'Spanks for the Memory'! in Private Eye

THE current issue of Private Eye describes how former Labour councillor Eileen Kershaw - mother of DJs Andy and Liz -  'has shed new light on why investigations into her late friend Sir Cyril (Smith) were abandoned.  She tells the Rochdale Observer of Smith's alarm when he learned that Knacker was investigating him in the late 1960s.  According to Kershaw, "the worry caused him to forgo his usual supper of pie and chips ands start popping Valium".  She remembers a conversation between Smith and his parliamentary predecessor in Rochdale, the late Jack McCann, a Labour whip, who "declared that he would call on the director of public prosecutions to drop the case".  This contradicts the CPS's recent statement that a prosecution of Smith did not take place in 1970 because the DPP considered the charges "stale" and "without corroboration", rather than because of any political pressure.' 

The writer in the Eye also adds:  'Kershaw's testimony also contradicts a statement made a week earlier by a former Rochdale councillor who told journalists:  "I worked with him (Smith) at nearly every school governing body in Rochdale and never heard a whisper."  Her name?  Eileen Kershaw!'