Virgin Insurance

Newspapers and broadcasters all over the world carried the story of three middle aged sisters, all virgins, from Inverness who were said to be paying an annual premium of £100 to provide a payout of £1 million if one of them could prove she had fallen pregnant by immaculate conception and given birth to Jesus Christ for his second coming.

Broker Simon Burgess, of British Insurance Ltd of Essex, gave dozens of interviews about his 'clients' in Inverness, never suspecting that he would have to back up his information.

Unfortunately he had not counted on re-encountering a journalist who had interviewed him about a similar scam when he was a broker for Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson (GRIP) in 1996 when he claimed to have sold the same insurance policy to "four and twenty nuns from Inverness" - a reference to a well known rugby song.

When the accuracy of his claim was challenged a decade ago he threatened to sue the reporter and make sure he never worked again if the claim that he had lied to the media saw print.

Unfortunately for Mr Burgess that same reporter saw his latest claim that the policy had been sold to three middle-aged virgin sisters in Inverness and recognised the story. Mr Burgess was confronted and again insisted his story was true and that this was the first time such a policy had ever been offered by any insurance company.

He was soon identified as the same person who had been interviewed about the claim in 1996. The Inverness Courier reports Mr Burgess' response:
"Well okay there was maybe a bit of poetic licence. My main business is selling unemployment insurance but that is rather dull.
"It is only when I have nonsense stories like this that people want to speak to me.
"It is actually rather refreshing to talk to a journalist who is doing his job properly for a change."

Posted by Paul in Bizarre News Inverness at July 18, 2006 02:32 AM | 0 Comments