Chinese Whispers - 16/08/2002

Yesterday I received a telephone call from a journalist in Lima, he asked me about my father and did I have any news? I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, so he then explained that it had been reported my father had been involved a kidnap attempt! This was news to me and you can imagine how I felt. I then rang home just to check everything was alright – it was. I then went on the internet and saw that there were a number of stories about my father escaping an abduction.

Eventually I found out that this story had grown out of an incident that occurred four or five weeks ago. My father’s car had been broken into and as a result, the story seems to have developed from something minor to something massive! I’ve just found out that a friend of a friend of my father’s knew a guy who worked for a newspaper, somehow things were blown out of all proportion! I suppose this is just part and parcel of public life, but it wasn’t something I would like repeating!

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