James,
Thanks for your comment; interestingly I used Alien Skin Exposure 2 to convert to b&w and used ... the Neopan 1600 emulation. A feather in Alien Skin's cap ... ?
Brent,
Thanks for your comment also. If I was skilled enough to remove the towel then I would've - I certainly tried exhaustively with the healing brush and the ground but none of my attempts produced slightly convincing results. After trying a number of other techniques unsuccessfully including painting over it I eventually cloned the texture from the jacket across and messed about with it and managed to convince myself that it only looked odd to me because I was conscious of it. (It's amazing what tricks the mind will play when it's tired of doing something

.)
J,
Thanks for your comment too.
Pete.