‘Twink should have asked before she turned up at Mam’s funeral’
RORY COWAN ON THE MOST ASTONISHING FEUD IN SHOWBUSINESS:
TWO of Ireland’s showbiz luminaries are in a bitter feud – and it’s certainly not behind them. Rory Cowan has said Twink should have ‘stayed away’ from his mother’s funeral this week and that she wasn’t considering his feelings.
Responding to reports of a dramatic exchange between the two within feet of Esther Cowan’s coffin after her Requiem Mass, Mr Cowan said he is still furious that the panto queen turned up.
Twink, real name Adele King, attended Mrs Cowan’s funeral at the Church of the Ascension of the Lord in Balally, south Dublin, on Thursday.
Mrs Cowan, 85, had battled dementia for the last four years of her life. Her son Rory had cared for her with the help of three professional carers at his home.
Up until the funeral, neither himself or Twink had spoken to each other for more than a year-and-a-half due to an acrimonious fall out understood to be rooted in a failed pilot television show.
When Twink approached him to pay her respects on Thursday, he told her she was not welcome.
For her part, Twink has said all she wanted to do was sympathise with an old friend.
Last night, Rory, 58, told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘When she turned up at my mother’s funeral, she wasn’t considering
Says she wanted to sympathise
my feelings, she wasn’t considering that at all.
‘She turned up for her own reasons, but it was nothing to do with me.
‘If she had even thought her decision to attend my mother’s funeral might upset me, then she would have stayed away.
‘And she used my mother’s death as a reason to reconcile and make up.
‘If she was even considering me, she could have called friends of mine – who she knows very well – to see if they thought I would be happy to see her or if I would be upset to see her.
‘But, as far as I know, she didn’t do that. And I told her to go, and that it was only for family and friends.
‘She had her own agenda and it was nothing to do with me.
‘And I just wasn’t buying into it and I didn’t like the idea of her just using my mother’s funeral as something else.
‘I haven’t spoken to the
woman in a year and a half.’
When contacted by the Irish Daily Mail for a response, Ms King would only say: ‘The matter is in the hands of my solicitors.’
However, she was quoted in The Sun newspaper yesterday as saying: ‘If you can’t offer an old friend sympathy on the death of their mother, there is no hope for anyone.
‘I came out of the church and saw Rory standing at the back of his mother’s coffin.
‘I would have gone around him but the crowd was too big.
‘It was too narrow a margin to get by.
‘I wasn’t going to go up to Rory but it was awkward to get out without going by him.
‘I had my head down and I tapped his arm and told him, “You have my sympathies on Esther”.’ Mr Cowan added that seeing her outside the church was not the first time he had seen her at his mother’s funeral.
He said that when he stood up to pay tribute to his mother, Ms King got up from her place at the back of the church and stood up, facing him.
‘At the end, I was trying to tell a few funny stories about my mother,’ he recalled.
‘You know the way you do. And this woman, I saw her, she actually stood up from her seat, walked to the back of the church and stood right in the middle of the aisle.
‘She stood there looking up at me while everybody else was sitting down.
‘She did it so I would see her, because I was standing up facing the packed church. So later, when people were coming up, giving their condolences, and then she just came over and touched me on the arm.
‘I just said to her, “You shouldn’t be here. This is only for family and friends and you are neither,” and then I turned back to the people who were offering me their condolences.’
Ms King, speaking to The Sun newspaper later, said of that moment: ‘There was a packed crowd around us.
‘People thought he was joking but realised he wasn’t.
‘I thought the ground would open up and swallow me.
‘I had brought a little card which I never got to give to him.
‘I was that upset I drove away from the church blinded with tears.’