made from the best-seller written by Shirley Harrison, he was unable to keep the money in the bank that would have paid the mortgage and kept the roof over his head, which makes his claim to have faked the diary so he could make enough money to cover the monthly mortgage payments look very much like crocodile tears. It doesn't appear that he ever had the least intention to fritter away his ill-gotten gains on anything as frivolous as his own four walls in Goldie Street.

If I do find any confirmation from Anne - or anyone else - that the Barretts were struggling to afford their mortgage payments before 1992, I will post it. In the meantime I would advise against accepting at face value any more out-of-context quotes from our book, particularly when accompanied by assumptions about the source or the authors.

Love,

Caz
X

[Iconoclast]

Full disclosure, I edited this post borrowing some suggestions and comments from Caz's erudite post which arrived before I posted the original of this post ...

Meanwhile, your colleague Caz writes:
"We do have Anne complaining that Mike was sent out with money to do the food shopping and came back with little to show for it and that, together with his increased drinking, while she was paying the mortgage, home insurance and other household bills, would undoubtedly have caused friction. If he spent money as soon as he got it, and was resentful when he didn't get it, one can imagine the financial pressure on Anne to try and keep everything on an even keel."

Caz may have written this but let's be clear, it is self-evidently a supposition on her part not proof or evidence of anything (I'm sure she'd be the first to agree) so please don't cite it as evidence in support of your argument that the Barretts were under any financial pressures whatsoever in the period 1988-1992 (or, at least, perhaps none more so nor more consequentially than for millions of other working class families).

There's that pesky phrase again: financial pressure.

Yes, there it is - in a supposition which you want to dress up as a statement of fact because you quite literally have nothing else to support your suggestion that the claim had come from Anne not Mike. Tut tut.

Or as Linder has it: crippling financial pressure.

I think you aren't keeping up, RJ. Linder merely summarises the Gray-Barrett tape of (IIRC) November 5, 1994 during which Barrett - according to Linder - makes the claim that he was under ''crippling' financial pressure' and thus decided to do the most logical thing possible in suddenly becoming 99% literate (instead of less than 50%) in a hoax that would immediately (well, about eighteen months later - very patient bank manager evidently) start bringing the bounty home in order to protect the family home. So it seems that the expression did not come from Mike to Shirley, but I don't think I said it unequivocally did anyway, and a little bit of research from Caz has soon highlighted that you were grossly wrong to even 'presumably' attribute it to Anne in order to make it seem more real. Naughty, naughty.

I think you'll be hard-pressed to convince your readers that an unemployed and heavy-drinking Barrett, having lost his audience when Celebrity went under, and with a new mortgage hanging over his head, wouldn't have been under financial pressure in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy wasn't exactly booming and when the interest rates were going up.

Barrett would have been under financial pressure whether he was 'writing' for Celebrity magazine or not as - by his own admission - he only earned around £120 per article - or £2,000 or so over four or five years. Fortunately for him (as for so many other aspiring 'artists'), Mike had the benefit of a hard-working wife whose salary could comfortably cover the cost of the new mortgage even when the interest rates soon went up (assuming they had a variable rate mortgage).

It now appears you were wrong; the house was purchased in 1988 and not 1989. What does that do to the interest rates?

Other than the interest rates skyrocketing briefly in October 1989 to 15%, the UK mortgage interest rate from when the Barretts bought 12 Goldie Street on what appears to have been March 13, 1988 was on average 8.88% (Feb 1, 1988). Four days later (Mar 17, 1988), it was 8.38%. It rose to Nigel Lawson's 14.88% (Oct 6, 1989) before declining back down to 10.38% (Sep 6, 1991 - a month after Tony Devereux died) and then down further thereafter. It looks (from Anne's bank statement) that her mortgage payment was around £107 in May 1992, but let's imagine that it was £200 in October 1988 (just for jolly). That additional 7% interest rate (assuming they were on a variable rate mortgage) since she committed to buying 12 Goldie Street would have increased her monthly payment by £14. If her mortgage was more like the £107 it looks like it was in May 1992, that additional 7% would have added £7 per month to her interest payments. As she was earning around £750 per month in May 1992, it isn't obvious where the 'crippling financial pressures' lay? And I haven't even considered Mike's disability allowance, my discerning dear readers will have noted.

I leave it to you to argue that this is clear evidence that the Barretts had got themselves into 'crippling financial pressures', but I caution you to recall at all times that no-one ever claimed this was the case until Mike Barrett implied it in his June 1994 Liverpool Post 'confession' and then stated it to Alan Gray in November 1994 and I further caution you to recall that - by then - the gravy train of Anne's income may have dried-up and Barrett actually did have to fund the mortgage and therefore have the very 'crippling financial pressures' to which he first alluded in June 1994 and then stated to Gray in November 1994. This might caution you to imagine that he was simply translating what had become true for him in 1994 into his feeble 'confession' of what he claimed was true about his reasons for creating the text of the Maybrick scrapbook in 1992.

Somehow, I fear the caution observed may not be as significant as the evidence clearly prompts, but we'll see.

[caz]

Knowing that the authors of Inside Story were working closely with Anne, I wrote that "presumably" Anne was the source...

Let me stop you there and suggest you read my latest post.

Thank you.

[rjpalmer]

The 'little bit' Palmer quoted from Inside Story was missing the context, but I note he came back with a page number - 153 - so it took me all of five minutes to grasp that Seth's source was very obviously Mike Barrett in conversation with Alan Gray in November 1994, and had bugger all to do with Anne.

Perhaps Palmer can explain to you how he missed the context.

I suspect Al is better at reading comprehension than you are, Caz.

Here's my second post where I identified the page number, complete with the context. You must have seen it, because you refer to it; did you actually read it?

If you refer to the relevant passage on page 153 of Ripper Diary, it would seem that the immediate source was not Harrison, as you gratuitously speculate, but something Mike claimed in the still off-limits Barrett/Gray tapes, and we can only hope was confirmed by other sources.

All you ever want to do is to fight and to insinuate and to try to discredit your perceived enemies instead of trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Were Mike and Anne, or were not Mike and Anne, under financial pressure in 1991-1992?

Is Ike's claim that they had no motive to write what turned out to be a bestseller rational? How is it possibly rational, since you yourself admit that even wealthy people can create a hoax?

I think it's probably best to simply put you on ignore. It will save time.

[caz]

I think you'll be hard-pressed to convince your readers that an unemployed and heavy-drinking Barrett, having lost his audience when Celebrity went under, and with a new mortgage hanging over his head, wouldn't have been under financial pressure in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the economy wasn't exactly booming and when the interest rates were going up.

The mortgage wasn't 'hanging over' Mike's head, if Anne was paying it out of her salary because he had no regular employment. When the mortgage was taken out, the amount of the loan would have been based on their joint guaranteed income at the time, which would not have included whatever Mike may have been able to earn as and when one of his articles or word puzzles was accepted for publication. He was a house husband, and fortunate to have a wife who could bring home the bacon, so why would he have been under financial pressure, when it was Anne holding down the full-time job which paid the bills?

The evidence shows that it didn't seem to matter how much Mike later earned from the diary's publication, because he still failed to pay the mortgage with the result that he lost the house. The financial pressure he was under while he was receiving the book royalties was all self-inflicted, due to his alcohol habit and his stupid forgery claims, which killed off his own golden goose. That ought to be ringing alarm bells right there.

[caz]

I suspect Al is better at reading comprehension than you are, Caz.

Here's my second post where I identified the page number, complete with the context. You must have seen it, because you refer to it; did you actually read it?



All you ever want to do is to fight and to insinuate and to try to discredit your perceived enemies instead of trying to get to the truth of the matter.

Were Mike and Anne, or were not Mike and Anne, under financial pressure in 1991-1992?

Is Ike's claim that they had no motive to write what turned out to be a bestseller rational? How is it possibly rational, since you yourself admit that even wealthy people can create a hoax?

I think it's probably best to simply put you on ignore. It will save time.

If Palmer knew all along that the 'crippling' quote was from page 153, and was one of Mike's claims to Alan Gray, I can't understand why he originally did not give a page number and incorrectly 'presumed' that this information came from Anne because he believed - also incorrectly - that the authors were working closely with her.

None of this makes sense, but Palmer is clearly in no mood to explain or apologise for misrepresenting our book and the authors.

All he ever seems to do is to fight and to insinuate and to try to discredit his perceived enemies instead of trying to get to the truth of the matter.

When he gets the truth he doesn't want to know and goes into a sulk.

Poor show.

[rjpalmer]

None of this makes sense, but Palmer is clearly in no mood to explain or apologise for misrepresenting our book and the authors.

Misrepresenting the authors?

Long before you started pointing fingers, I already gave the page number, the quote, and even pointed out that this 'crippling financial pressure' was originally based on the Barrett/Gray tapes. Strange behavior for someone who was trying to misrepresent anyone. By contrast, Tom Mitchell attributed it to something Mike had told Shirley Harrison.


That the authors, not being 'Barrett Believers' (isn't that what you like to call people?), would have also confirmed this with Anne Graham was a generous assumption on my part, but hardly a misrepresentation.

If, as you now inform us, neither Keith Skinner nor Seth Linder tried to confirm any of this with Anne Graham or independent financial records as I had assumed, and simply repeated Barrett's explanation without irony, challenge, or sarcasm, I am more than happy to apologize and give them an honorary membership to the Barrett Believers Club. We meet in Liverpool every third Wednesday.

But I'm not quite as petty as that. If this was the case, and all they were doing is reporting Barrett's own rationale, I suspect that they didn't challenge it because, unlike you and Ike, they realized that they couldn't crawl inside Barrett's brain and determine what pressure he may have personally felt in 1991-1992.

That's the rub, isn't? You can't prove that Barrett wasn't feeling pressure. For instance:

He was a house husband, and fortunate to have a wife who could bring home the bacon, so why would he have been under financial pressure, when it was Anne holding down the full-time job which paid the bills?

Again, you're fighting a losing battle and seem to have little insight into the masculine mind.

A house husband, whose wife is paying the bills, can't feel shame and pressure? Especially if what little money he was making had dried up and he's added to the problem by blowing money on drink and who knows what else?

Sounds like a very good reason to feel pressure.

I recently met a fellow in Hawaii who was under enormous pressure to buy a house--because he was living in his girlfriend's place, and he felt that a man should "pull his own weight." He had a perfectly good income (Barrett had none) and still felt pressure. Who are you to say otherwise?

And let me remind you that it is fairly commonplace for an alcoholic or a gambler to blame his woes on car payments or mortgage payments or "baby needs a new pair of shoes" when he largely did it to himself, so your argument again falls flat. That Barrett attributed the pressure he was feeling to something other than his own weaknesses (to mortgage payments, for instance) is not evidence that he wasn't feeling pressure, nor that he didn't have a motive.

Coming up for air: Let's remember that Ike is arguing that Barrett had NO INCENTIVE to create a bestselling hoax.

An unemployed writer, whose magazine gig had gone south, had NO INCENTIVE to write a bestseller.

This comes from the same source that believes that Barrett had all the incentive in the world to call up a literary agent within minutes or hours of seeing the possibly stolen Diary of Jack the Ripper in a pub in an attempt to get a publishing contract.

Suddenly his motivation for fast and easy profit has come to life?

It's ridiculous. It's a waste of time.

Barrett obviously had incentive to write. He bought an expensive word processor and submitted articles for two or three years.

No rational member of the public is going to believe there wasn't a motive.

[Iconoclast]

This comes from the same source that believes that Barrett had all the incentive in the world to call up a literary agent within minutes or hours of seeing the possibly stolen Diary of Jack the Ripper in a pub in an attempt to get a publishing contract. Suddenly his motivation for fast and easy profit has come to life?

Imagine a scenario where someone is walking down the street. This person is doing okay for themselves. They are paying their way and getting by. They are neither too rich nor too poor. They'd like a little extra, like most of us, but they can't grumble about the hand life has dealt them all things considered and they have no obvious reason to to proactively change their life in any significant way.

As they walk down this street, they pass a paper bag with £100 notes sticking out of it. There looks like there could be maybe £2,000 or even £3,000 in there.

If one subscribes to RJ Palmer's argument, above, that person just keeps on walking.

Now, if you read that and find that perfectly logical, read no further, this post ain't for you.

If however you live in the real world, when life gives you lemons, you make some lemonade. Please, dear readers that have read this far, do not concern yourselves, you have not gone mad: a failed 'writer' who stumbles across what looks for all the world like a record of the thoughts of the most infamous serial killer of all time is not going to keep on walking down the street because he's generally speaking doing okay in this world. Nope, he's going to seize his sudden windfall and make some lemonade.

I can do nothing if you read RJ's argument and agree that Mike Barrett would walk on by when the opportunity of a lifetime fell into his lap. I can do nothing for you if you agree with RJ's comments that "It's ridiculous. It's a waste of time". Honestly, no-one could do anything for you in that situation.

No-one is arguing that Mike Barrett appears to have had an ambition and a motivation to write. The challenge he had was that he wasn't any good at it. This from his own mouth, by the way! He didn't have the talent to write what he found in James Maybrick's scrapbook, and he didn't have any reason to. But that doesn't mean that he was going to look a gift horse in the mouth: which of us would?

Nope, when Mike Barrett claimed that he had ''crippling' financial pressures' (not 'pressures' generally, note - he was very specific that they were financial in nature and they were 'crippling' so let's not have any truck with the little spin to make Barrett experience any kind of generic pressure, thank you), he was genuinely unable to pay his mortgage and he was losing his home. It was late 1994 and his goose was cooked. All he did with that was move the pressure back two or three years so that he could find a reason for claiming to have written a masterpiece without a brush or paint to his name. He was a failed 'writer' and a failed 'hoaxer'. A failed husband and a failed father. He was the Nowhere Man who won the lottery and pissed his good fortune up any wall he could find at chucking-out time.

Mike Barrett found the 'diary' of Jack the Ripper as he walked down the street and - just like the rest of us would have done - he took it home with him.

[rjpalmer]

As they walk down this street, they pass a paper bag with £100 notes sticking out of it. There looks like there could be maybe £2,000 or even £3,000 in there.

If one subscribes to RJ Palmer's argument, above, that person just keeps on walking.

Where on earth have I ever suggested such a thing? Always such amazing projection.

I'm perfectly happy with someone picking up a bag of £100 notes.

I'm also aware that someone might 'roll' an elderly lady and grab her handbag---hoping it was full of £100 notes (and spend a year in prison for it, or thereabouts)

But I also think it is utterly inane and naive to argue that the same person wouldn't counterfeit a bag of £100 notes if he thought he could get away with it.

Though I HASTEN TO ADD that that's not what I think Barrett did.

He signed a contract to collaborate on an "investigation" into the authenticity of these "counterfeit notes"---which neatly avoids any need to try and pass the notes as authentic and risk the appropriate criminal penalty.

You're just talking in circles, Ike. Probably time to move on.

[rjpalmer]

Please, Ike.

No-one is arguing that Mike Barrett appears to have had an ambition and a motivation to write. The challenge he had was that he wasn't any good at it.

Um....I asked you on Tuesday why Mike (and Anne) couldn't have hoaxed the diary.

Your very first response:

Well, never one to be left behind, I'll start:

1) The obvious one - they had no motive. Despite Barrett's claims, they were NOT struggling to pay the mortgage or indeed the gas bill, newspaper boy, or milkman (kids, ask your grandparents for the latter two).

So long, Ike.

If I ever desire to wrestle with eels again, I'll head to the aquarium.

[Iconoclast]

Um....I asked you on Tuesday why Mike (and Anne) couldn't have hoaxed the diary.

Motivation is drive. Motive is reason. To quote Alexander Orlov, “Don’t even sound same”.

You have to wonder at the motivation behind someone who would confuse the two.

[Iconoclast]

Where on earth have I ever suggested such a thing? Always such amazing projection.

It's called an analogy, RJ, but I get it, it's okay, you didn't realise.

[Iconoclast]

Dear Readers,

I have access to fifteen tapes of meetings between the ace Liverpool detective Alan Gray and his employer, the brilliant hoaxer Michael "Ex-Scrap Metal Dealer" Barrett.

Not all of them are equally audible. Many seem to have been recorded from Alan Gray's pocket and are probably now lost to us, but the body of recordings which are audible enough are fully quorate to form an interesting observation.

And it is this.

Alan Gray made those recordings in order to catch Michael Barrett revealing the information which would categorically prove (or even just indicate if that was the best he could get) that the Maybrick scrapbook had been created by the erstwhile scrap metal dealer. Gray's role was to pass those recordings on to the viper Melvin Harris who passed those recordings onto - variously - Nick Warren and co. and eventually they found their way to those arch-anti-scrapbookists Lord Algernon Orsam and his lickspittle acolytes. They also (I don't know how) found their way into the hands of the authors of Inside Story.

So why am I telling you all this, my dear dear readers?

Well, how many Gray-Barrett tapes does it take to change a narrative? It would appear that it must be more than fifteen because not a single scrap of those tapes has ever provided the anti-scrapbookists with any ammunition whatsoever to argue that there is any evidence that Michael Barrett had a hand in creating the Maybrick scrapbook.

If any one of those tapes did, do you imagine for a moment we would have heard about it by now?

RJ Palmer - transient in possession of his copies - even discarded his or just casually gave them away to someone he can't now even remember - 'presumably' because he realised what is very obvious to anyone who has ever had the misfortune to sit through the hours of conversation between our latter-day Laurel and Hardy, namely, that there is not a scrap of evidence in favour of the argument that Michael Barrett had a hand in the creation of the James Maybrick scrapbook which solved the question of who Jack the Ripper actually was and - in sharp contrast - there was more than sufficient evidence of Michael Barrett's ceaseless lying and duplicity to make anything he ever said or WROTTED utterly inadmissible in court except on behalf of those arguing that he was a talentless, embittered, pissed-up loser who didn't care a jot about who or what he hurt if he thought his actions might get him even a tiny step closer to something he might want.

What should you conclude from this, dear readers? Well, it's simples. You should conclude that you are being sold a pup by those who attempt to give credence to the pisshead's utterly feeble attempts to prove he did something he didn't do. Believe those posters if you wish. Go on Lord Orsam's new blog and revel in how the truth can be twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools if you really want to be persuaded that the fanciful might be the actualité, but don't come running to me when it all goes horribly wrong and you realise how badly you have been let down by those you trusted to seek out the truth of this simple matter.

Ike

[Tab]

I have access to fifteen tapes of meetings between the ace Liverpool detective Alan Gray and his employer, the brilliant hoaxer Michael "Ex-Scrap Metal Dealer" Barrett.

Not all of them are equally audible. Many seem to have been recorded from Alan Gray's pocket and are probably now lost to us ...

Have these been digitised? Audio restoration is pretty straightforward these days - AI based DSP software is available to any Tom, Dick or Harry and can bring the most degraded unrecognizable audio back to life. I would be interested in giving this a go.