Read the article. Before reading look at the words in the box and try to predict what the story would be about.

Seven sentences have been removed from the article. Put sentences A-H into the correct places in gaps 1-7. There is one extra sentence which you needn’t use.

A. Of course, I’m uncomfortable with discussing what you call betrayal.

B. After reading the manuscript and cross-examining Irving about his meeting with the billionaire, McCulloch became convinced that Irving was telling the truth, and that the telephone call he had received from Hughes was a fake.

C. His wife, Edith, received a two-year jail sentence in Switzerland, although most of the sentence was suspended and she served only two months.

D. He was a successful author with a three-book contract; he owned a lovely Ibiza farmhouse and his own boat.

E.Speaking on the telephone from his Bahamian hotel he held a bizarre television press conference, in which seven reporters sat around a table addressing questions to a voice coming from a speaker on a stand.

F. I couldn’t believe it when McCulloch betrayed me by telling Hughes what I’d done.

G. Especially, if you still have the money to give back, as we did,

H. Swiss authorities had been making investigation into Geneva bank account of ‘HR Hughes”, establishing that it was actually Irving’s wife who was depositing the cheques and withdrawing the money.

You couldn’t make it up

Clifford Irving was already a successful author, when in 1971 he hit upon the idea of faking the autobiography of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes – a man, who had not been seen in public, or broken silence for almost 15 years.

With forged letters and false promise, Irving convinced his publishers that Hughes had appointed him his biographer. He received cheques made out to Hughes for around $750,000, which Irving’s wife – carefully disguised in wigs and dark glasses – deposited in Swiss bank account. Irving now says it was never about the money. His life was good (1) ____ What he was in search of was not a good life but ‘an adventure’.

Nor, he says, did he grasp that he would be committing a crime. ‘We thought it was just a hoax. They can’t put you in jail for hoax (2) ___

‘He pauses. It just seemed like such an elegant act and also an act from which I thought I could withdraw at any time I wanted.’ That, he acknowledged with a rueful smile, was ’the great fallacy’.

What is most astonishing, perhaps, is how Irving managed to convince so many people for so long that he Hughes ‘autobiography’ was genuine. As news of its impending publication began to leak out, Franc McCulloch, a Time-Life journalist, who had been the last person to interview Hughes 14 years earlier, received a telephone call from a man purporting to be Hughes, stating that they had not cooperated with Irving in any way (3) ___ . In fact, the call was genuine.

On January 7, 1972, just before scheduled publication, Hughes finally broke cover. (4) ___ Hughes said he had never met Irving calling his autobiography ‘totally fantastic fiction’.

The net was drawing tighter. (5) _____ in the face of this clinching piece of evidence, Irving confessed to his lawyer; the whole thing was a hoax.

Did Irving feel any kind of remorse? Irving gives a deep sigh. ‘As the hoax unraveled, a number of people said to me, “How could you lie to me?” My answer was, “How could I tell you the truth? If you had known that the whole thing was made up you might have given it away. I couldn’t let you know.” (6) ___ But it was more than 35 years ago and I paid the price.’

In June 1972, Irving was sentenced to two and a half years imprisonment on charges of conspiracy to defraud, forgery, using the federal mail to defraud and perjury. (7) ____ I didn’t think of it as being punished. It was just happening,’ says Irving, but at the same time I never thought I didn’t deserve to be there.’[92]