had been raped by a group of men,
including the then Lib Dem MP
John Hemming, who was questioned
by police but exonerated.
In October 2015, The Sunday Times
revealed that Ms Baker had under-
gone a controversial therapy which
experts feared could generate false
memories. Despite that, Mr Lafferty
says a meeting with Ms Baker and Mr
Watson was held the following month,
although the Labour MP said last night
it had taken place in August that year.
Mr Watson faces questions over
why he gave such unstinting support
to Beech, who was jailed for 18 years
in July for fabricating abuse claims.
Detectives are now investigating if
Ms Baker lied to police.
Last night, Mr Hemming said: ‘Tom
Watson needs to come clean about his
involvement with Esther Baker. If he
was egging her on then that warrants
an urgent investigation by Labour.’
Ms Baker said she did not recall
being asked to ‘name names’ by Mr
Watson at the meeting, adding: ‘Phil
Lafferty is just seeking attention.’
Sources close to Mr Watson denied
pressuring Ms Baker. His spokesman
said: ‘After Tom raised the issue of
historic child sexual
abuse in Parliament,
many survivors of
abuse contacted
him. It was his duty
to respond.’from other spin-offs. But when
he raised concerns about the direc-
tion his creation was going and
the volume of merchandise being
created, he was told to ‘face com-
mercial realities’.
Cunliffe, of Ilkley, West Yorkshire,
also created the ragdoll characters
Rosie & Jim.
The royalties that he received paid
for a house, but he lived modestly,
writing in his bedroom with a statu-
ette of Pat on the shelf.
Woodland Animations was sold for
£ 5 .1 million in 2001.28
Postman Pat’s final delivery
28
Tom Watson
‘urged abuse
fantasist to
name MPs in
VIP sex ring’
By Michael Powell
By Andrew Young
THE creator of Postman Pat left
less than a £1 million in his will
after missing out on a small for-
tune in royalties.
John Cunliffe, who died last
September aged 85, signed away
the bulk of his rights in the
early 1980s before the character
become a television favourite.
Probate records released last
week show that Cunliffe left his
£828,051 estate to his wife Sylvia
and son Edward.
The Postman Pat rights are
owned by Woodland Animations,
the production company that
makes the hugely popular
15-minute films. The firm is
owned by animator Ivor Wood.
Under the deal, Cunliffe did not
receive repeat fees for the BBC
series, and received only ten per
cent from annuals and comics and
nothing for other merchandising.
He also had to give 50 per cent
of royalties from Postman Pat
books to Mr Wood’s company.
Although the overall figure for
profits on sales of everything
associated with Postman Pat
over the past four decades has
never been publicly disclosed, it
is thought to run into tens of
millions of pounds.
Children around the world have
been enchanted by kindly Pat’s
adventures with his black-and-
white cat, Jess. Cunliffe was
inspired to create Pat’s fictionalhome village of Greendale, with
its dry-stone walls and rolling
hills, after spending much of his
life in the Lake District.
He was said to have based his
characters, including postmis-
tress Mrs Goggins, handyman Ted
Glen and Rev Timms, on people
he met while working as a mobile
librarian in Northumberland.
Cunliffe revealed in an inter-
view in 1994 that he got nothing
for the Postman Pat films when
they were repeated and only a
small percentage of the incomeCreator who missed out on millions
leaves £800,000 to his wife and son
SIGNED AWAY HIS RIGHTS: John
Cunliffe with Postman Pat and cat Jess(^) The Mail on Sunday September 1 • 2019
LABOUR’S deputy leader Tom
Watson has been accused of putting
an alleged child sex victim under
pressure to ‘name names’ of politi-
cians involved in a fictitious VIP
paedophile ring, despite significant
doubts over her credibility.
A respected child abuse campaigner
claims Mr Watson pushed Esther
Baker into identifying alleged high-
profile paedophiles during a meeting
at his Westminster office.
Describing Mr Watson’s conduct
during the two-hour meeting, Phil
Lafferty, chairman of the support
group Voicing CSA, told The Mail on
Sunday: ‘I remember it absolutely
clearly like it was yesterday.
‘Watson was only interested in press-
ing Esther to name names. She did
bring up [the late Labour peer Lord]
Janner, Elm Guest House and Dolphin
Square, all things that had already
been in the newspapers by then.’
Ms Baker alleged in a series of TV
interviews in early 2015 that she had
been raped by a MP when she was a
child, prompting Mr Watson to call
for a comprehensive police investiga-
tion. Later that year, Ms Baker made
fresh claims that she had been taken
to Dolphin Square, an apartment block
popular with politicians near the
Palace of Westminster, where she had
been sexually abused.
Similar allegations
had been made by
a man called ‘Nick’
- later exposed
as fantasist Carl
Beech – the pre-
vious year.
M s B a k e r
also falsely
c l a i m e d
that she
DOUBTS: Esther
Baker, and the MP
in 2015, around
the time he
met herSWNS / PA