Whilst we do not know when (or if) Jim Perrin moved to France, the many comments written by him and by others show how difficult he is to ‘place’: we think this is his strategy, and in our opinion his own comments are designed to deceive — to double-bluff.
After we wrote in Jim Perrin’s Fiefdom ‘He has not lived in Wales for some four or five years’ (as this was the deliberate impression he gave in interviews)* we were contacted by someone who told us: ‘I can assure you that Jim was living in Penrhyndeudraeth in 2010, he didn’t leave for the French Pyrénées until he had sold his house in October. There are many people in these parts who can verify that.’ Sadly we have learned he was with a young woman in that village whom he cast aside when he did leave for France…
We should, it seems, more accurately have written ‘He has not lived in Wales [consecutively] for some four or five years.’
But did the CSA know of that Welsh address? — the answer is ‘yes’ and we have learned that he left very hastily in good time to evade them; and others — (Grant Gee for one) who were also trying to contact him: we know that when he left that property he owed an extremely large amount to British Telecom.
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‘Melangell’ (JP?) wrote on The Guardian’s site, 2/08/2010, that ‘Jim had spent everything he had on Jacquetta in her last couple of years.’ This was not true, but a really despicable lie, and we have shown in earlier postings how Jim Perrin conducts his financial matters.
He told one of her sisters within only days of Jac’s death — her funeral service had not yet taken place! — that he ‘needed money to move on with… it was only fair’ and he was pressuring Jac’s children to pay him a quite impossibly large sum (this was the measure of the man… ) ref. Overheard at the funeral. Nevertheless, on page 299 of West he wrote that he ‘had organised finance, bought a house [this house we know was another in Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant, where he had first lived in 2002] and moved in on the first anniversary of Jac’s funeral’ that is, 2006 — despite having told everyone how impoverished he was… and that Jac was the cause! (However we were later told that he had charmed a young woman who had put all her trust in him, and all her money in his control and it was with this new partner that he moved into the house he wrote of in West — but of course he didn’t mention her in the book!) That was how Jim Perrin had ‘organised his finances’. Sadly, that too ended only in heartache for the young woman involved: but, in quick succession, there was another… So we know that he did have a house to sell in 2010 — albeit acquired at the cost of two different young women’s trust. Although it is difficult to keep track (as is his intention) the pattern is clear — that is, his modus operandi.
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There are other details relating to Jim Perrin’s whereabouts. In The Times, 13/07/2010, he wrote:
‘It led me to the third and most straightforward of a triad of catastrophies — my own diagnosis of terminal cancer.’ (‘My own diagnosis’? — or, the diagnosis he had been given? Our belief is that his statement was a ‘straightforward’ lie). ‘Treatments were suggested but I walked way from them. Instead I moved from Wales to the French Pyrénées. PS. My cancer — not worth mentioning in my view [so brave] carries a one in ten chance of survival beyond five years. In November I’ll be three years in’.
Diagnosis, he is claiming here, was in 2007 but it was certainly his fixed intention to go to France as far back as May 2005: only days after Jac’s death he told her sister of his plan to move to France via a visit to a former ‘partner’ in Ireland.
This year, in November 2013, he would have been, had he not, to the best of our belief, been setting the scenario with deliberate falsehood, the lucky ‘one in ten survivors over five years’ — now six years actually, and with no medical treatment at all! — of the terminal lung cancer with which he implies he was diagnosed, and the details of which (on pages 149 and 301of West) he described with such hypochondriacal relish.
An aside here, concerning his story of cancer; we have wondered if Jim Perrin inadvertently revealed a clue:
After quoting (of course) Gillian Rose, Thomas Mann, Coleridge and others he wrote: ‘It is not that I know better than doctors, but I know myself better than they do. Certainly I was becoming more ill — BUT THAT ILLNESS AT A LEVEL DEEPLY SUBCONSCIOUS WAS OF MY OWN MAKING.’ — our capitals. Is it possible to be aware of ‘a deeply subconscious level: or is that a contradiction in terms? In our opinion he was setting the scene for his lucky ‘survival’ — it was his get-out clause — but the phrase he chose was foolish indeed. He invented his ‘illness’ and used pseudo-psychology in an attempt to make it seem authentic, not realising that he had, as it were, Given the Game Away. **
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So: in West’; in articles; in radio talks; and in magazine and newspaper interviews Jim Perrin, despite it being ‘not worth mentioning in my view’, contrived to tell the world of ‘his cancer’ and how he had left Wales.
In TGO, September 2010, Emily Rodway after a personal interview with him wrote in an article :
‘Jim himself was diagnosed as having terminal cancer; he left Wales for the Pyrénées where the climate was more conducive to his health and comfort. ”A place where I might breathe again.” The clean air has improved his health but the diagnosis stands.’
That is, he was living in France well before this interview took place (September, 2010) and yet, mysteriously, according to the message we received, was actually in the Welsh village of Penrhyndeudraeth in October (with the earlier partner whom he abandoned, mentioned in the second paragraph): and the phrase ‘but the diagnosis still stands’, is strange — and rather an odd emphasis.
And he wrote in West, page 302: ‘Also, news of my condition leaking out, [hardly; he was declaring it to all and sundry] and of the determination to evade suggested treatment, I needed to escape the ravening hordes [!] of the well-meaning with their earth-wisdom and unconditional love and infinite modes of alternative healing and syrupy-shallow hieraticalism.’ He left…
Now, Jim Perrin — having determinedly removed himself to the safety of the French Pyrénées (always his original intention) and thus avoiding, ‘evading’, who knows what CSA hassles? — wrote on page 114 of West ‘And I must come back to the Autumn of 2002 [he met Jac on the 29th of October] seven years before the time at which I now write in this distant, necessary [?] and self-imposed exile’… oh, can’t one can almost hear the violins? Therefore, he is writing this in 2009, in France.
On 11/09/2010 Kirsty Macrum wrote an article after an interview with him, brimming with lies — it was not her fault; we have since spoken with her and quite obviously she had been fed them — she wrote this truth (or was it?): ‘Jim is still writing from his home in the French Pyrénées.’ Not then, as we had been informed, in Wales? The thing is: we have good reason to believe our original contact, as several other witnesses contacted us who were aware that, for a time, Jim Perrin did live in Penrhyndeudraeth whilst he was giving the impression he lived in France. Even he, in our opinion a master of subterfuge, could not have been in two places at once; or could he?
What it all amounts to is this: Jim Perrin spends his life looking over his shoulder taking steps continually to avoid finally being brought to ground by the Child Support Agency; this is his fate. He can never feel wholly at ease. We feel certain he has no conscience about it (he has said ‘they are a joke’ and bragged they are useless, and seems to have proved his point by successfully evading them for nearly two decades) but surely he must find the constant vigilance wearing?
Jac’s sisters.
* In a YouTube interview in July 2014 Jim Perrin responded to the questioner: ‘I’ve been away now for getting on for four years. I live in Ariège, France.’ This makes our point that he did say he lived in France although we know that really he moved back and forth and, when staying in this country, lived in the Lampeter area of Ceredigion in South West Wales: and all to avoid the authorities; the Child Support Agency.
** (A later note: June 19th, 2022.) Jim Perrin has not died from his Terminal Lung Cancer. This must be evidence that he lied about the state of his health when he claimed positively that in 2007 he had been given a diagnosis of that advanced cancer; and he also claimed to have elected to receive no medical intervention of any kind and went into great detail about the various treatments, procedures and surgical options which he refused, in West. These exaggerations are not ours but his own…