Why did Groucho Club founder leave daughter just £5,000 in £1m will?

ACCLAIMED as ‘the godfather of the literary world’, Michael Sissons was adored by colleagues, who recalled his ‘wicked sense of humour’ and ‘spirit of fair play’ after he died last summer, aged 83.

But I can disclose there is little funny — or seemingly fair — about the thrice-married agent’s £960,000 will, which he signed just ten days before his death.

Sissons, who represented the likes of Simon Schama and Margaret Drabble, was also a co-founder of the Groucho Club.

Most of his reputed £15million fortune was tied up in trusts. But he left his eldest daughter, Kate, 57, just £5,000. By contrast, his son Jonathan — born, like Kate, while Sissons was married to his first wife, Nicola — received £50,000, as did Maia, 44, and Jemima, 40, Sissons’s daughters by his second wife, Ilze.

‘Kate is devastated,’ says a family friend. ‘She loved her father.’

Her relationship with Sissons’s widow, Serena, is less cordial.

‘Kate is bemused by the will,’ says the friend.

‘She has already consulted lawyers who think she has a very good case.’