Madeleine: Do your bit for the McCanns and buy this book for, er, £18 or £9

The Sun has extracted so much from Kate McCann's Madeleine for its massive serialisation it's a wonder there's anything left worth reading. However, I do applaud the paper's championing of the book - I guess they must have parted with more than £500k for the rights, perhaps more given the advertising campaign behind it.

The case of missing Maddie has, like many other crime mysteries, drawn out the conspiracy theory trolls and armchair Rumpoles who imagine a question amounts to evidence. They were at it on Twitter last night, repeating baseless claims against the McCanns. Fantasists of this sort are not interested in forensic investigation or even the truth: they have a variety of agendas, and clinical personal issues, none of them much to do with Madeleine.

As for the book, out May 12, it is a highly emotional chronicle which I don't think breaks any major new ground. It is amazing to read nonetheless that the incompetent Portuguese cops imputed guilt to Kate because she'd consulted a priest just after her daughter went missing. A sign of guilt, apparently. So what's a practising Catholic supposed to do? She seems to have attracted vitriol over her failure to run around screaming and wailing like some soap opera banshee, disappointing the thirsty, tit-hardened sadists who live to slurp up other people's tears.

The Sun is advertising the book at a 'special' price of £18 from its RRP of £20. Yet on Amazon you can get it for £9. The book's earnings will be poured into the McCanns' not-for-profit Fund - details here on their Find Madeleine site.

To buy a copy click here.

The Madeleine Foundation bows to the McCanns and Carter-Ruck

Private Eye's least favourite firm of solicitors, Carter-Ruck, has imposed a set of restrictions on The Madeleine Foundation - the organisation of loafers, bigots and trouble-makers who have persisted in falsely holding Kate and Gerry McCann personally responsible for the disappearance or death of their young daughter.

This at least is the claim of the Foundation in a newsletter dated November 15 (2009). The MF was recently threatened with a libel suit by Carter-Ruck on behalf of Madeleine's parents over a number of outrageous baseless claims made against them. The newsletter - which has been passed to me by a source - describes these purported restrictions and acknowledges trouble within the organisation led by Tony Bennett.

The MF has agreed to launch a new website with new material. It will now "report the facts of the [Madeleine] case without comment"; will "analyse these facts"; and will "ask questions based on these facts." As opposed to publishing the crazed accusations of sofa Poirots with too much time on their hands. The MF reports: "The Carter-Ruck requirements mean that we can no longer make specific allegations against the Mccanns [sic], e.g. that Madeleine died in their apartment, or that they somehow caused her death and then covered it up."

The MF promises to add to any article "the McCanns’ version on any of the issues. For example, there is nothing to prevent our publishing, as we intend to, the evidence of Martin Grime and his springer spaniel sniffer dogs, so long as we add the McCanns’ comment on this. They claim that the evidence of sniffer dogs is ‘notoriously unreliable’."

This is excellent news, if accurately reported. At a stroke it ends the spurious claim of MF-ers that their right to free speech is being blocked by the McCanns. The couple have, I think, displayed a magnanimity unmatched by Bennett and his army of lapsed Daily Express readers and other frothing lounge louts.

There is distressing news, however. The newsletter discloses that the MF current bank account of £2,766 has been frozen. By the McCanns and their wicked lawyers? No. By its former chairman Debbie Butler following her expulsion and her denied fraud claims against the MF. If she's reading this, do get in touch.

Bennett has agreed to give an undertaking to the High Court “Not to repeat allegations that the McCanns are guilty of, or are to be suspected of, causing the death of their daughter Madeleine McCann, and/or of disposing of her body, and/or lying about what happened and/or seeking to cover up what they had done”. The MF adds: "We would advise all our members that they may run the risk of receiving a letter from Carter-Ruck if they can be identified as having made similar comments about the McCanns." So they should use "cautious language".

That could be difficult judging by the filth I have received.

The Madeleine Foundation: A public nuisance

The Madeleine Foundation bows to McCanns and Carter-Ruck - click here (Nov 18 2009)

Last September I posted an item about Tony Bennett - not to be confused with the crooner - who'd attached himself to Terry Lubbock's campaign over the death of his son Stuart Lubbock against the entertainer Michael Barrymore, before he was detached. Bennett was suspected of a homophobic mindset given his odd interest in deaths which may have arisen from homosexual activity.

Now I see that back in January Bennett, described as a retired solicitor, turned his interest to Madeleine McCann and set up something called The Madeleine Foundation. It is campaigning for the prosecution of the McCanns "for abandoning their children six nights in a row [in Portugal]" and aiming to "encourage" the McCanns and their friends "to tell the truth" about Madeleine's disappearance. Last year, Bennett tried unsuccessfully to launch a private prosecution against the McCanns, only to be told by magistrates in Leicester that they had no jurisdiction over the case, because Madeleine disappeared in Portugal.

The "Foundation" (or Bennett, more to the point) adds: "The case of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has many parallels with other cases where families have cried 'abduction' when their infant child has gone missing - only for us all to find out later that the child has died at the hands of the parents, whether accidentally, negligently or intentionally." It/he concludes: "There is precious little evidence of an abduction."

If that is not a highly defamatory statement I don't know what is. His reason for saying this is not based on any incriminating evidence against the McCanns. He simply has developed a prejudice: if a child goes missing then the parents must be to blame.

This "Foundation" asks members to pay £10 a year and is described by Bennett as an "unincorporated association". It certainly is not a "fund" - as the Telegraph thinks - since it would have to be registered as a company (and it is not). Nor is it a charity.

Bennett is approaching his latest obsession in much the same way as he did Barrymore. No new evidence is adduced - he just demands an inquest, based on dreamt-up questions, and imputes baseless criminal activity to his targets in his media interviews and pronouncements. Why Bennett feels impelled to persecute individuals who have already suffered a tragedy is quite beyond my understanding.

Just as baffling are the morons, bigots and loafers who are signing up to Bennett's bullying members' club.

Finding Madeleine

Michael Barrymore: 'Lubbock's been kind to me'

Happy to see Michael Barrymore in Surviving Spike at the Theatre Royal Windsor. A comeback via theatre is an excellent plan, and of course he should do Twelfth Night again. More improvisation in Spike – ie unscripted responses to the audience - will compensate for the fact that there's only one Spike Milligan, dead or alive.

Inevitably, as the media have reported, Terry Lubbock was there in a “silent front row protest” though he left in the intermission, professing to be bored. After the performance, Barrymore told me that Lubbock has privately been quite kind to him, in contrast to Lubbock's public allegations that the star knows more about his son Stuart’s death than he lets on. One of the news media - Sky perhaps - suggests that Barrymore acknowledged Lubbock from the stage a number of times, but Barrymore says this is not true – he didn’t see Lubbock in the front row.

Barrymore tells me: “I asked Terry once why he’s always beating me up in the press and he replied it’s the only way to get publicity. He knows I wasn’t involved in Stuart's death. I do feel for him. I support calls for an inquest.”

Another paper, the Mirror I think, claims Julian Clary offered to meet with Lubbock on Barrymore’s behalf when it was known he was in the theatre. I find that hard to believe. Can someone confirm?

Meantime, a Barrymore blog, click here.

Terry Lubbock statement

I have been asked to put up the following statement:

"Please note that Mr lubbock would like it known that Anthony Bennett known as Tony Bennett, Mr Lubbock's former solicitor, no longer acts for Terry Lubbock or the Lubbock family. Mr Bennett is not authorised to use the Lubbock name."

Tony Bennett and his fight against homicidal homos

Further to the posting immediately below, I await with interest an update on the The Lubbock Trust website informing its readership that Michael Barrymore is not to be charged with anything in connection with the death of Stuart Lubbock. The somewhat cranky Tony Bennett, who is now solely responsible for the site, has in the past not been tardy in posting bulletins hostile to Barrymore so I can only assume he is on holiday or under sedation after the recent good news for the TV entertainer. The Trust no longer exists – it was wound-up on June 22 - but the site’s still there, brooding.

Girding my loins I read through it and learned that it’s under police investigation over alleged homophobia – I shall watch this with interest if the matter has not already resolved. For some time I had suspected that disapproval of cock-cocking had motored Bennett’s interest in the Lubbock case – as much as his concern for “justice” (ie the arrest and conviction of Barrymore or a drag queen called Jonathan Kenney). Now it is plain. “What active homosexuals do to each other, or with each other, never makes pleasant reading,” he says in his intro to a page that he has toned down following a complaint of homophobia. Of Lubbock’s anal injuries – which remain unexplained - Bennett attributes this to fisting and asserts that “it is practised by a surprisingly large proportion of active homosexuals.” I look forward to reading the research, if any, but I’m impressed that he knows of FistFest in the US.

I can just imagine him drizzling his keyboard with spittle as he tut-tuts his way through the pictures in the name of research. Some people call it work.

Now I see Bennett has donned Columbo’s old mac again and is investigating another death, that of Alec Barrack – “another case where homosexual activity undoubtedly led to his death,” he writes. His mission statement is clear: “Where deaths result directly from the activities of homosexuals - and especially where the precise events remain hidden due to incompetent, corrupt or inadequate police and inquest investigations - we will want to uncover and expose the true circumstances, as we have done with the Stuart Lubbock case and will do shortly on the Alec Barrack case and yet others.”

“And yet others …” Fisters better beware.

The Lubbock Trust website