Dave, first of all, congratulations. Are you surprised as I was gobsmacked?

That only two newspapers in this country, the Sun and the Mail, and nobody else so far has picked up on what is for you and the world, I think, a pretty damn big story.

No, it doesn't surprise me at all actually because since leaving journalism, I just can't believe how long it takes some media organizations to pick up on this kind of story.

I can't completely understand why. It's just that there's so few journalists left.

The newspaper I used to work out had over 100 members of staff when I was there in the mid-90s and now it stands unless you can count them on your hand.

I think it's simply that they have a far easier.

It's far easier just to copy stuff that's coming through on Twitter and I actually do any proper journalism and ask any questions like I'm able to do because I do it in a sort of freelance capacity.

And you can give it the time. Last time I did a conversation about this case which was about four months ago. I remember ending it ironically enough with the words, somebody must be sitting on this picture somewhere.

You can't tell me that somebody doesn't have a copy of this. You found the picture and the person. How?

By old fashioned shoe leather footing door journalism, the sort of thing that I was taught as a trainee in the 1980s, you sort of, you're like a dog with a bone. If like you just said Howard, you know that someone must be sitting on that photograph, then what's the best way to find it?

Is it to sort of go online and spend all day on Twitter or is it actually to drive to Scotland, knock on doors, speak to people, real human beings.

And eventually you will hit pay dirt and that's why I did the former M O D employee who had this picture was told don't worry about it London will deal with this that is after the negatives of the picture disappeared following them being handed over to the daily record newspaper and you know the trail goes cold after that.

So he was told London will deal with this now he's 83 and he's decided whatever the consequences, which I'm sure there won't be any he wants to come forward and talk about it.

Well, he was happy to talk to me about it. He doesn't want to talk to anyone else because he wants the whole thing to go away, but he is after all these years, he is keen as I am for the truth to come out.

Well, whatever that truth is, I mean in his words are, you know, the photograph is shows it's either an exceptionally good hoax or it's the real thing.

I'm not sure what he means by the real thing, but I agree with him.

If it is a hoax, then those two chefs who took the photograph have fooled the RAS finest, you know, directly the best in the business apparently the photo analyst is they fooled them, they fooled the M O D and to me as a journalist.

That's as good a story as it being, you know, aliens or secret aircraft, you know, to me, it's the story that's important, not whether it's true or false, you know, genuine or not, etc, etc.

And people's reactions to the story.

The M O D wasn't going to release this picture, was it for another 50 years, certainly for an period of decades?

Well, that's not exactly true because there's a lot of false information going around on the internet about this because yeah, they obviously had the photographs and the negatives.

What became of them, they say that they returned them to the day the record.

...