Whiteley ‘spy baloney’...but he had Cold War adventure
THE mystery over Countdown host Richard Whiteley’s links to MI5 took a further twist yesterday after it was revealed he visited Moscow during the Cold War.
His friends and family have hit back after Royle Family actor Ricky Tomlinson, 77, claimed “a source” told him that Channel 4 legend Whiteley was a government mole.
The former Conservative MP Jonathan Aitken knew Whiteley well and called the claims “baloney”.
Countdown colleagues Carol Vorderman, 56, and Gyles Brandreth, 68, have dismissed the claims – while Whiteley’s partner at the time of his death in 2005 branded it “nonsense”.
Angry Kathryn Apanowicz, who lived with Whiteley for 11 years, added: “Ricky’s just being ridiculous.” But now it has been revealed that in 1974 Whiteley, then fronting a current affairs show on Yorkshire TV, joined a group of space enthusiasts visiting the USSR with astronomer Patrick Moore.
He was one of “20 or 30” people on the trip who were “all space geeks”, an academic source has revealed.
The news will only embolden Liverpudlian Tomlinson, who starred in Brookside, and his outlandish claims.
Tomlinson was jailed for two years in 1973 for conspiracy to intimidate and affray after altercations at a Shrewsbury construction site.
He claims the jury was swayed by an ITV documentary called Red Under The Bed, which was presented by Whiteley.
Journalist and former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt, who died in 1997, was in the documentary and also branded an MI5 agent by Tomlinson.
Father-of-one Whiteley died from heart disease endocarditis aged 61, having hosted Countdown for 23 years.
He was a student at Cambridge University between 1962 and 1965, graduating with a third-class degree.
The university, a known recruiting ground for the secret services, was attended by the notorious double agents Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt.
But Brandreth, another ex-Tory MP and a regular on Countdown’s Dictionary Corner, said he knew Whiteley for 40 years and never got any hint he was a spy. Carol Vorderman said: “If Richard was a spy, he never mentioned it to me!”