This article was published in the daily newspaper The Daily Post, Liverpool, U-K., January 25, 1965.
Liverpool's great Leprechaun Mystery has been solved. It was only nine months ago that reports of "little people" started pouring in. They were seen in parks and playing fields around Liverpool. Scores of children scoured the parks, invaded bowling greens and hunted among shrubberies in an effort to catch a glimpse of the little men from Ireland. At the time no one knew how the leprechaun mystery started.
But the man who thinks he might have the answer to the whole business is the man from Knotty Ash Towers - Ken Dodd. "Just before all these rumours started, I did an item on television. We used a special technique by which the cameras were able to 'diddify' people. It was rather like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. We arranged everything so that television commentator Bill Grundy was reduced to about four inches on the screen and I described him as a diddy man from Ireland - a leprechaun. Immediately afterwards, there were all sorts of stories about leprechauns being sighted by people all over the place. Children were running around the parks and gardens looking for the little men," says Ken.
