After an investigation by Chloe Hadjimatheou, a reporter from The Observer, it seems that the bestselling work The Salt Path may have been sprinkled with a little fairy dust.

In fact, the author and her husband could qualify as what Clint Eastwood might have a called a pair of 'salty dudes' - although there is no question that they have ever been involved in robbing a Cost Plus store in San Franscisco.

[https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-real-salt-path-how-the-couple-behind-a-bestseller-left-a-trail-of-debt-and-deceit]

If what The Observer claims is true, and naturally this is all now subject to legal shenanigans, then once again the value of the term 'due diligence' is called into question.

On the evidence of The Observer story, both Penguin Books, the book's publisher, and Number 9 Films, the film's producer, seem to have done very little in the way of due diligence to verify the accuracy of the author's account about how the couple became homeless and forced to embark on their coast path trek.

But does it matter?

Lots of people obviously loved the book and will take some comfort from the story and its subsequent conversion into a film that one IMDB commentator described as:

Tragic, dramatic but heartwarming this is not a movie of sensations but it is gritty realism. 

So even if this is yet another example of fake news, and maybe even a rather grubby tale of theft and unpaid loans, all this proves is that people are clearly desperate for heartwarming stories - fake or not - and what does that tell us about ourselves and the world we live in?

How many of us already walk the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire?

Or is it the case that, as Erica Wagner argues:

When our sympathy is sought, we deserve the truth. Stories of survival that claim to be true and play on our desire to have faith, bear a weight of responsibility to the reader that should not lightly be betrayed.

[https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/did-the-salt-path-con-us-memoirs-that-stir-our-emotions-and-seek-our-sympathy-should-tell-the-truth]