‘Crabby’ GBBO fans

MARY Berry has said that adverts may be putting people off watching The Great British Bake Off. Berry, 82, left, told Good Housekeeping magazine said that new presenters were doing a “good job” on Channel 4, but added: “It’s just people get a bit crabby about the ads.” FRIENDS of embattled Cabinet minister Damian Green have accused former police officers of seeking to blacken his name, after it was alleged that thousands of pornographic images had been found on his work computer.

Retired Scotland Yard detective Neil Lewis told the BBC he was “shocked” at the volume of material found in a 2008 raid on Mr Green’s Westminster office and had “no doubt whatsoever” that it had been amassed by the Tory MP.

He stressed that none of the images were “extreme”, but said analysis of the computer suggested they had been viewed “extensively” over a three-month period, sometimes for hours at a time.

Mr Green, who is the subject of a Cabinet Office inquiry into alleged inappropriate behaviour towards a young female activist, has denied looking at or downloading porn on the work computer.

The First Secretary of State – effectively Theresa May’s deputy – declined to comment on Mr Lewis’s allegations.

But friends of Mr Green said they were “gobsmacked” at the former detective putting his claims into the public arena and “outraged” by the BBC’s decision to broadcast them.

The Metropolitan Police Service said it was launching its own inquiry about how information gathered during an investigation was made public.

Mr Lewis told the BBC he was involved in analysing the then opposition immigration spokesman’s computer during a police investigation into Home Office leaks.

The allegations echo claims made by former Met assistant commissioner Bob Quick, who Mr Green branded “tainted and untrustworthy” after he went public last month with his account of the material discovered in the raid.

A spokesman for the First Secretary of State said: “It would be inappropriate for Mr Green to comment on these allegations while the Cabinet Office investigation is ongoing. He maintains his innocence of these charges and awaits the outcome of the investigation.”

Tory MP Andrew Mitchell said his friend was entitled to be taken at his word.

“I think the hounding of Mr Green over information which everyone is clear was entirely legal and which he has emphatically denied either downloading or viewing is completely wrong,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Mr Mitchell said it was “highly questionable” for a retired officer to use material in this way.

Another friend of Mr Green told the Press Association he was “gobsmacked” and found it “deeply concerning that a former police officer who freely admits talking to Bob Quick is putting confidential and nonillegal details of a police investigation into the public domain, and equally outraged that the BBC would use such information from an unreliable source”.

Downing Street declined to comment on the latest allegations.