Fears for mum who vanished after watching Fawlty Towers
A WOMAN disappeared in the middle of the night hours after watching Fawlty Towers during an apparently happy Christmas Day with her family.
Grandmother Sally Allan, 59, was last seen at her home at 3am on Boxing Day.
CCTV footage shows she walked 11 miles from her house in Ponteland, Northumberland, to the Quayside in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Her husband Gordon said last night that she had been in good spirits on Christmas Day and had watched an episode of the classic John Cleese sitcom Fawlty Towers with him before going to bed. ‘It was the last thing we did together, we were laughing,’ he said.
Mr Allan, 60, continued: ‘This is totally out of character for Sally to do something like this and we have
‘We had a lovely time at Christmas’
never been apart from each other for long at all.
‘The family were all together over Christmas and had a lovely time and for this to happen is just devastating. We all sat around on Christmas Day and watched the TV and had a laugh, it was like any other Christmas.’
Mr Allan saw his wife leave their bedroom at 3am on Boxing Day, believing she was going downstairs to get a drink of water or a cup of tea, which was not unusual for her.
When he woke in the morning and she was not in bed, he thought she must have been sleeping in their spare room. But when he could not find her, he contacted the police.
Police and firemen have been carrying out river searches for several days and have scoured the River Tyne and the Quayside.
More than 100 volunteers have joined the search for Mrs Allan, who had one grandchild and had recently retired as a teaching assistant at Gateshead College.
At a Press conference held on the Quayside, Mr Allan and the couple’s three children, Clive, 32, Claire, 30, and David, 28, thanked the public for their help and urged people to keep searching for her.
At the time of her disappearance, Mrs Allan is believed to have been wearing pink pyjamas, a cream fleece and a cream Regatta waterproof jacket.
Police say they can trace her movements by CCTV from her home through Throckley, Newburn and the Scotswood Rood before the final reported sighting of her at 6.10am on December 26 near the Swing Bridge on the Quayside. Speaking at that spot, Claire Allan said: ‘You are an amazing mam, wife, sister, grandma. Everyone wants you to come home.’
Neighbour Jim Robertson, 81, had a glass of sherry at the Allan home on Christmas Day and said Mrs Allan ‘seemed to be enjoying herself’. He found out about her disappearance on Boxing Day when Claire came to the door with police wanting to search his garden. ‘I could not believe it,’ he said. ‘It was totally out of the blue.
‘She was wonderful. Every Christmas I would get invited in for a sherry. I didn’t notice anything was wrong. She was the same as usual – bright and cheerful.’