You are probably right that it is a red herring, it could be a poor earth or live connection somewhere. :dunno
You'll need to undo any earth connections and use wet and dry/emery cloth to polish the bodywork and connections to shiny bare metal. You can cover the re-done connection in waxoyl or similar.
Start at the battery, disconnect the earth lead.(leave it off for now) clean the battery terminal and the connector, follow the lead down to where it connects to the inner wing and do that connection. Finally follow the lead to the engine block to do the same. Any earth leads your find en-route treat the same.
There is an earth point on the inner offside wing (behind the ECU) open it up and clean it.
Go back to the battery and do the same with the live/positive lead, following it to the starter motor and any connections between.
The ECU has a big plug on its end, remove this and reconnect, this should be enough to clean the pins. There are some connectors in the fusebox near the ECU, open them up and re-connect, be careful the pins inside are delicate.
Once done reconnect the battery live connection first, make sure both connectors are nice and tight.
Good luck, keep us posted.