THE mystery surrounding a video that purportedly showed a "ghost diner" chowing down on a curry has been solved.
Alan Harding, 67, says it was him tucking into a chicken korma and not the late husband a widow claimed it was.
Lucy Watson sent the internet into a frenzy when she alleged an elderly diner in a new ad for a Hampshire curry house was her eight-year-dead Harry.
The Facebook comment under the video from Spice Cottage, in Westbourne, also alleged a man opposite was her stepson Alex.
Alan, a retired IT manager from nearby Emsworth, had no clue about the ghost diner mystery until a pal rang up and said the man looked a bit like him.
He told MailOnline he remembered staff filming the clip on January 13, adding: "[I] of course recognized myself and my friend Kevin Parsons.
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"It is all quite funny, but I am definitely very much alive."
The revelation is the final nail in the coffin of a mystery that gripped fans from as far as the tiny Pacific island of Tahiti.
The video shows the Indian restaurant full of diners who give the waiting staff a round of applause at the end of the clip.
But in her comments, Lucy insisted she "recognized the blue sweatshirt he was wearing and he is sitting there with his son Alex".
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The 59-year-old's late husband Harry 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's comments sparked a row with the restaurant, with owner Azizur Rahman later telling The Sun Online the widow was completely wrong.
The spice specialist added: "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."
Despite her claims being rubbished, the widow still insisted: "It's definitely some kind of montage – the people at some of the tables change.
"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."
The comments forced Alex, a former British world duathlon champion, to come forward and blast his step-mum's claims as untrue.
Noting he hasn't spoken to Lucy in years, Alex added: "It's not him and it's not me. Anyone who knew my dad would know that straight away."
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