Thread 10: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
2nd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found
3rd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video
4th Observer ‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
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New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer

To all - No saltiness. Keep to the path. Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for nine very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

Keep calm and eat fudge.

Thank you

Yes, please

Someone said on one of the previous threads that they’d been asked for proof of diagnosis before applying for help from a charity devoted a specific condition.

But if you weren’t asking for financial or support help, but were all about raising awareness of the condition and/or fundraising, that might not be the same.

It shouldn't be me. I had a uni job serving in a restaurant and didn't know how to use the coffee machine. I attempted to froth a cappuccino for some painful amount of time. Afterwards my manager came up and said crossly: "I've watched you trying to do that for 3 minutes." It always baffled me why he didn't come up and give some on the spot training, instead of managing in a strictly observatory capacity.

Unless, obviously, there’s a whole other story yet to emerge where the Walkers are hardened drug kingpins who go on the run from a rival gang with their tent, under cover as harmless backpackers. Rebrand as The Snow Path, with Simon Armitage carrying a concealed weapon and bodyguards disguised as poetry fans.

I wasn't replying with reference to you. A PP earlier today mentioned that publishing houses run DBS checks on authors. Had not noticed you have also referred to these checks. So no need to get in a froth!

Just popping on here to endorse the quarries, beaches*, cliffs, historic buildings and pubs of the Isle of Portland as an amazing place to visit.

*Beaches are few, small, (barring chesil bank which starts there) but perfectly stunning.

Magical place. Very much still a working area, but also 😍😍.

How do we know they are fake for certain?

Yes- also the Anthony Godby Johnson hoax, another miraculous/improbable triumph over a usually fatal illness.

abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2784838&page=1

I’d say it’s still fairly rare.

There must be hundreds of memoirs published worldwide every year - of those, let’s say perhaps fifty or so are very widely read and become publishing phenomena. Out of those, probably less than a hundred altogether have been proved to be fake or significantly embellished.

Whilst some embellishment is perhaps to be expected and allowed for, I’m sure there’s a line beyond which a memoir can’t reasonably be called that anymore. I think fabricating the key event of the memoir is fairly significant embellishment and justifies marketing it as fiction rather than a memoir.

The extent of the fabrication can be tricky to judge, of course, and sometimes it may never be found out, but I think the digital world we live in now makes it easier to sniff out and investigate non-genuine memoirs marketing themselves as such.

Because Tim Scott is the Director on the Gangani website and Tim Walker is the Director on Companies House.

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120703185144/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/pages/about-us" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20120703185144/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/pages/about-us

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07999809/officers

However I'd add that with all of this it's hard to say if any of our sleuthing is for certain.

Ugh how depressing

Last night, on recommendation of a PP in a very early thread, I finally watched The Puppet Master, a Netflix documentary about Robert Hendy-Freegard. I'd highly recommend it, though I think the second part of its title, Hunting the Ultimate Conman, is a shame as that lends glamour or prestige to a really awful human behaviour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RobertHendy-Freegard

It's extremely interesting that he conned several long-term partners into supporting him in ruses, sometimes for as long as 10 years. I do still mainly think Raymoth are partners in crime, but her breathless delivery and high tension throughout, plus being highly in thrall of partner, does strike me as characteristic of someone who's being coerced. At the least she is not comfortable in the role of conperson, who usually come across as very slick and charismatic (like Moth). Unless it's all part of the shhhhtick!

ETA: typo edit!

Better not break the news that we are now on thread 10!

True

Nothing is certain...not even Simon Armitage.

We may need an indignant froth correspondent.

WHAT?? Then who have I got in my cupboard under the stairs??!

Abandoned cats correspondent signing in.

Could be Moth Winn? Good place to lie low.

@DisappointedReader OP please can I suggest a sin bin for the posters who step massively out of line. And I'd like to nominate @Vroomfondleswaistcoat for it.

"Sellotaping Simon's head back on as we speak. He got damp, but I thought he'd appreciate the sound of raindrops pattering down around his cardboard essence."*

This is not how one treats a poet laureate!

Just came across this article, which I think is worth reading, about James Frey of A Million Little Pieces fame - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/sep/15/usa.world.

This bit of the article stood out for me in particular:

To many, Frey and his novel were a big deal. Not just because he sold millions of books and was wept over by Oprah Winfrey, but because his was a tale of triumph over adversity, and it gave people hope. Frey still insists that the bulk of his book is true. His addiction is unquestioned. The root-canal surgery, queried by dental experts, is "true to my memory ... My memory is still what I wrote."

I think the triumph-over-adversity element will always be a bankable USP for memoir, but as with Frey’s memoir, this has come under scrutiny in TSP. The TSP revelations suggest so far that a large amount of the Walkers’ adversity was of their own making, and it’s much harder - if not impossible - to be sympathetic to that than adversity brought about by events out of our control.

Oh bloody hell, I was at least hoping for Martin Kemp 🤦. Mind you I did wonder where all my Fudge bars keep disappearing to.

I has been reported that Timoths parents moved to Gwynedd ,can anyone substantiate this. I don't have a subscription to Genes Reunited, can only do basic searches.

Ooh, me. My latte art never got to terribly high standards but I could froth like a boss.

I doubt very much if they do a DBS check - why would they? It matters not a jot to publishers whether their authors have a criminal record or not. And as for fake names - publishers need to have your real name if you write under a pen name. You get paid into your bank account and I presume that even RaySal didn't go to the extent of getting a bank account set up in a fake name - because that's almost impossible these days.