Local Papers victims of Spanner PR stunt

downthetubes has learnt that our story posted yesterday about a missing Dick Spanner puppet is pure hokum contrived by the PR company promoting the release of the new DVD - and many local papers across the country have been victims of it.

Chris Bentley of Fanderson told fans yesterday that he has spoken to Gerry Anderson about the reports and apeal for the return of the missing puppet published in many local papers "and it turns out it's all a lot of nonsense intended to promote the Dick Spanner DVD.

"Ben Titchmarsh [of Quite Great Publicity] is not Gerry's publicist at all," Chris reports. "He's a publicist for the DVD company - and was not speaking on Gerry's behalf in those articles. In fact, until I asked him about it, Gerry didn't know what this guy has been telling the newspapers and it certainly wasn't done with his permission.

"The truth is that Gerry doesn't have a large collection of puppets at home, or any collection at all come to that," Chris reveals. "He has a couple of the busts that were sculpted for New Captain Scarlet but that's all. Nor is he looking for the original Dick Spanner and is more than happy for whoever might have it to keep it, if it even still exists."

Apparently, the "Clive" person who allegedly owned the puppet is a figment of Mr Titchmarsh's imagination too.

Fans of Gerry Anderson are likely to be considerably aggrieved by this hoax, so you may want to mail Mr Titchmarsh (nfo@quitegreat.co.uk) and tell him what you think of his "PR".

I imagine many local newspapers won't be very happy at being taken in, either, which will perhaps make it all the more difficult for genuine appeals of this nature to get coverage in future (although given the content of most local newspapers these days, if ours are anything to go by, I doubt it!)