UR TV CAST

More than 3.5 million members are hoping to receive free shares worth up to pounds 1,000 each.Sources at the Woolwich have alleged the chief executive used the society’s gardeners to landscape the grounds of his home in the village of Brasted, in Kent, as well as having decorating work done to his pounds 450,000 mock-Tudor house. The aim is to sanitise the Woolwich completely from me.”Mr Robinson refused to discuss specific allegations, saying he could not do so until his lawyers received details of what he was alleged to have done.He promised he would rebut all claims of improprieties in detail within days. NIC CICUTTI

Peter Robinson, the Woolwich Chief Executive ousted for alleged financial irregularities, broke his silence yesterday to accuse the building society of setting up a “War Room” aimed at smearing him with false claims about his misuse of the society’s resources.
He said accusations levelled against him were the actions of “dissidents hoping to besmirch my name” and denied any wrongdoing. “I have been told they have set up a war room, an operations room to collect any smear against me,” he said.”Staff are being told that if they have anything against me, no matter how old, they should come forward and their jobs will be safe They are leaving no stone unturned in their efforts.

In 1990, a salvage operation was launched to rescue the underwater-matured blend.A local poet lamented the loss of the Scotch with “The Quest For The Celtic Spirit”:”With sadness we learned of the Spheroid’s messageIt reminded us of that ancient adageWorse things happen at seaWhat could be worse than to lose all that whisky.”The poem in the Liverpool coastguard’s newsletter, ends:”Any coastguard that’s worth his saltIs partial to a nip of Irish MaltSo on patrol at weekends we goIf anything’s found, you’ll be the last to know.”. You won’t find a skipper in Fleetwood who’s touched a drop.”He said scenes at the port recalled Whisky Galore, a 1940’s Ealing comedy based on the true story of the plundering of the SS Politician, which went down off the Scottish island of Barra with a cargo of Scotch. “I’m told the whisky is a fine blend, but the salt’s got to it I haven’t had any myself. “The locals might have beaten them to it.”The coastguard received calls all day yesterday from would-be salvagers checking weather conditions before heading out to sea in the hope of a liquid catch.Fleetwood Police said no offence was being committed, but after local radio reports that Customs and Excise officials were taking a keen interest in the matter, silence fell over Fleetwood “I’ve got a terrible headache,” said one skipper. “It’s not very good stuff, though, so I’m told.”The alcoholic cargo, worth pounds 50,000, was lost from the roll-on roll-off vessel Spheroid when a 26-ton container went overboard in October, off Drigg Point, in Cumbria.It was thought the whisky had sunk 15 fathoms below the sea, but locals say the container has broken open and currents are dragging thousands of bottles along the seabed.”The company knew where the cargo was lost, but they were keeping it a secret and hoping to send a salvage team to it,” said Ged Lynch, senior watch officer at Liverpool Coastguard. ROS WYNNE-JONES

Lancashire fisherman found themselves in the drink yesterday as they re-enacted scenes from the Ealing comedy Whisky Galore and pursued a liquid cargo that was lost six months ago but has surfaced in the Irish Sea.
Bottles of Scotch were selling for as little as pounds 5 in the port of Fleetwood as the local population took to their boats in search of an alcoholic catch.”The conversation round here is `What bottles have you caught today?’, not `What fish have you caught?’, said a spokesman for the Harbour Control office.

She claimed she had been engaged to Hendrix, though this was disputed.Miss Danneman had lost an earlier libel action when she was ordered to pay pounds 1,000 damages and costs after libelling Mrs Etchingham. She repeated the allegations in the book.Worshipping Hendrix, page 3. The judge was given medical reports about the state of both her physical and mental health.In 1995 Miss Danneman published The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Hendrix’s death. Mrs Etchingham, 49, now a doctor’s wife with two teenage sons, had a 30- month relationship with Hendrix in the 1960s.Mr Justice French said no public interest would be served by committing Miss Danneman to prison for contempt, or by making her pay damages after hearing she was in poor health and had little money. Police discovered the body just before 10am.It was in Miss Danneman’s London flat that Hendrix was found dead from a drugs overdose in 1970. They met in Germany in 1968 when Miss Danneman, then an iceskating champion, saw Hendrix at a concert.The court case was the latest episode in a long running feud between the two women.

It was brought because Miss Danneman, 48, had breached an undertaking that she would never repeat an allegation that Mrs Etchingham was an “inveterate liar” about her life and relationship with Hendrix. JAMES CUSICK

Monika Danneman, a former girlfriend of rock legend Jimi Hendrix, who only three days ago was found guilty of contempt in the High Court, was yesterday found dead in a fume-filled car near her Sussex home.
The apparent suicide of the German-born artist at her home in Seaford, Sussex, follows the court action brought by Kathy Etchingham, another of the rock star’s girlfriends. Antibody status may be related to the stage of infection, with people only recently exposed to HIV and those on the verge of Aids being most likely to fit this profile.Nick Partridge, chief executive of the Terrence Higgins Trust, said anybody who was wrongly tested as negative might be able to sue Abbott Laboratories.A spokesman for one of the London clinics which carried out the tests, at St Mary’s Hospital, Praed Streetsaid: “We expect the retesting to take about one month.”. He advised people to make use of helplines over the weekend, adding: “The samples are already being tested and I am confident that the vast majority that have tested negative will still be negative.”A letter sent on 29 March by Abbott Laboratories in Maidenhead, Berkshire, to laboratories which use the test, is believed to have been the source of the leak. A spokesman for Abbott Laboratories in Chicago said yesterday that the company had been alerted to a potential problem in late March when European laboratories reported inaccurate results with the test. A doctor in Portsmouth was among the first to query its reliability when he used it on a patient he knew to have full-blown Aids, and the result was negative.Professor Jangu Banatvala, of the clinical virology unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, where 5,000 samples are already being re-tested, said that only people with a very high number of HIV antibodies were at risk of testing negative instead of positive with the IMX test.