Cheeky Girl’s man and me
Politician ‘wanted kiss and mudbath’
NORTHERN Irish-born former British MP Lembit Opik – f amous f or his romances with one half of pop duo the Cheeky Girls and weather forecaster Siân Lloyd – has been accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a teen.
Hannah Thompson claims she was just 17 when Mr Opik tried to kiss her at a meeting.
Mr Opik is said to have run off with her shoe, then called her ‘Cinderella’ and asked for a kiss before returning it. Ms Thompson, now 21, also claims he urged her to join him in his bedroom – and on another occasion invited her to share a mudbath with him.
Mr Opik, 48, last night denied the claims, saying: ‘I have no idea why she would say these things’. There is no suggestion of any criminal behaviour on his part.
Ms Thompson, who works for the Liberal Democrats party, wrote on Facebook about the ‘Cinderella’ incident with ‘a Lib-Dem MP’, complaining: ‘I was 17 and my local party treated it like a joke.’
She went on: ‘I resigned as vicechair of liberal youth because some of the male members were making bets about sleeping with me, and I constantly got told I was only elected because I was a relatively attractive young girl.’
Ms Thompson later alleged Mr Opik was the MP who demanded a kiss from her in a student bar when she was a naïve schoolgirl. She said it happened when Mr Opik went to Aberystwyth, west Wales, in 2010.
She alleged local activists agreed that if he had to be put up in a member’s home, it could not be a woman’s due to his reputation.
Ms Thompson said: ‘My shoe fell off and Lembit grabbed it and ran off with it round the corner. When I got to him he called me “Cinderella” and said I could not have my shoe back until I kissed him. In the end he didn’t actually kiss me – but he definitely tried.’
She said others in the local party dismissed Mr Opik’s behaviour as ‘banter’.
Ms Thompson claims one of them even said to him: ‘Lembit, what have we told you? You mustn’t sleep with anyone.’
She said she bumped into Mr Opik, who once went out with Gabriela Irimia of the Cheeky Girls, on several other occasions.
One time, she said, he urged her to join him in his bedroom, and made l ewd suggestions. Ms Thompson added: ‘Lembit said; “Do you want to come up to see my stuffed animal of mythic proportions?”.’
Another time, she claimed, Mr Opik, invited her and another schoolgirl to his room, saying “Come and have a mudbath”. He kept saying “It’s nothing seedy”.’
Mr Opik last night denied the allegations.