...as second witness admits he made up sighting ‘for comedy’
A KEY witness who claimed he saw Dominic Cummings on a second lockdown trip to Durham has now said that he made up the story as a joke.
Tim Matthews, a keen runner, admitted that he doctored the details on the Strava app, used by joggers and athletes to record routes and times, to make it look as if he had seen Mr Cummings on the afternoon of April 19 – five days after the Prime Minister’s aide returned to London.
The claim that Mr Cummings made a second trip north, which he denied, was reported from an unnamed source in The Observer newspaper last week.
On Monday, its sister paper, The Guardian gave details of a second witness making the same claim, reporting that: ‘Tim Matthews, a runner, has since come forward to claim he saw Cummings later that day [April 19].’
The Guardian also said Mr Matthews ‘tweeted a link to a route from the running app Strava that he had dubbed “Brick Run aka Dominic Cummings Spotting Run”.’
Mr Matthews posted a message that read: ‘Here’s my two potential sightings [at] Riverbanks and Houghall Woods – I’ve been banging on about them ever since.’
But speaking to The Mail on Sunday outside his semi-detached home in an affluent Durham suburb, Mr Matthews said of the Strava post: ‘I made that up afterwards, a few days ago in fact. I modified it for a little bit of comedy value.
‘I undid it later, I’m sorry. A bit of comedy value even if it was really inappropriate.
‘The only thing that I can definitively say is that at some point during the last few months when I was out running, I had occasion to think to myself, “That’s Dominic Cummings”.
‘What I can’t tell you is any sort of timeframe other than in the last few months.’
Mr Matthews, who supports remaining in the European Union according to his comments on his social media accounts, also tweeted under a Guardian article about Mr Cummings on May 23: ‘Ask him whether he was walking along the riverbanks in Durham city on (or around) 02 April – and if so who he was walking with. “Yes” & “My parents” would be a good start. Then ask him why?’
Mr Matthews was one of two witnesses who claimed to have seen Mr Cummings admiring the bluebells in picturesque Houghall Woods on April 19.
It was reported that he was overheard remarking: ‘Aren’t the bluebells lovely?’
Mr Cummings has strenuously denied heading back to Durham following his return to London and the Prime Minister has dismissed reports of a second lockdown-breaking visit to Durham as ‘palpably false’.