This story helps illustrate the fanaticism of the press in the nineteen-eighties.
While I was still the director of the Loch Ness Centre, we had a visit from the Good Morning America team of which Ronnie Reagan Junior was a member.
As part of the assistance the Centre was providing I had agreed to attempt to keep the press away from him as, from past experience, he had had serious problems carrying out his work because of intrusion by the media wanting to interview him about his father who was still president of the USA at the time.
On the first day of their visit, I was standing in the middle of the entrance to the Centre's busy car park talking to some of the Good Morning America team when a car arrived bristling with local press including photographers and journalists, all of whom I recognised instantly.
Squealing to a halt beside us, the window of the car came down and Jim Love, later editor of the Inverness Courier, said, "Tony, where are they?"
"Who?" I asked innocently while bending down, leaning into the car window and trying to think what to do.
"Reagan and the TV crew," said Jim.
"Oh, I think they've gone to Aberdeen," I replied.
"Oh no. When did they go and what were they driving?" asked Jim also expressing a few colourful words of mild disappointment.
"I don't know, perhaps twenty minutes ago in a maroon Sierra estate car," I said quick as a flash, trusting that the lie was justified in the circumstances.
"Thanks, Tony," said Jim and the car spun around and shot off in the Aberdeen direction.
The tall dark haired man standing beside me in the car park during all of this looked down at me and said, "I don't believe you pulled that off."
"All in a day's work Mr Reagan," I laughed, and we walked off for a cup of coffee in the Drumnadrochit Hotel.
It's a long time ago and I hope my friends in the press forgive me. I'd employed an old magician's trick ... by bending down to their level and keeping their gaze on me as I leaned into the car, they never even saw Ronnie Reagan, all six feet two inches of him and easily recognisable, standing right beside me.
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(C) 2018 Tony Harmsworth
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Loch Ness Monster Explained
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