A woman insisted she spotted her dead husband in a promotional video for a popular restaurant – but the mystery appears to have been solved after a man came forward claiming the footage was, in fact, him. Lucy Watson had alleged a diner in a new ad for a Hampshire curry house was her late husband Harry – but her claim has now been disputed.
Alan Harding, 67, says it was him tucking into a chicken korma and not the late husband a widow claimed it was.
Alan, a retired IT manager from nearby Emsworth, had no clue about the ghost diner mystery until a friend rang up and said the man looked a bit like him.
He told MailOnline he remembered staff filming the clip on January 13, adding: “[I] of course recognised myself and my friend Kevin Parsons.
“It is all quite funny, but I am definitely very much alive.”
The video shows the Indian restaurant full of diners who give the waiting staff a round of applause at the end of the clip.
But in her comments, Lucy insisted she “recognised the blue sweatshirt he was wearing and he is sitting there with his son Alex”.
The 59-year-old’s late husband Harry Doherty – an award-winning journalist – last visited the curry house on New Year’s Eve in 2013, before he passed away in April 2014 aged 61.
Lucy’s comments sparked a row with the restaurant, with owner Azizur Rahman later telling The Sun Online the widow was completely wrong.
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The owner added: “I don’t know why she thinks she saw her husband in the video, it was taken the other day by me and my cousin.”
But despite this new evidence, the widow stands by her comments. She said: “It’s definitely some kind of montage – the people at some of the tables change. I’m 99.5 per cent sure it’s him and his son Alex. There’s no way you’d get two doppelgangers like that.”
The claims forced Alex, a former British world duathlon champion, to come forward and blast his step-mum’s claims as untrue.
Noting he hasn’t spoken to Lucy in years, Alex added: “It’s not him and it’s not me. Anyone who knew my dad would know that straight away.”
