Friends of Mary Blair say she helped to daub Communist party slogans on walls in Govan, Glasgow. She did no actual daubing, it was her job to mix the whitewash.
The revelation is particularly embarrassing because young Tony went out of his way to praise the respectful attitudes of 1930s Govan. “They didn’t have as much money as we did,” he recalled, “but people behaved more respectfully to one another.”
But Alex Morrison, 86, once a neighbour of Mary Blair and fellow Communist party activist, poured scorn on that idea. “I’m sure Mary would have been laughing her head off at her grandson’s description of Govan as some kind of idyllic community,” he says. “The reality was that Govan was a terrible place to live.”
Mary, who died in 1976, was foster mother to Tony’s father Leo. He had been given away by his real mother, who gave birth after an affair with a fellow travelling entertainer.
Garrick club sends TV shrink back to the waiting room
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Who could blame Raj Persaud, psychiatric consultant to the Richard and Judy audience, for wanting a little rest on his consulting couch? Because after the accusations of plagiarism reported in The Sunday Times last week, he faces more bad news. The adverse publicity has been noted at the Garrick club, where Persaud has been up for membership since 2002. He was expecting to be admitted last week, but a decision has now been put off.
A Garrick insider says: “He was about to sail through when somebody pointed out the recent publicity about his alleged plagiarism. His application has been postponed, but I don’t think he has a chance of ever being elected now.”