Six months after Stanley Kubrick died, a 'world exclusive' was published - a supposed last interview on the set of Eyes Wide Shut. Odd, thought Anthony Frewin, the director's long-time friend: this didn't sound like Kubrick. Was it a fake? Who was the author? He turns detective and follows the trail of a thoroughly shady character

Adrian Rigelsford? Ever heard of him? Me neither, back then. Funny name, eh? Sounds like someone made it up. Sounds like a character from a British comedy film of the 1950s played, perhaps, by the surly and camp Harold Lang (you'd recognise him all right).

Stanley Kubrick, my boss, died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in Hertfordshire in March 1999 after completing the editing on what was his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. There was still much to do on the picture's post-production and this engaged us full time over the ensuing months.

All the while the press cuttings were mounting and mounting. Stanley subscribed to Durrants cutting service, and every day he would receive a thick envelope or two full of clips. He tended to throw these envelopes, unopened, into an R-Kive box and then once a month or so give the box to me with the instructions that I should go through them and show him anything noteworthy.

Easier said than done. Just opening the envelopes and unfolding the clippings took a good couple of hours while reading or scanning the clips was interminable. There were articles, but there was clutter, too. For example, if the Bolsover Advertiser mentioned a re-run of The Shining in its TV listings, we got a clipping. The Royston & Buntingford Mercury - ditto. In fact, we got a clipping from every newspaper that noted the re-run. Then there were the lengthy magazine pieces, an interview with an actor or a film director, say, and it was only 2,000 words into the thing that Stanley was mentioned, once, in passing. They all had to be read. How rewarding, then, to find a piece with Stanley mentioned in the title! That was meat.

Once viewed the clippings would be thrown into one of the all-purpose archive boxes Stanley had custom made. There were dozens and dozens of them on the industrial shelving that lined his offices and store rooms. "One day," said Stanley, "we better sort them ... when we've got time." But he knew there never would be time for that. Never.

After Stanley's death the volume of clippings doubled, and tripled, then quadrupled. There were obituaries, memorials, recollections, assessments and so on. These were too important merely to box, so I decided to file them in date order in Swedex four-prong binders (always a favourite with Stanley: "Those Swedes sure know how to make a functional, sexy binder!"). Even with the help of Rachel, my assistant, we soon had a massive backlog of clippings waiting to be unfolded, read, punched and bound. I would come in at weekends and steadily work my way through them.

It was late on a Saturday in September, six months after Stanley had died and when the clippings were beginning to slow down, that I came across something that startled me. It didn't initially startle me. It startled me when I was reading the next clipping. A delayed startle. I returned to it.

The Durrants cover sheet to which it was attached stated: TV Times - 4 September 1999. The article was a two-page spread. In the centre was one of the photographs of the bespectacled and bearded Stanley that Christiane, his wife, had taken only a month or two before his death, while display type announced: World exclusive, Kubrick, The Last Interview. Beneath this, the text stated that Channel 4 would be profiling Stanley on the eve of the release of Eyes Wide Shut, that David Quinlan, the film editor of TV Times, was examining the man and his films and "Adrian Rigelsford and Kim Meffen, who visited Kubrick on set, uncover the truth in what turned out to be the last interview he ever gave".

The last interview he ever gave? Huh?

There was an introduction of a couple of hundred words by Quinlan, then the interview by Rigelsford and Meffen in Q&A format taking up a little over a page preceded by this: "Early 1997. Eyes Wide Shut is a couple of months into what would eventually become an epic filming schedule ... Notoriously reluctant to be interviewed, a good-humoured atmosphere prevails on the set and he [Kubrick] agrees to answer a few questions on the condition: 'They don't ask me to conceptualise about my films ...' "

What? I read it again. Had Stanley really been interviewed on set? This seemed doubtful, as the sets were always closed and a security guard or two was on sentinel duty at all times. Even Terry Semel and Bob Daly, the joint heads of Warner Bros who were financing and distributing the film, would have thought twice about visiting the set, and as for two unknown journalists? But, who knows, perhaps Stanley had done this as a special favour?

The only time he did give interviews was on the release of a film, and then reluctantly and only to one or two big name journalists or critics from magazines such as Time or Rolling Stone. Rigelsford and Meffen. Who were they? Were they big names? If so, where? I wasn't aware of them interviewing Stanley, but then I wasn't on set all the time and not everything passed through my office.

Then the Q&A interview itself. Half of it was, for want of a better word, banal. Some of it sounded like Stanley, but if indeed this was Stanley, he was firing on a single cylinder. I put the article to one side and carried on reading and filing the other clippings. When I got a moment I'd return to it.

Several weeks went by as more pressing work was dealt with. Every so often I'd glance at the interview. It puzzled and intrigued me. One morning in October a meeting was cancelled and I had a spare hour. I reread the article. Did this really happen? Mmmm. I'd phone a couple of people.

Julian Senior, the head of publicity at Warner Bros in London and a close associate of Stanley's, didn't know anything about it and laughed at the suggestion. Brian Cook, the film's assistant director and co-producer, who never left Stanley's side throughout the shooting, shook his head, "Not on my watch." Jan Harlan, our associate producer, also said no. Margaret Adams, the production supervisor who had worked for Stanley on and off since 1970, knew nothing about it either. I showed the interview to Christiane Kubrick and she agreed with me. It was unlikely. Very unlikely.

Another thing began to puzzle me. Why, if the interview was conducted at the beginning of 1997, did the interviewers wait more than two-and-a-half years to publish it - until six months after Stanley's death? It wasn't as if they had to have a "peg" (in this instance, his death) before someone accepted it for publication.

My doubts were increasing daily and I decided to speak to the TV Times. I could not prove it was a fraud. I could only suggest it was.

There was something about the two interviewers' names. Adrian Rigelsford. Adrian, for no good reason, I've always felt was a bit of a poser's name. And Rigelsford. What did this suggest? Somebody who wriggles? Kim Meffen. I couldn't get, as they say, a gender-fix on the first name. A girl or a bloke? And as for Meffen, what was this? It sounded like some long-forgotten agricultural implement or, perhaps, something to do with West Country folk dancing. In fact, as I later found out, it's a variant of the Scottish name, Methuen, from Methven in Perthshire.

So, who were these two?

I came across a book by Rigelsford in a second-hand bookstore in Rochester - Carry On Laughing: A Celebration, published by Virgin in 1996, a hastily put-together scrapbook of a volume with lots of illustrations. He had also written books on the TV series Blake's 7, Peter Sellers (another "celebration") and several on a series he claimed to be a world expert on, Dr Who. He inhabited that undergrowth of showbiz literature where fandom and cultists hang out.

I drew a blank on Meffen.

A few days later I phoned the TV Times and was put through to the editor, Peter Genower. I introduced myself and said that I worked for the Kubrick Estate.

"Yes?"

"It's about the interview with Stanley Kubrick that you published at the beginning of September."

"Uh-huh."

"Well, I think it's a fake. A fraud. I don't think it happened."

There was a long silence and then Genower said,"You realise you're impugning the integrity of a well respected magazine?"

Which hadn't occurred to me, but he was right. "I'm sure you published it in good faith, but I don't think it's kosher."

"We've published pieces by Adrian Rigelsford before."

"That may be. This just doesn't read right."

Another long silence followed by, "The interview was tape recorded."

The interview was tape recorded. Tape recorded ...

That was it. I was sunk. I'd convinced myself the piece was invention and here was the proof it wasn't. What folly! I didn't know what to say. I glanced at the opening of the interview:

Q: There are some rather strange legends circulating about you ...

A: You mean the eccentricity? That I'm a recluse? I've heard most of them.

Q: The latest?

A: Probably that I wear a parachute under my coat at all times (he laughs). It must go with the crash helmet that I wear whenever I'm out driving.

Q: There must be enough for a book of Urban Myths about Stanley Kubrick ...

A: My twin brother could write the foreword.

Q: Twin brother?

A: Exactly. Next question.

Q: Why don't you respond to weird stories circulating about you?

A: A response to one requires a response to all of them. I'm not on screen, but my films are, so they're what should be judged. You open yourself to suspicion and rumour the minute you allow people to see your work. It's the industry's mantrap that you can't avoid.

Q: Do you still keep animals?

A: Specifically?

Q: I've heard stories of cats ...

A: Well, yes, quite a few.

Q: Do they like The Simpsons as well?

A: (Pause) You've been doing your homework.

Q: There's another urban myth - it says you've had more than one business meeting in your study, clinching business deals, cleaning out litter trays with The Simpsons on in the background.

A: Fifth Amendment.

It sure didn't sound like Stanley. Those replies weren't the sort of replies he would give, but they had it on tape ...

If the interview was tape recorded, Rigelsford and Meffen presumably took the most "interesting" parts. What could be on the rest of the recording?

Then, eureka! I got it. I had the answer. Rigelsford and Meffen thought they were interviewing Stanley, but in fact they were interviewing Alan Conway, the bankrupt travel agent who went around London for years pretending to be Stanley. But hold on. On the set of Eyes Wide Shut? No, impossible. Not even Conway, an endlessly resourceful con artist, could have managed that. Then I heard myself, observed myself, saying something to Genower. "Yes, but have you heard the tape recording?" Where did that come from? Did I say that?

"No," was Genower's immediate reply, "but I shall be asking them to come in with it and I'll be in touch."

I was in limbo. What would happen next?

Genower contacted Rigelsford and an appointment was made. Rigelsford cancelled at the last moment and another appointment was made, which he also cancelled. Then Rigelsford claimed something had happened to the tape. Then another excuse. Genower had a showdown with him and realised he and the magazine had been conned. No interview had ever taken place.

Genower wrote an eloquent and gracious letter to Christiane apologising for printing the interview and a "correction" was published in a subsequent edition of the TV Times. Rigelsford would not be contributing to the magazine again.

I did some research into Rigelsford on the internet. There were postings in the Dr Who user groups dating from the early and mid-1990s following the publication of a couple of his books. He was described as "promising things and never delivering them", of having a penchant for "exaggeration". His "definitive" book on Dr Who managed to leave out a whole series. The errors and omissions, of which there were many, were gloatingly detailed.

But, more interestingly, many writers were questioning whether some of the numerous interviews he claimed to have conducted and printed ever really took place, and this was some five or six years before the Kubrick interview. For instance, a correspondent discussing William Hartnell, the very first Dr Who who died in 1975, wrote of one book, "I find all Hartnell quotes and other conveniently dead people highly suspect." So did a lot of other people. A fan inquires what else Rigelsford has written aside from the Dr Who books? Another fan replies, "He did an autobiography, Adrian Rigelsford: My Struggle With Lies. In the book Adrian details his life and interviews many people who have known him (including Elvis, Hitler and Larry Grayson)." Elsewhere, there were question marks hanging over supposedly "last" interviews in the Carry On book. Could it be that the fake Kubrick interview was not the first time that Rigelsford had exercised his imagination?

I guess the Dr Who fans picked up on the TV Times interview because from then on pot-shots at Rigelsford kept cropping up. A contributor says he was at a seance. Someone asks, "Was Adrian Rigelsford there conducting interviews for his next book?" There were others: "Use a ouija board or ask AR." "Death is sometimes not a barrier to being interviewed - ask AR." "Little hard to do interviews with the Great Beyond unless, of course, you're AR."

I tracked down Rigelsford to a rented flat on Holland Road in west London, down Shepherd's Bush way. He was long gone. All that remained were the rent arrears. He'd done a flit. No forwarding address. Nothing.

Did Rigelsford and Meffen really think they would get away with it? Well, obviously they did. Had Rigelsford gained confidence from similar earlier ventures?

Over the next few years I would occasionally do a search on the internet looking for Rigelsford and Meffen. Meffen never showed, but Rigelsford made frequent appearances in Dr Who and showbiz sites. He'd written an episode of Dr Who, The Roof Of The World, and an episode of a science fiction TV series called Space Island One. Then there was a book on the Hannibal Lecter movie. Finally Meffen makes an appearance, as co-author with Rigelsford of Trail Of The Pink Panther, that was announced but never seems to have been published.

Last year a lot of the film gossip sites announced a movie entitled Cabbages And Queens, "a backstage romp through the London theatre world with a jewel heist thrown in for good measure". Simon Callow, Joss Acland and Brian Blessed were scheduled to appear in it. The director was a John Henderson whose previous credits included TV programmes such as Sticky Moments with Julian Clary and The Borrowers. Shooting was scheduled to begin on June 30, 2003. Nothing happened. The film disappeared into development hell, or worse. Of the three producers one was none other than Rigelsford; he was also co-author of the script with a Kim Lamont. Was this our original Kim or another one? Did Rigelsford collect Kims?

A year or so went by and my interest in Rigelsford evaporated. Then a friend called me and said I should check him out again on the internet. He was in the news for a "tasty bit of thievery". He was?

I downloaded some 30-odd online newspaper reports and here's the story. In May 2003 Rigelsford appeared in court accused of stealing 56,000 photographs over an eight-year period from the Daily Mail/Associated Newspapers picture library in Kensington after being arrested at his then home in Brampton, a small village west of Huntingdon. Many of these photos were of great historic value. He was selling them on to memorabilia shops in the West End of London, and it was claimed he had netted some £75,000 from the venture. He was described as "one of Britain's foremost experts on Dr Who" (loud laughter from the chat rooms) and it was said he had appeared in two James Bond films (he had claimed this elsewhere, but his name appears on no cast list - if he was in them it was as an extra).

He was to have entered a plea to the charges but it was said he had had a stroke shortly after his arrest and thus the hearing was put back (someone posted a note on the net saying they had seen him in London, business as usual, certainly not looking like a stroke victim). At a hearing in June Rigelsford denied stealing the photographs and the trial date was set for September 2003, but this was further delayed and the trial didn't begin until May 2004. The buzz at court was that his barrister had urged him to plead guilty, but he wouldn't listen. One can see why. This way, even if he was found guilty, he could claim it was a frame-up, a miscarriage of justice. He was imaginative all right.

While Rigelsford stoutly denied "stealing" the photographs, he admitted selling them on. He said he had found them in a skip on the street outside the library and a security guard had told him it was OK to take them away. Well, that was what he told the court. He told one of the shop owners that they were found in a rented stable at Camden Lock, and another that they were in a sack thrown out by a cleaner (56,000 pics? A sack the size of the Ritz?).

The prosecution said he had sold 30,000 prints to one shop for around £60,000 and some 26,000 to another for £15,800.

How had this fruitful little scam been tumbled? Dave Sheppard, who runs the Daily Mail's picture library, received a call from a member of the public saying he had purchased some photographs from Cover Story, a shop in Leicester Square, that had Associated Newspapers' stamp on the back. Sheppard went to the shop and found two boxes of photographs from the library. He subsequently retrieved some 21,000 pictures.

The jury was unanimous in finding Rigelsford guilty and Judge Deva Pillay's comments were unsparing: "In my judgment you are a thief, a cheat and it seems to me, on the evidence I have heard, a man lacking courage." He added that Rigelsford had "cunningly, deliberately and systematically ingratiated himself with the library staff" in order to plunder the archive. In June 2004 Rigelsford was jailed for 18 months. The story made most of the national papers and popped up on the BBC News website, complete with a photo of Rigelsford, with beard and glasses, looking like an ageing cherub.

So, there we have it. Faking an interview with Stanley Kubrick and ripping off a picture library. Could these be considered two isolated incidents or were they indicative of an ongoing modus operandi?

I phoned Sheppard. An amiable Londoner with a youthful voice that belies his 57 years, he said Rigelsford first turned up at the picture library when he was working on a book by Brian Blessed some 12 years ago. He was a regular visitor over the years, very plausible and charming and ingratiated himself. He was considered totally trustworthy. Sheppard sees him now as a Walter Mitty character: if he wishes it to be true, it is true.

In his favour, he said Rigelsford had a tremendous working knowledge of film and television, and frequently identified people in photographs who had defeated everyone else. "There wasn't much he didn't know." Rigelsford also claimed to be an actor (James Bond again), but Sheppard now doubted that he was ever anything more than a "spear carrier". He sometimes arrived at the picture library with a girl in tow who claimed she had appeared in West End musicals. Her name? Kim Meffen.

Sheppard said that during the trial the court attempted to account for the money. Rigelsford claimed, among other things, to be paying off Kim's father's debts. The court rejected this.

I got an address for Meffen in Pembroke Street, off Caledonian Road, north of King's Cross, just down from where Katie Johnson's house was situated in The Ladykillers (a fact that wouldn't have been lost on Rigelsford). I wrote to her asking her to call me when she had a moment. She never did. I wanted someone to speak for Rigelsford. I was curious as to whether she was a willing accomplice, innocent dupe, reluctant co-conspirator, or whatever. A few weeks later I was in the area and looked her up. The address was part of the Bemerton Estate, a vast high-rise gulag of a development built by Islington council in the late 1960s. She had gone. The woman who answered the entry-phone had never heard of her. A guy with a ponytail and a dog said people come and go all the time on the estate.

Richard Bentine, the son of Michael Bentine, one of the original Goons, employed Rigelsford for a few months doing research for his company, Classic Comedy Group. He described him as rather pasty looking and always nervous but with a superb knowledge of film and television. He was surprised to read about the court case, but not that surprised.

Bentine said he was an observer on the pre-production development of the film Cabbages And Queens. Rigelsford would arrive at meetings declaring things like Jennifer Aniston's agent had phoned him last night saying his client was looking for projects. The implication being that Rigelsford could hook her for the film.

Bentine thought that this would all end in tears, and he was right - the film collapsed. Later, Rigelsford showed him some 30 film scripts that he claimed to have written but Bentine now wonders just how many were in fact his. And one other thing. Rigelsford's co-writer on the project, Kim Lamont? This was, indeed, the elusive Kim Meffen. Why the name change?

Rigelsford was variously described at the time of the trial as aged 33 or 34. Just about everyone who knew him was astonished because they had always assumed he was at least 10 years older. If he was 33 or 34 it meant he was only around 21 when his first book was published in 1992. And what about that article in The Stage in June 1993, when he wasn't much older, saying he had scripted a 90-minute Dr Who special and describing him as a "former writer at Pinewood Studios' script pool"? Where did that come from? The boy himself? But, a precocious talent, eh? And, anyway, when did Pinewood ever have a "script pool"?

The only way to resolve this was to get a copy of Adrian Warwick (sic) Rigelsford's birth certificate. It revealed that he entered the world in 1969. So, he just looked older. He was born in a Cambridge hospital but the address of his parents was in Brampton, on the same modern estate where he was arrested. Half of his addresses given in court were in London. The other half were a stone's throw away from where he grew up in Brampton. I guess he never quite left home.

Faking an interview with Stanley showed some imagination, but not much. If there is a certain grandeur to Clifford Irving's scam in faking a biography of Howard Hughes, Rigelsford's venture smacks more of a venal seediness. Why didn't he go for something big? How about The Black Diaries Of Dirk Bogarde or The Secret Journal Of Vivien Leigh?

Anyone who has worked in the film industry will instantly recognise the type. They hover around on the margins. The Sammy Glick figure forever on the verge of the Big Break, no more morality than is strictly necessary, constantly hustling, chasing chimeras, talking up deals that evaporate at the 11th hour through no fault of their own. So, in this respect, Rigelsford is part of a great tradition.

What would Stanley's reaction to the interview have been? He was remarkably philosophic about his position in the public eye. You're bound to attract this stuff, he would comment, ignore it if you can. He would have been irritated by the fake interview, and also flattered. Flattered in the way he was when Spike Lee phoned up and said he was a big fan, because he was, essentially, an unassuming and modest man. However, I can hear his voice now saying, "Gee! Rigelsford could have written better lines for me than this. I sound like a schmuck!"

But not as much a schmuck as Rigelsford. But who speaks for him?