FAMILY FURY OVER SHANNON I want show to stop... I’ve stepped in better stuff than Karen Relative on BBC’s Moorside

THE family of Karen Matthews are furious over next week’s TV drama about the fake kidnap of her daughter Shannon.

Relatives of Matthews – dubbed Britain’s most hated mum after the phoney abduction – claim they weren’t consulted about the BBC1 show.

The family disowned the mother-ofseven after her cruel crime was exposed and have had virtually no contact since she was jailed.

Now they fear the two-part drama starring Sheridan Smith will dredge up all the ill-feeling and heartache which tore them apart.

Revealing the bitter rift in the family, one relative told us: “I have walked on better stuff than Karen.”

BBC bosses think the agonising story of schoolgirl Shannon’s disappearance and the people involved nine years ago will make compulsive viewing.

But two family members, who asked not to be named, have revealed their anger.

One said: “We just want it all to stop before it comes up on the screen. We just want to be left alone.”

They said they hadn’t been contacted by anyone from the makers.

The family are worried their name will once again be dragged through the mud when the programme is screened.

They have talked about contacting a solicitor to try to stop the show, which starts on Tuesday night.

Members of the family don’t know if they will feature in the programme or how they will be portrayed.

Emotional

The show is called The Moorside, after the housing estate in Dewsbury, West Yorks, where the real-life drama unfolded in February 2008.

A huge police operation was launched when nine-year-old Shannon failed to return home from a school swimming trip.

Matthews, now 41, made emotional TV appeals for the return of her daughter which led to a £50,000 reward being put up.

The local community pulled together to raise publicity in the desperate search for the youngster.

But after almost a month the charade began to fall apart and Matthews confessed she had arranged for her daughter to be kidnapped to get the reward money for “finding” her.

Shannon was discovered drugged and imprisoned in the divan base of a bed less than a mile away at the flat of Michael Donovan.

He is the uncle of Craig Meehan, who was Matthews’s boyfriend at the time.

Matthews and Donovan, now 49, were jailed for eight years for kidnap, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice.

The TV drama focuses on the women