Curry house at centre of saga say they know identity of mystery man in promo – after widow claimed it’s her dead husband
THE manager of a curry house at the centre of a social media mystery has rejected a woman’s claims that her dead husband featured in their new promo video.
Azizur Rahman tonight insisted that Lucy Watson is mistaken in her belief that her late husband Harry Doherty appeared in the new video posted on Facebook.
Ms Watson is adamant she saw her late husband tucking into a meal with his son in the clip posted by Spice Cottage restaurant, near her home in Emsworth, West Sussex, and says it must be an old clip.
The 59-year-old’s late husband Mr 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, from Emsworth, Hampshire, stumbled across the video and immediately recognised two men sitting at one of the tables as Harry and his son Alex.
In shock, she played the clip some 30 times before concluding it must be them as her late husband was a “distinctive man” with white hair and glasses, and he was wearing a familiar-looking blue sweatshirt.
“I knew it was him, it was just a gut reaction,” she said.
“The moment I saw it I knew it was Harry; he has the same build, same glasses and the way he sits is the same.
“I wasn’t upset by it, I just didn’t understand it.”
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But tonight, Spice Cottage manager Mr Rahman said the video was filmed on January 13 this year and the man in the video is a regular – not Mr Doherty.
Mr Rahman said: “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.
“We filmed it on Friday the 13th of January this year. I saw the man she thinks is her husband come in to the restaurant, he was in his 40s or 50s.
“I don’t know his name but he comes in every two months or so. I think he was with his friend, not with a son.
“Most of our customers are regulars here. We filmed the video across two sittings, which is why the video jumps, and we had a big group in for the second one.
“We always upload videos to our Facebook every month or on special occasions.
“We took our old tables outside on the day of the video and had new ceiling lights installed during a Covid refurbishment which you can see in the video.
“[Ms Watson] said it is always quiet when she comes here, but we are always busy, and I have never seen her in here.”
The video shows the Indian restaurant full of diners who give the waiting staff a round of applause at the end of the clip.
Having watched the footage ’30 times’ to check she was really looking at her late husband and his son, Ms Watson commented below the video on Facebook to ask the restaurant when the video was filmed.
The restaurant replied to her claiming that the footage was captured “last week”.
Ms Watson said the video was clearly a “hash of old footage”, which could not have been filmed recently.
She was left “bemused” by the large social media response to the saga, but did admit that some of the Facebook comments were “very funny”.
Today Ms Watson said: “It’s definitely some kind of montage – the people at some of the tables change.
“There’s a woman in a checked dress who disappears halfway through the video.
“They must have just done a hash of old footage. It’s not the same thing all the way through, any idiot can see that.
“Harry last went to the restaurant with his son Alex at New Years Eve in 2013.
“When I saw him on Facebook I knew it was him, it was just a gut reaction.
“The moment I saw it I knew it was Harry, he has the same build, same glasses and the way he sits is the same.
“I wasn’t upset by it, I just didn’t understand it. I’m not claiming he’s still alive, I was there when he died in 2014.
“He looked very different in the months before he died, so it must have been filmed some time before that, possibly New Year’s Eve 2013.
“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.
“I’ve not been in contact with Harry’s son Alex since he died, but I can tell it’s him in the video as well.
“Harry would have been in fits of laughter about this whole thing.”