This is a work in progress, and until it is completed its text will be under constant addition and revision.
The last update was on June 2, 2024 at 1:27 PM UTC.
Since this text was published a lot more very basic information has been uncovered that is not revealed here.
It will become a part of a new book called:
CAROLINE
SEX, CRIME, MONEY AND
THE PALIMPSEST HOAX
an anthology narrated by
GENIE BASKIR
This critical review is about a book that was first published in 2021.
At first glance, from its coffee table, overly-large-sized cover, it appears to be the story of a roller disco venue which opened in July 1979, and closed in October 1981. The title proclaims that is a book called Denny Cordell presents Flipper's, but while it contains many pictures about that enterprise, it also contains a large amount of text by Ian Cowper Ross about the alleged backstory that led up to the 1964 creation of Radio Caroline.
The text was delivered in a question and answer format.
The questions were answered by Ian Cowper Ross and asked by his billionaire father-in-law, and edited by his wife, who is Ian's daughter.
The storyline in this book by Liberty Ross is fictitious, but its storyline is the same one that has been used by Paul Alexander Ruslling and Ray Clark.
BACKGROUND TO FICTION SPUN BY IAN COWPER ROSS
The strange title of Liberty's book is 'Denny Cordell present's Flipper's', which refers to another person in this strange tale. His name is Denny Cordell.
Denny was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina during 1943, which is the same year that Ian was born in Chelsea, England.
The two of them met while Denny was licking stamps as an office boy for musicians.Their original office was in the basement of a building called 'Caroline House' at Warwick Square in London. Later, Denny Cordell and the pop group 'Moody Blues' who were also based at that same address, moved to another 'Caroline House' in Chesterfield Gardens, London.
Ian Cowper Ross and Denny Cordell formed a friendship which eventually paralleled the strange and extremely involved story about the manner in which the Beatles lost a huge amount of money due to the careless signing of a contract by their manager Brian Epstein, and his lawyer named David Jacobs. None of that is included in the various versions of the tale spun by Ian Cowper Ross, and as retold by Paul Rusling and Ray Clark.
FLIPPER'S
Flipper's was located within a building that was once a bowling alley in California. It occupied a corner within the city of West Hollywood at the spot where La Cienega and Santa Monica Boulevards meet.
More descriptively, after its days as a bowling alley, the building became known as a 'Roller Boogie Palace' called 'Flipper's'. You might think from that description that this book and its review is primarily about roller skating set to disco music, but you would be wrong.
First of all it is not a documentary work.
Secondly, it is not a factual work.
It is the work of 'spin' by Ian Cowper Ross.
Ian is a gadfly born in England.
It is not his biography, although he pretends in this book that it is.
However, Ian's real life story is more akin to the make believe world of Walter Mitty, than it is to a true recital of lives lived. In other words, it is almost impossible to untangle and decipher Ian's fiction, from the reality of his own life.
He first spun his tale in a book called 'The Boat That Rocked' . It was originally published in 1990, and then it was twisted by Ian in person and on camera, within a linking narrative of a 1991 BBC-TV documentary. Ian Cowper Ross implied that the story in his novel, which was used as the partial basis for the BBC-TV script, was in fact his true autobiograhy which he wrote using the pen name of Paul Shaw, but with his real name Ian Ross, appearing on the cover.
LIBERTY'S BOOK
The lives mentioned in Liberty's book are those of Ian's real family by birth.
This includes Ian's wife Bunty, her immediate aristocratic family, plus an aristocratic brother-in-law.
Liberty is the daughter of Ian and Bunty.
But with reality out of the way, it is necessary to mentiton two other individuals who are not related to Ian, but whose fictitious lives have been woven into the fabric of Ian Cowper Ross' own make-believe life. This is the foundation of Ian's big lie which has been repeatedly amplified by Ray Clark, but which has veered off course to incorporate the true foundational fact that Ian almost lost his foot as a result of a head-on car crash by driving on the wrong side of the road.
The head-on accident occurred when teenage Ian Ross crashed a Jensen car into a bus. It landed Ian in hospital, and then he found himself hobbling on crutches into a court of law at Derby.
Doctors managed to salvage something of his natural foot by fitting him with a metal replacement that his friends thought was closer to a flipper than a foot. That is how he got his nickname, and that is how this book got its strange title.
,Denny Cordell also used that name for his roller-disco, after Ian Cowper Ross had grafted himself upon Denny.
WHO IS IAN COWPER ROSS?
Without Ian Cowper Ross this book would not exist.
He provided its unique name, and he was involved in the creation of the 'boogie palace' as "presented by Denny Cordell". But it is Ian Cowper Ross who embellished the original fake story spun by Ronan O'Rahilly, which Paul Rusling and Ray Clark merely amplified.
Ian was born in Chelsea during 1943 while World War II was raging.
Chelsea, like other parts of London, England, was the target of multiple attacks from both VI and V2 rockets, in addition to the standard fare delivered and dropped by piloted planes sent on their way with the blessings of Adolf Hitler.
Ian's father was born in New Zealand during 1901, and he arrived in England as a married man.
His first name is central to understanding the true story.
It is listed on all official documents as Charles Edward Ross.
In 1929, while Charles was still married, his first son was born in England.
He was named Charles Cowper Ross.
Seven years later, Charles Edward Ross divorced his first wife who had been born in New Zealand and came with him to England.
In 1938, Charles Edward Ross married again, this time to Phyllis Balfour Davies who was born in England.
It was Charles and Phyllis who produced Ian during War the years, when deception of the enemy was a necessity.
Those years of deception were authorized by Winston Churchill.
Before he became Prime Minister, Churchill had been a Member of Parliament representing Dundee in Scotland, and that is where Churchill wrote a full page article in 1920 defining Jews as being both 'good' and 'bad'. This was before Hitler decided that all Jews were bad.
Churchill decided that 'good Jews' were people such as Benjamin Disraeli because he assimilated with both English religion and politics. Churchill branded 'bad Jews' as people who founded the communist USSR. But Churchill went further. He claimed that 'bad Jews' were also members of a secret world domination cult known as 'Illuminati'.
THE DOYEN OF DECEPTION
Obviously Churchill had little regard for reality, and when it came to warfare he discarded the need for factual truth.
Churchill assembled a team to mislead his Nazi opponent concerning the true location of the D-Day invasion into France by the Allied United Nations Fighting Forces. While the real invasion force was assembling in many parts of the British Isles, a phantom army was being staged in southern England under the phantom command of U.S. General George Patton.
Among Patton's 'weaponry' was an impressive array of inflatable tanks. At least from the air, they looked like the real thing, but on the ground, four soldiers could lift one his lightweight fighting machines (and other related military gimmicks), and place them into formation positions observable from the air. From the vantage point of Nazi aircraft pilots and crew, it certainly looked as if Patton was going to be leading the Invasion of continental Europe.
But, while the War of Death raged elsewhere, Churchill not only had control over Patton's make-believe army, but he also had command of a huge and clandestine broadcasting operation under the control of a man named Sefton Delmer. The British Broadcasting Corporation attempted to stay closer to the truth in its news coverage, but Delmer's many stations did the exact opposite. They pretended to be Senders broadcasting from Nazi controlled territory on the continent.
Meanwhile, American troops were also being entertained by the fledgling American Forces Radio stations that were transmitting on low-power from bases all over the island of Great Britain. At first, the BBC would not indulge in the American form of entertainment, having branded it as vulgar. These were the secret years of World War II that the British hoy polloi knew nothing about, unless of course they were employed as part of the deceptive operations.
"ASK NOT!"
What exactly Ian's father Charles Edward Ross did during WWII is not at present known. Whatever it was had some effect on his son Ian, because by the time he became a teenager, he was a rebellious kid who branded himself as a political and religious anarchist. In other words, Ian was not falling into line like his older step-brother Charles Cowper Ross.
Ian's older step-brother went to the same English 'public' (private) school at Repton that Ian also attended later on. After the War, Ian's step-brother became a member of the British Army on the Rhine (BAOR), and he was promoted in rank during his service.
While Ian also attended Repton, he was not a noteworthy student who went on to serve his country.
Just the opposite.
Ian was cynical and determined to use the System to his own advantage. While U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was telling American citizens to ask what they could do for their country, Ian was pondering what the United Kingdom (and the United States of America), could do for him.
By the time his daughter Liberty came to publish her book about 'Flipper's' in 2021, her father had years of practice pretending to be someone that he was not. Ian did this by claiming to have achieved things that he had never achieved. One of his elaborate and totally false claims was that in 1964, he had become a co-founder of the offshore radio station called 'Caroline'.
IT'S A LONG AND WINDING ROAD
Liberty Ross was only 2 years old when Ian took her to see his boogie palace for the first time.
We should say that she was taken to see Denny Cordell's venue called 'Flipper's', because the musical road that led to that venue in Los Angeles County began with Denny, and not with Ian. The road trodden by Denny did run parallel to the path trodden by Ian and it is possible that while Ian was still an office boy working for Jocelyn Stevens, Denny was still an office boy licking stamps for a group who wanted to become promoters of pop artists called the Moody Blues.
Denny's lifetime journey began in Ireland, but he made two stop-overs in England, and that is how Ian came to meet him, before they both arrived in California by a long and winding route, swathed in deception.
Liberty's book doesn't pretend to be a novel, and yet, that is exactly what it is, because its narrative is a work of fiction as told by her father Ian. He had a lot of practice in telling his fictitious tale.
Over the years, Ian has tweaked it here and there since it first saw publication in his novel called 'Rocking the Boat', but at its core is a problem if he insists that it is his autobiography.
In his novel, Ian's character is called Paul Shaw, and his father is referred to only once as 'Jim', which, if he is Paul's father, then it means that his name is Jim Shaw. Ian's real father is Charles Edward Ross.
But in his novel, Ronan O'Rahilly never goes to see Charles Edward Ross. Instead, a Liam O'Mahoney and a Johnny Meadows go to see the father of Paul Shaw who is only identified once as Jim.
At first Ian tried to walk to tightrope in which he never referred to his birth father by name. He called him "Daddy".
MEET PAUL SHAW
In the original telling of his fictitious tale, his central character is called Paul Shaw, but Ian Cowper Ross is careful not to claim that he is Paul Shaw.
The make-believe father of Paul Shaw was given the first name of Jim. The wife of Charles Edward Ross is merely identified as Phyllis, which happens to be the first name of Ian's genuine birth mother.
In his book called 'Rocking the Boat', the names Jim and Phyllis are never used in connection with the surname Shaw, but the inference is that Jim and Phyllis are Mr and Mrs Shaw, parents of Paul Shaw.
In Ian's 1990 novel, Paul Shaw has an older brother named Melville who seems to be sneeringly patterned after the real step-brother of Ian Cowper Ross whose actual name is Charles Cowper Ross. In real life both Ian and step-brother Charles attended Repton, and in Ian's novel, both Paul Shaw and his brother Melville attended a public school called 'Elphinstone'. Melville became a serving member of BAOR, just like Ian's step-brother in real life.
The name 'Radio Caroline' is never mentioned within the text of 'Rocking the Boat'. But on the inside of the folded flap forming the back of the dust jacket, a connection is made by the publisher.
In 1990, following publication of 'Rocking the Boat', BBC-TV aired a program within its 'Arena' series in which Ian Cowper Ross personally inferred that his novel is in part a true account of his own life and that of his father.
But he never says that!
This is where lasting mischief begins.
It is 'ground zero' of a lasting lie.
THE RADIO CAROLINE STORY RETOLD
In 2014, a now former local BBC employee in the south of England named Ray Clark wrote a book called 'Radio Caroline the true story of the boat that rocked' which 'borrows' from a premise first published as fiction by Ian Cowper Ross in his 1990 novel called 'Rocking the Boat'. There is no other source for the foundational nonsense spelled out by Ray Clark in his book, because Ray Clark's storyline begins with a person that he identifies as 'Jimmy Ross', but even Ian Cowper Ross never, ever calls his father by that name!
This false name association by Ray Clark is important.
First of all it is untrue.
Secondly, it does not make sense.
If Charles Edward Ross had a nickname, it would have been Charlie or Eddie, but not 'Jimmy'.
The only Jim involved in the Ross family comes from the fiction of Jim Shaw as a result of invention by Ian Cowper Ross.
The only reason that Ray Clark knows the real name of Ian's real father, is because the editor of this review paid a private investigator to discover the true identity of the person who wrote 'Rocking the Boat' .
The cover of that book merely says that its author is Ian Ross. The P.I. responded with a copy of the 1966 marriage certificate of Ian Cowper Ross. Upon that document is the true identity of both Ian's real father and mother. A genealogy site then revealed the maiden name of his real birth mother, as well as details of the previous marriage by Ian's real birth father. The author of this review then shared that information with everyone having an interest in the 1964 source of financing behind 'Radio Caroline', which is how Ray Clark became exposed to the names Charles and Edward.
Ray Clark personally interviewed Ian Cowper Ross, but Ian Cowper Ross merely fed him more false information, mixed-in with true details, but only where it became necessary to promote deceit as well as conceal the overall nature of its false premise. That is the information which was then published Online under the byline of Ray Clark.
Meanwhile, Ray Clark's fake book about 'Radio Caroline' that is based upon the false testimony of Ian Cowper Ross, was first published in 2014 (although a later publication claimed that it was 2013), then republished as a second edition in 2019, and then again in 2024 as a third edition with an update. Clearly, Ray Clark's 2024 edition is more recent than the 2021 edition of the 'Radio Caroline' story as told by Ian Cowper Ross within the book published by his daughter Liberty.
But the 2024 book by Ray Clark has not deviated from one key error that was gleaned from the 1990 book by Ian Cowper Ross, and that is the invention of a person called 'Jimmy Ross', as retold in 2014 book by Ray Clark. That key error is trying to turn Jim or Jimmy Shaw, into Charles Edward Ross.
However, Ian Cowper Ross has been very careful in retelling his own fake version of the 'Radio Caroline Story', and he has left it to other people to connect dots that do not exist. But the doyen of misinformation is the self-appointed teller of a story about the creation in 1964 about 'Radio Caroline', is Ian Cowper Ross. His primary disciple is Ray Clark who has written about a subject which lacks a foundational basis in personal knowledge. Ray Clark only knows what Ian Cowper Ross has told him.
THE ASSERTIONS OF RAY CLARK
Born in 1954, Ray Clark began his own false narrative about 'Radio Caroline' by asserting in his first edition (2014), that the father of Ian Cowper Ross had been "a financier in the City, who owned the Jensen car company and had interests in numerous other businesses, including a London bank and the Buxted chicken brand." (See page 37 of Ray Clark's 2014 edition.)
In reality, Charles Edward Ross became sales director for a local laundry in Scotland which had extended its services to dry-cleaning, and then, by buying newly invented automation equipment, it had branched out into offering dry-cleaning franchises for sale. As a result, a chain of automated dry-cleaners began to appear on the island of Great Britain. The parent company of the dry-cleaning chain moved its head office to Chelsea, and the owner bought a residence in the affluent part of southern England where his daughter had dreams of becoming a debutante.
Charles Edward Ross also became involved with the sale of Jensen Cars which had its factory in Birmingham, and he bought a house that had recently been part of a farm in Reynards Wood at Hindhead, near Haslemere in Surrey. This also became the home of his son Ian Cowper Ross. Meanwhile his older son, who is Ian's step-son, also named Charles, moved on with a business partner to establish their own commercial ventures on King's Road in Chelsea. Ian Cowper Ross used parts of his step-brother's real life to cloak the life of his fictitious character called Paul Shaw.
In his 1990 novel, and in at least one subsequent follow-up interview with Ray Clark, Ian Cowper Ross had been somewhat vague as to what exactly Ian's father did for a living, and how his father came to know people such as Jocelyn Stevens. But this did not stop Ray Clark from filling in details that did not exist.
In'Rocking the Boat' by Ian Cowper Ross, it begins by telling a tale with the dateline of '1963' as its introductory title. The novel is about a young man named Paul Shaw who is taken by his father to Beverly Hills in California. Paul Shaw becomes bored while his father is off conducting unnamed business, and so Paul Shaw wanders off and sees an automated car wash. He persuades his father to open one in Richmond, Surrey which upon his return to England he father does, but he turns over its management to his brother Melville Shaw. Paul Shaw then claims in the novel 'Rocking the Boat', that this automated car wash is the first of its kind in Britain. Remember, this is fictitious story told by Ian Cowper Ross.
In reality Ian's real step-brother Charles opened (with his business partner), a car wash on the King's Road in Chelsea. Ian merely stole part of his step-brother's real life story for his bogus character called Paul Shaw.
But in Ian's novel, Paul Shaw works at his brother's car wash and soon gets bored again, so he wanders off to a pub. There he meets an aristocrat who lacks spending money, and in exchange for Paul Shaw paying his bill, the aristocrat gets Paul Shaw into an exclusive club called 'Pandora's Box' (which did not exist in the real world.)
The reason why Paul Shaw wants admission to this exclusive club for aristocrats and their hanger's-on, is because Paul Shaw has seen a picture of a model in a fashion magazine, and he has fallen in love with her picture. Believing that she frequents 'Pandora's Box', Paul Shaw then conceives of a plan to meet his dream lover, and this involves meeting the club disc jockey.
That is how a character named Johnny Meadows enters this fictitious storyline.
He is the club DJ and he knows the model that Paul Shaw wants to meet.
There is a quid-pro-quo in that Johnny Meadows has his own friend, another fictitious character in this same Ian Cowper Ross novel. His name is Liam O'Mahoney. He is Irish, loud mouthed and boastful. He had an ancestor who took part in the Irish uprising against the British Crown, and consequently he was shot and killed.
A meeting is arranged by Johnny Meadows at the 'Kenya' coffee bar on King's Road in Chelsea, and although there once was a real coffee bar on King's Road in Chelsea by that name, it changed its name to Kenco, although that fact is ignored within Ian's work of fiction.
Upon being introduced by Johnny Meadows to Paul Shaw, Liam O'Mahoney tells Paul Shaw about his plan to put a radio station on board a ship, anchor it off the coast of south-east England, and then broadcast commercial radio programs with advertising into the United Kingdom. Liam O'Mahoney claimed that such a station would make a fortune. There is just one drawback. Liam O'Mahoney is broke. But Johnny Meadows has led Liam Mahoney to believe that Paul Shaw is connected to a money source that can finance his offshore radio station.
Paul Shaw tells Liam O'Mahoney that his "Daddy" (he never refers to him by name), can finance such a plan. So Paul Shaw lends his MG to Liam O'Mahoney, and together with Johnny Meadows on board and Liam at the wheel, all three of them race down to Hindhead to see Paul's father who so far is only known as "Daddy" in Ian's novel.
The trio arrive in Hindhead and Paul Shaw tells his Daddy who is working on a tractor parked outside the Shaw family house, that he wants to introduce him to someone he has brought with him. The three of them, plus Daddy, all enter the house and are invited to dinner by Paul Shaw's mother.
Liam O'Mahoney then let's loose and begins showing Daddy paperwork about his plan.
Daddy, who is then identified by Paul's mother as Jim, makes phone calls to his friends and tells Liam that he can have his money.
The next day, Paul Shaw, Johnny Meadows and Liam O'Mahoney go to an unnamed bank where Liam is given a case full of cash.
Upon leaving the bank, Liam hands a few thousand in bank notes to Johnny Meadows for him to go to Holland and buy a ship. His purchasing ability is based upon the fact that Johnny Meadows once worked on a cruise vessel.
IAN'S FOUNDATION OF LIES
This is the foundation upon which Ian Cowper Ross has built his fable, and it is the same nonsense story that Ray Clark has bought, hook, line and sinker so that he can turn fiction into alleged fact. Thus, for readers of this tale, what didn't happen, did happen. What is so absurd as to be dismissed immediately, is now the topic of hours of detailed discussion, umpteen books, magazine articles and broadcasting documentaries about 'Radio Caroline'. Yet the name of that station is never mentioned by Ian Cowper Ross in his 1990 novel!
Let us reconsider that statement.
Not once in his novel does Ian Cowper Ross ever mention 'Radio Caroline'!
Shortly after publication of Ian's absurd story, it was followed by a BBC-TV documentary in which Ian Cowper Ross hinted that his novel is non-fiction and that it contains details of his real life activities. The inference is that Ian Cowper Ross is the character in the novel, and therefore Paul Shaw is really Ian Cowper Ross. His father (who he only refers to as "Daddy" or "Jim" in his novel) is transposed into "Jimmy" by other people., and then after Liam O'Mahoney has got hold of him, he becomes "Jimmy".
THE WONDERS OF WIKIPEDIA
This story really goes further off the rails, if that can be conceived as a possibility, in order to imply that fiction is fact, once Wikipedia got hold of the storyline courtesy of Ray Clark's readers. In 2024, Wikipedia is telling its readers that 'Jim', the make-believe father of Paul Shaw who Liam O'Mahoney calls 'Jimmy', is really Carl 'Johnny' Ross of Ross Frozen Foods!
But Ray Clark's description of "Daddy" is also far removed from reality.
Charles Edward Ross was not "a financier in the City, who owned the Jensen car company and had interests in numerous other business, including a London bank and the Buxted chicken brand."
No amount of successive 'tweaking' of text in amended editions of the same book written by Ray Clark can avoid the conclusion that Ray Clark does not have the slightest knowledge of what he is writing about, and neither for that matter is Wikipedia in any way shape or form to be considered as a reliable source of knowledge. But that has not stopped hacks from gathering-up all of this misinformation and then repeating on air, and in print, to claim that it is the true story about the 1964 origins of 'Radio Caroline'.
In another listing, Wikipedia tells its readers that the name of the ship station is not 'Radio Caroline', but 'Radio Kennedy'!
LIBERTY OR LICENSE?
It is indeed a question to ponder about this book by Ian's daughter.
In 2021, did Liberty Ross do herself a favor by asking her own father to tell the world how a California roller-disco came to exist using his nickname? Or did her father sell his daughter down a river of rubbish in order to bolter his own Walter Mitty world that he built, in order to continue sponging off other people - including his own family members?
How did Ian's 1990 novel become the core narrative in the 2021 book by Liberty Ross called 'Denny Cordell's Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace'?
LIBERTY ROSS AND RADIO CAROLINE
The cover of Liberty's 2021 glossy picture book, appears to reveal that its contents are about a roller disco rink, but inside the book, readers are confronted with text about the 1964 start of 'Radio Caroline', as told by Ian Cowper Ross.
His words are supported by illustrations of two ships that occupy a full page.
One picture shows the motor vessel 'Caroline', and the other picture is a news clipping reporting the 1980 sinking of the motor vessel 'Mi Amigo'. Both vessels had been used as floating stations for 'Radio Caroline'.
Both ships were in use between the years 1964 and 1968, which means that the first 'Radio Caroline' transmission took place 14 years before Liberty Ross was born on September 23, 1978, and then they spluttered off the air 10 years before she existed as a human being. In other words, Liberty Ross has no first-hand knowledge about the creation of either 'Radio Caroline', or for that matter about "Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace" which she visited for the first time when she was 2 years old.
The storyline in Liberty's book is provided by her father, Ian Cowper Ross - in response to questions put to him by his daughter's billionaire husband James Lovine. He married Liberty Ross in 2016.
James or Jimmy Lovine was born in 1953, and therefore he is 25 years her senior. In 1964 Jimmy Lovine was 11 years old, and at age 19, he was concluding his education in New York State.
In 1970, Jimmy Lovine became a recording engineer for John Lennon.
But, Jimmy Lovine did not tell readers the story about John Lennon and the other members of the Beatles - who had been financially victimized by a group of people that included a brother-in-law of Ian Cowper Ross!
Therefore, neither Liberty Ross or her current husband Jimmy Lovine have any working knowledge about the radio ships that had been broadcasting rom off the coastline of the British Isles during the years 1964 and 1968. This is the story of the blind leading the blind by deceptive guides who are intentionally leading everyone astray.
ROCKING THE BOAT
Because the storyline in the Liberty Ross book that was published in 2021 is based upon a novel that was published in 1990 by her birth father, it is necessary to point out what one of its book flaps claims about its author. He is identified as Ian Ross, and not by his full name:
"Ian Ross was one of the founders of the pirate station Radio Caroline, was (sic) briefly manager of the pop group the Animals, then, in the early 1970s, built a rag-trade empire which collapsed. After that he went to California, opened Flippers, a roller-disco, which was spectacular but short-lived success, following which he was for two years a butler to a movie mogul. He now lives in London with his wife and six children. He is working on his second novel."
This poorly edited author's notation about the author was published by the Heinemann in London. In 1990 it was a respected company founded in 1890 by William Heinemann, and thanks to the aristocratic string-pulling by the mother-in-law of Ian Cowper Ross, his book was published by Heinemann and given a launch party covered in the British Society magazine called 'Tatler'.
The synopsis of this novel appears on the front inside flap of the dust jacket:
"Breaking out of the Home Counties in his brown suede shoes, nineteen-year-old Paul Shaw gets to grips with the Swinging Sixties with unerring ineptitude.
Turned on by a Californian carwash, his first move is to start one of his own, financed with Daddy's money. But where is the razzmatazz? The low-revving whales and finny sharks and golden-skinned girls? In damp suburban London cross queues of grimy Austins and Rovers soon turn Paul off with their penny-pinching complaints. Hamburgers don't feature in the cafe across the road, nor could even the sexiest rollerskates (sic) hope to improve the service of its one elderly waitress.
Then Liam comes into his life and suddenly it's all happening. Liam is so cool he even wears uncool clothes. With a finger-snapping flourish he turns Paul on to a scheme that cannot fail. A million a month and a chance to live at the heart of the beat of the times. All it takes is another spot of Daddy's cash and ... (sic)
Paul Shaw is truly the Bertie Wooster of the late twentieth century, muddling his way through the sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll of London and Liverpool in pursuit of the girl of his dreams."
RUBY WAX ENDORSEMENT
The endorsement by Ruby Wax on the back cover of the 1990 dust jacket which wraps Rocking the Boat', provides readers with insight regarding the marketing merits of this book: "Ian Ross captures the universal schmuck in all of us. You don't know whether to laugh or go back to therapy. 'Rocking the Boat' is like 'The Catcher in the Rye' on acid."
BEVERLY HILLS BUTLER
Ian Cowper Ross wrote a second novel that was published in 1991, again by Heinemann, under the title of 'Beverly Hills Butler'. The main character in this second book is again Paul Shaw, and it is therefore intended to be read as a sequel to his first novel called 'Rocking the Boat'. The back cover of this paperback version says:
"In Beverly Hills Butler, the gloriously funny sequel to Rocking the Boat, Paul Shaw lands up in Hollywood flat broke with a bunch of Harlem roller skaters and a collapsed movie deal.
But Paul is rescued by the one thing left he can exploit - his Englishness. He gets a job as a hopelessly inept but very British butler. In the glittering, crazy, snobbish world of Hollywood he is an instant success."
BEACHED IN CALABRIA
In 2019, Arcadia Books published a third book by Ian Ross called 'Beached in Calabria'. Inside the paperback edition of this book, it says:
"Ian Ross was born in Chelsea in 1943. Aged sixteen he went to Los Angeles, saw an automatic car wash and opened one in Richmond, Britain's first. In 1963, he co-founded Pirate Radio Station Radio Caroline, briefly managed The Animals, and met his future wife Bunty Lampson. He moved his family to Los Angeles in 1979 and opened Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace in Hollywood. The place caused a sensation and was closed by authorities after three years whereupon Ian became a butler in Beverly Hills. In 1988 he returned to England and wrote two books about his adventures, Rocking the Boat and Beverly Hills Butler, both published by Heinemann."
In his third book Ian Ross uses his birth name.
Gone is the fictitious Shaw family, but now the publisher describes the contents of this book without direct reference to the subject matter of his two novels:
"Where do you go to when you only have a pittance for a home away from home for a huge family? Ian Ross realises that his small inheritance won't get him a place in France or even Spain, so he heads for southern Italy where he remembers the Blue Guide describing long empty sandy beaches in southern Calabria.
When he arrives in Southern Italy he finds the house prices are encouragingly low. Why does no one go there? It's inaccessible and it's beloved of the Mafia."
More blurb is followed by his final back cover paragraph:
"Disaster follows disaster, but this travelogue encompasses tales of the friendships Ross makes on the way in this forgotten corner of Old Italy where the food and 326 days of sunshine a year make for a perfect setting to a triumphant escapade."
BUT WHAT IS TRUE AND WHAT IS FAKE?
By publishing two novels using fake names in which Ian Cowper Ross is identified as the author, he confuses the line between real and fake because as author, he 'borrows' from the real lives of other people. He also changes dates, places and events in order to cobble-together imaginary storylines for his two books. Then he begins to imply that his two novels are really his biography. But it becomes an impossible and a time wasting task trying to pick apart texts in an attempt to discern what is true and what is fake.
According to page one of his novel 'Rocking the Boat', (hardback edition), its fictitious character called Paul Shaw begins telling his story in the year 1963, by describing a visit to Beverly Hills, California with his father. Paul Shaw then gets the idea of starting an automated car wash business in England at Richmond, Surrey.
But while Paul Shaw may have been dreaming about starting England's first automated car wash after a flight of fancy to Beverly Hills in California, Ian Cowper Ross was working in London doing entry-level work for Jocelyn Stevens in his advertising department.
Because the purpose of this critical book review is to carefully examine statements made by Ian Cowper Ross, questions put to him in this 2021 book have mostly been omitted. In this way the words of Ian Cowper Ross remain the focal point of this critical analysis. Where the narrative of Ian Cowper Ross needs to be prefaced in order to explain the foundational direction of his response, the original question has been included in light text. However, all responses by Ian Cowper Ross are shown in enhanced bold text.
ABOUT THE STATUS OF FLIPPER'S
"Denny Cordell presents Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace" was closed down in 1981 under threat of a Los Angles Police raid for the distribution of illegal drugs and many other offences, including a failure to obtain building permits before it opened to the public.
ABOUT IAN COWPER ROSS
Ian Cowper Ross came from a sheltered background which failed to teach him the fundamental process of interacting in a financially self-sustaining way within the norms of what is considered to be a free society. Instead, he learned how to live off the financial support of other people. This inability to self-provide for himself then resulted in him living in a repetitious boom to bust circular lifestyle.
Although his involvement in the creation of Radio Caroline was peripheral, over the years Ian Cowper Ross has found a necessity to drag it out of the shadows and embellish it in order to provide a form of 'calling card' means of introduction by describing himself as a successful entrepreneur. He never has been successful in business of any kind, as his own words admit. But his first main attempt to use the story of 'Radio Caroline' came as a loosely 'inspired' basis for his 1990 novel called 'Rocking the Boat'. When he wrote it, Ian Cowper Ross was in another financial 'bust' cycle. But his wealthy and aristocratic mother-in-law came to his rescue and promoted publication of his novel.
It was on the heels of that book that the producers of a documentary in the 'Arena' series aired on BBC-TV, came calling. They placed Ian Cowper Ross center stage in their video production. In some instances Ian Cowper Ross appears to have just imbibed something strange, due to his mannerisms on screen. This might account for the rather glib way in which he began to imply that the fictitious actions of Paul Shaw were actually based upon his own real life activities, although he never mentions the name of the mythical Shaw family on screen.
It is essential to note that initially, Ian Cowper Ross never made any direct claim between himself and Paul Shaw, although by a process of seeping inferences he began to imply that the storyline in his novel about Paul Shaw, and other fictitious characters, are disguised reflections of his actual life as Ian Cowper Ross.
THE FAKED ORIGINS OF RADIO CAROLINE
This faking of the broadcasting origins of 'Radio Caroline' is found in the manufacturing plans of the Pye Group of Companies under the management of Charles Orr Stanley, and to a lessor extent, by his son, John Stanley.
The roots of the Pye Group extend back in time before World War II. Pye enjoyed a lengthy relationship with both miliary and civilian contracts under many administrations representing the British government.
After WWII, Pye was very instrumental in the creation of a political Pressure Group that brought about the Independent Television Authority. In 1954, ITA was the only Crown licenced alternative broadcaster to the British Broadcasting Corporation. ITA functioned as a licenced broadcaster because it controlled both transmitters and towers, but it commercially franchised off its programing to contractors in non-competitive zones.
To allow the franchisees to pay for their programs and to make a profit, ITA allowed them to sell time to non-religious and non-political entities in the form of spot advertising. Direct sponsorship of programming in which sponsors would commission the programs to be made for the franchisees, was not permitted, and the sale of both religious and political advertising in sponsored programming, was also prohibited.
THE PYE AGENDA
The Pye Plan was to open-up both the radio and television airwaves to as many broadcasting operators as possible. It was not the primary objective of Pye to engage in programming, although it did commission its own sponsored entertainment shows that were broadcast by Radio Luxembourg.
The Pye Plan was to increase the demand for both transmitters and receivers, and thus increase the financial bottom line of the collective group of Pye companies. The radio broadcasting door remained closed to independent operators, because from its inception, the airwaves had been closed to any form of programming that did not comply with the English Church/State mantra. Radio Luxembourg was one of several commercial stations targeting the British Isles before WWII, and it alone resumed transmissions after the War.
In 1954, ITA had been licenced to expand British Crown approved programming by allowing a limited form of advertising to pay for its operation. This was not what Pye wanted because it restricted market demand. Pye wanted competition to create demand for transmitters, studio equipment and receivers that the Pye Group could manufacture and sell. ITA was not exactly what Pye had in mind.
Pye wanted independent stations based upon the American formula of free enterprise broadcasting. Instead, the Crown Post Office which controlled all forms of mass communication in the United Kingdom, had only licenced the singular ITA, and for television transmissions only.
Consequently in 1959, Pye revived its political Pressure Group which it originally devised to expand the television market, only this time it was intended to cause the Crown Post Office to l licence independent local radio stations. But in the immediate years that followed, the Crown Post Office refused to issue such licences, even though hundreds of prospective companies had been formed by various companies and organizations for that purpose.
It was as a result of the British Crown Post Office refusal to issue more licences, that Pye went one step further and activated a clandestine operation to create a de facto independent radio station, paid for by commercial advertising. The reasoning behind this plan was that listeners having a choice of actual programming, rather than a speculative plan of what such programming might sound like, would then create a political demand by way of their votes cast at election time, if one of the main political parties endorsed the Pye Plan.
To put the secretive Pye Plan into action, Charles Orr Stanley and his son John, teamed-up with a designer named Alan Bednall who was primarily working full time under contract for Pye. Everything was conducted on a need-to-know basis because Pye did not want to lose its existing government contracts by exposure of working both political sides of the issue against the middle (the British Crown Post Office). To accomplish this goal, Pye created a radio station on board a ship, using the eponymous name of 'Caroline' for both vessel and station.
But Pye also went out of its way to hire masters of deception who had previously worked under Winston Churchill during the WWII D-Day preparations. Churchill ordered the creation of a secret counter plan designed to fool Adolf Hitler. The physical part of that plan was put into the hands of U.S. General George Patton. But one of the masterminds of that D-Day plan later went to work for Charles Orr Stanley on the Pye Plan to fool the Crown Post Office.
LIAM O'MAHONEY AND RONAN O'RAHILLY
While there was no comparison in age and experience with U.S. General George Patton, the Pye Plan needed a young gadfly with a successful father in the Irish Republic who had a business of his own, plus a family connection to the original uprising which threw the British out of governance of most of the island of Ireland. The youth of this person would identify him with the musical format broadcast by the clandestine station. He did not need to have any degree of business acumen, but he did need to be cunning and have the gift of blarney.
The problem would arise in trying to control this person who would have the upper-hand over his master, because sacking them once hired, would present the possibility that the entire Plan might be exposed. Therefore, the person hired had to be retained on a limited need-to-know purpose, and this required stepping stones to remove that person from direct contact with the master of the entire operation.
The Master Planner was Charles Orr Stanley, and his first link in a chain of subterfuge was his son, John Stanley. It was John Stanley who had contact with a remote designer (not on the immediate Pye payroll), named Alan Bednall. He worked out of his home in a small village just outside Cambridge, headquarters of the Pye Group of Companies.
Bednall admits to having been sworn to utmost secrecy by John Stanley to put the plan into operation. There were several people who then took their directions from Alan Bednall, and most of them were also independently working from the Pye Group of Companies. But there was one link in the chain that connected to an obscure company originally sans Pye name, which had moved location and then officially become a subsidiary link to the Pye Group of Companies and a company in the United States of America. That company supplied the broadcasting equipment to a Dutch tug and towing company in Rotterdam, Holland which installed the apparatus on board a vessel it had acquired.
But the organizational link went from Bednall to one of a several printing companies that he had contact with. One of those companies took on a junior employee who needed to pay off his court fine for reckless driving, and his father had found him the job. His father was Charles Orr Stanley and his irresponsible son was Ian Cowper Ross.
It was Ian Cowper Ross who found the gadfy through a club DJ named Stephen Christopher Moore, whose mother had brought him to England under her own maiden name which she had given him, after his military birth father had died before he was born in California.
From Moore the link goes to Ronan O'Rahilly, and for his part Ian Cowper Ross was told to create a different chain in reverse which seemed to put Liam O'Mahoney in charge, with Johnny Meadows acting as his lap-dog who found a kid who father had money. Cementing all of that was the love life of Ian Cowper Ross and his girl friend and later wife, Bunty Lampson daughter of an aristocratic family and a sister who married into another aristocratic family, and it is from that link that more links lead to Denny Cordell.
But what of Ronan O'Rahilly himself?
Well, Ronan O'Rahilly had also invented a very convoluted and a very untruthful back story for himself involving a school for actors and management of a host of pop groups. In reality he had come to London in 1961 looking for investors for his father's business. He was Irish at a time when London landladies viewed the Irish on a low-level with Blacks and dogs, and he was broke having little money in his pocket. So he went to work for Peter Rachman who was part of London's criminal underworld dominated by the Kray Twins, but then Rachman died at the end of 1962, which was during the related Ward-Profumo-Keeler-Davies interlocking scandals with the All-Nighter Club and Georgie Fame.
Ronan O'Rahilly had then gone on the prowl looking for a new source of income.
THE 1990 EXPANSIVE REBIRTH OF A FABLE
Initially the part played by Ian Cowper Ross was coincidental and trivial.
In 1964, Ian Cowper Ross had a junior job with Stevens Press Ltd on Fetter Lane. They were the publishers of various periodicals which included a newsweekly, a travel magazine, and a fashion magazine called 'The Queen'. Ian Cowper Ross worked in the Stevens' Advertising Department whose boss was Frederick W. Pemberton with connections stretching back to the Victorian Age.
Ian Cowper Ross was assigned to an activity within Stevens Press Advertising Press that had taken its first pointers from employees in the advertising department of Granada Television. Called 'Caroline Sales' it was merely a name and not a registered company which had a mail drop address on London's Regent Street. It appears from Ian Cowper Ross' own admission that the only connection he had to advertising on Radio Caroline was a voice over assignment for the Duke of Bedford and Woburn Abbey.
However, the programming side of Radio Caroline under the original Pye Plan which lasted from late 1963 to October 15, 1964, was assigned to Ross Radio Productions Ltd., and their use of a well-known studio in Hampstead where they had recorded Pye shows heard on Radio Luxembourg. It is where Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd, renamed Simon Dee, was sent for his initial audition.
BEGINNING OF AN INVESTIGATION
It was not until 1990 when Ian Cowper Ross was in one of his 'bust' cycles upon his return to England from California, that with the help of his wealthy and aristocratic mother-in-law, he decided to reinvent himself as the co-founder who put 'Radio Caroline' on the air with Ronan O'Rahilly. But since the money to the station had come by way of his family, he deserved most of the credit, and that idea formed the basis for the 1990 novel by Ian Cowper Ross.
In order to understand why the fake narrative of the Radio Caroline story has reemerged from the shadows in 2021, it is necessary to know about the results of an investigation into the accepted storyline of Radio Caroline. Suspicions were aroused not only by the manner in which Ian Cowper Ross implied on camera that parts of his 1990 novel were events take from his own life, but in 2002 a book was published by the prestigious Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), as part of their Technology Series, which seemed to contract everything that been claimed by Ian Cowper Ross and Ronan O'Rahilly.
However, it was not until 2014 that this book came to the attention of the research team responsible for this critical analysis, and it was a solitary paragraph on page 276 that caused doubts about the veracity of the story told by Ian Cowper Ross.
The title of the IEE book is: 'Radio Man: The remarkable rise and fall of C.O. Stanley.' This volume was commissioned by the grandson of Charles Orr Stanley, but it was and primarily authored by Mark Frankland who had read history at both Cambridge University in England, and Brown University in the USA, and then worked as a journalist for the 'The Observer' newspaper, and twice won the British Press Awards for foreign reporting. He was assisted in writing the book by technical advisor Gordon Bussey.
After the Pye Group of companies ran into major financial difficulties in the latter part of the 1960s, most of it was subsequently absorbed by Phillips. Because the official company records were no longer available, the IEE book set out to establish an overview of Pye achievements and explain the reasons for its downfall. But one paragraph on page 276 referred to a "top secret project" by Charles and his son John, that no one outside of the Pye boardroom were aware of for many years. That top secret project referred to the creation of Radio Caroline.
Because the statement in print on page 276 did not make literal or factual sense due to the way in which it had been written, a major investigation was undertaken to find the original sourced documentation that Franklin and Bussey had used as the basis for their own text of page 276 in 'Radio Man'.
The grandson of Charles Orr Stanley was questioned repeatedly, and his response was that he could not recall who supplied the original information. Eventually he explained that all foundational notes had been given to a branch of Science Museum at Bradford in England. But enquiries to that Museum were rebuffed, and it took the threat of legal action and press exposure to get them released for inspection.
When they were made available it was discovered that no attempt had been made to sort them and create files for further study, and therefore, in some instances, boxes dispatched to the Museum after Frankland and Busey had finished with them, were now gathering mould and could not be released by the Museum for research purposes due to health and safety regulations. Fortunately the 'smoking gun' was discovered. It was the original source of notes from an interview conducted with Alan Bednall by the grandson of Charles Orr Stanley. Why the grandson did not want to assist in the recovery of the original texts remains as much of a mystery as to the reason why the grandson did not admit that he was the person who had interviewed Alan Bednall for the book, or why Frankland appears to have totally misquoted what he said in that interview.
The book claimed that John Stanley and Alan Bednall had created a 'fictitious company', but that was untrue. There was a real company. Pye did not 'manufacture equipment' for Radio Caroline, which is what the book implies, it supplied the equipment, and those products were identified by their American brand names. It was only later that further research discovered that Pye had formed a UK subsidiary of a subsidiary with the American manufacturer of the equipment, and that Pye was the majority shareholder in the British subsidiary.
While secrecy made sense when Pye was an operational entity, it now makes no sense at all.
Or does it?
THE COVER-UP BEGAN ANEW
In 2021, the same year that the team of investigators first began to expose the hidden story behind the 'Radio Man' version of events relating to the start of Radio Caroline, Liberty Ross published the book we are now reviewing. Just as Ian Cowper Ross has from time-to-time needed to reinvent himself by using his fake story of Radio Caroline, the need arose for his daughter Liberty to reinvent her own life following a 2014 rather messy public divorce.
In 2016, Liberty Ross remarried, this time to a billionaire, and with his help asking the questions of Liberty's father Ian Cowper Ross, this 2021 publication was the result. That is the same year in which we originally exposed the false narrative in 'Radio Man', after we had found the original Alan Bednall interview.
Now it seems that the Liberty Ross rendition of the bogus story repeatedly told by Ian Cowper Ross, is threatened as being a totally false narrative if our own limited circulation monograph is turned into a mass media broadcasting and publishing exposure story. Not only is the credibility of Ian Cowper Ross at stake, but so is the credibility of his daughter and her husband. Add to that not just the special interest publications by Ray Clark, but the 'Arena' documentary series on BBC television and all of the many articles, books and both radio and television programs that have followed, all championing the same fake storyline. Academics who failed to do due diligence in their studies, should also be thrown on to the fire of scorn.
IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE MUSIC
Although misdirection began with the 1990 Ian Cowper Ross storyline, and brought back into focus by Ray Clark in 2014, republished by Ray Clark in 2019 and again in 2024, which was promoted by him holding up his book to the camera and shown during a May 14, 2024 as a feature on a U.S. ABC-TV newscast, when he stated:
"Back in the Sixties the kids in America had a wealth of radio stations to listen to. Here in the U.K. we had 1, the BBC, and they hadn't discovered the Beatles. We needed Radio Caroline from a ship 3 miles off the coast to hear that pop music that we craved for."
But like everything else that Ray Clark has claimed, his statement about the Beatles is totally untrue. On Friday, November 1, 1963, the Beatles appeared at the Odeon Cinema in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire to open their 4th British tour. "The following day a report in the Daily Mirror newspaper carried the headline: 'Beatlemania! It's happening everywhere... even in sedate Cheltenham.' This is believed to be the first use of the word in print; by the end of the year [1963] it would be widely used." (The Beatles Bible, Online.)
The reason why they were so popular the year before Radio Caroline first came on the air, is because among the many television and radio shows in Britain that were exploiting their music and popularity, was the BBC Light Programme which first aired recordings of the Beatles on March 7, 1962 at 5pm on a show called March 7, 1962 on 'Teenager's Turn - Here We Go' . That was a full two years before Radio Caroline emitted its first sound'. The following year on June 4, 1963, at 5pm, the Beatles began their own BBC radio show called 'Pop Go the Beatles'.
The fact of the matter is that Ray Clark is expanding the scope of the Ian Cowper Ross lie. Credit for promoting British pop music on the British airwaves belongs to Joe Meek, whose 1962 recording of 'Telstar' made him well known. Before that in 1960, Meek had his own record label and promotional show heard on Radio Luxembourg, which of course was a year before Ronan O'Rahilly first arrived in London from Dublin, and 3 years before Ronan O'Rahilly began to falsely claim that he could not get a record cut and then broadcast, when Georgie Fame already had a contract with EMI who had already issued his first LP.
The lies being told about British electronic media are incredible, mainly because no one seems to be authenticating the claims being made, before they are exposed to mass audiences in print and over the air.
Then there is the forgotten British doyen of pop television broadcasting named Jack Good. His work first aired on BBC-TV in 1959, before becoming a major series on U.K. ITA-ABC franchise, and then hired away in 1964 to create a similar sort of show named 'Shindig!' that was aired on the U.S. ABC-TV network. In other words, it was not just British music that 'invaded' the American airwaves, it was British production as well.
"FREE RADO"
But here is Ray Clark in 2024 on the U.S. ABC-TV network telling Americans a huge lie so that at the end of his interview he could hold up his ridiculous book that is founded upon the original lie spun by Ian Cowper Ross.
So if it wasn't about the music per se, then what was the fuss about concerning British offshore radio in the Sixties? The answer came from a car dealer in Eastland, Texas when he brought an American free radio station to the British Isle onboard a former U.S. minesweeper. That was at the end of 1964, be.
What Don Pierson delivered was a cloned version of an American free radio station which offered freedom of speech and expression, an via the purchase of airtime. That is something that the BBC had always censored.
To comprehend why freedom of speech and expression has always been a subject censored by the British Crown, it is only necessary to ask what happened in 1651 at the 'Onfall of Alyth', and the opposition retaliation in 1660 with its 'Act of Oblivion', not to get a sensible answer, but to get a puzzled look.
Then jump ahead in time to 1924, and here is John Reith, Managing Director of a British-American commercial broadcasting cartel called the British Broadcasting Company Ltd., publishing his memoirs, a mere two years into his job. This is part of what he wrote in his book called 'Broadcast Over Britain':
"As we conceive it, our responsibility is to carry into the greatest possible number of homes everything that is best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement, and to avoid the things which are, or may be, hurtful. It is occasionally indicated to us that we are apparently setting out to give the public what we think they need - and not what they want, but few know what they want, and very few what they need."
The original BBC cartel and its replacement British Broadcasting Corporation were both licensed by the British Crown Post Office. It had control of all mass communications in the British Isles, dating back to the events of 1660, when a military operation overthrew the existing united republic of England, Scotland and Ireland and put in their place three new kingdoms. The administration of censorship was assigned to the British Post Office. But today, very few people even know the name 'Onfall of Alyth', and even less in number will be able to explain what happened.
The same is true of the events of 1660, and so when the British Post Office put John Reith in charge of British broadcasting, it was not the musical content that worried him in serving his Masters, it was the idea of freedom of speech and expression becoming available to everyone via broadcasting. Now move ahead to 2024 and Ray Clark on ABC-TV in the USA. What he told the American audience was a lie. But this raises the question of whether Ray Clark knew it was a lie, because for some reason he thinks that playing recorded music is the same as delivering a political or religious monologue.
That was the difference between Radio Caroline originally launched by Charles Orr Stanley of the Pye Group and Don Pierson's 'Radio London' offshore station. Stanley merely wanted to create a consumer demand by demonstrating that one existed which would in turn stimulate sales of transmitters and receivers. Don Pierson fell for the Ronan O'Rahilly mythology and misunderstood why Radio Caroline had been created.
THE PALIMPSEST HOAX
The story originally spun in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly, embellished with modifications by Ian Cowper Ross in 1990, and repromoted in 2014 by Ray Clark. That fake storyline is a continuous string of nonsense which has been superimposed upon the real story.
It is a palimpsest hoax.