Michael "Rocky" Ryan was a British media hoaxer, who became well-known in the UK for providing newspapers with a number of stories that turned out to be completely false. Duncan Campbell writes in The Guardian that Ryan's stories included that the kidnapped racehorse Shergar

Shergar

Shergar was an acclaimed Irish racehorse, and winner of the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, the longest winning margin in the race's 226-year history. This victory earned him a spot in The Observer newspaper's 100 Most Memorable Sporting Moments of the Twentieth Century...

 was alive and well and living in Jersey, and that the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe

Peter Sutcliffe

Peter William Sutcliffe is a British serial killer who was dubbed "The Yorkshire Ripper". In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others. He is currently serving 20 sentences of life imprisonment in Broadmoor Hospital...

, was being allowed out of Broadmoor

Broadmoor Hospital

Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It is the best known of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth and Rampton...

to attend discos.