Lucan (BBC2)

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On the night he tried and failed to murder his wife, Lord Lucan staggered from the house in Belgravia and drove to see the one man whose advice he trusted, millionaire zoo owner John Aspinall.

The drunken earl blurted a confused and ghastly story, of how he bludgeoned to death his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett.

Aspinall told him that, for a blue-blooded and true Englishman, there was only one course of action. He handed Lucan a bottle of whisky and a revolver, and ordered him to, ‘go and do the decent thing’.

Within hours, while all London’s press and police were searching for Lord Lucan, Aspinall had disposed of his friend’s body — by serving it as breakfast to his tiger. That’s an upper-class version of the gangster tradition of feeding corpses to the pigs.

This improbable legend has been doing the rounds for decades. There’s no evidence for it . . . but it’s more likely than any of the delusional theories pursued in the three-part documentary Lucan (BBC2).

A handout photo of Neil Berriman, inside his lock up. Neil is son of Lord Lucan’s children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, thought to have been murdered by Lord Lucan

Neil Berriman accused ‘Old Etonian’ Christopher Bell (pictured), 87, of being Lucan and of having killed his mother on November 7, 1974, before going on the run for decades. Mr Bell denies he is Lucan.

Lord Lucan with his fiancee Veronica Duncan in 1963. The brutal murder of Ms Rivett in the Lucan family home in Belgravia, London, shocked Britain and prompted a five-decade manhunt for the prime suspect, the 7th Earl of Lucan

Film-maker Colette Camden is following Sandra Rivett’s son Neil, a Hampshire builder who is obsessed with the case to the point of monomania, despite the fact he never knew his birth mother: she gave him up for adoption as a baby.

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Moment the son of murdered Lord Lucan nanny confronts ‘Old Etonian’ accused of being fugitive peer

The first episode was bizarre, as we began to plumb the depths of Neil’s compulsive preoccupation. He has convinced himself that Lucan survived, fled Britain and is still living in hiding, aged 89.

This delusion appears to have taken hold of his mind until he can think or talk of little else. His partner and daughter, who appeared briefly, were unable to hide their despair.

But if that was uncomfortable viewing, the second part was excruciating. With an investigative reporter, Glen Campbell, who apparently has nothing better to do, Neil flew to Perth in Western Australia to follow up an alleged Lucan sighting.

Sandra Rivett was brutally murdered in the darkened basement kitchen of Lord Lucan’s family Belgravia home

Sandra Rivett’s (pictured) body was discovered in a mail bag in the blood-stained basement of the Lucan home after his wife Lady Veronica Lucan ran into a nearby pub screaming that their nanny had been murdered

Lady Veronica Lucan and Lord Lucan on Belgravia Street

Lady Veronica Lucan and Lord Lucan sitting on bed

The credibility of the witness was non-existent — a fantasist and loner claiming Lucan was now a gay Buddhist monk who, 20 years ago, had propositioned him, confessed to murder, and then had him beaten up.

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Neil swallowed every word, then spent countless hours scouring Buddhism websites until he spotted an elderly monk. 

Deciding this must be the same man, he devised an elaborate cover story, inventing a middle-aged hippy called Bezza Dugal who was supposedly desperate to meet this monk.

Compounded by anxiety that left him barely able to function, Neil’s obsessive behaviour now seemed to be bordering on the extreme. Even if nothing could shake him out of his wild convictions, I think it was irresponsible of both Campbell and Camden to indulge him — filming his encounter with the puzzled old man using a camera embedded in a pair of glasses.

This is not a true-crime documentary. It’s a portrait of an unhappy man, prurient to the point of mockery, and one that serves no purpose except to revel in baseless conspiracy theories.