And Ian Morris, director of communications for Bass, added that under Rae’s leadership the group had “achieved many objectives to promote sensible drinking”.But events over the past year have undermined confidence in the Portman Group’s much-vaunted independence.The problems began in December 1994, when it was revealed that the group had offered selected British academics pounds 2,000 to attack the findings of Alcohol Policy and the Public Good, by Griffith Edwards, emeritus professor of psychiatry at London University and editor of the journal Addiction. The book concluded that the best way to reduce alcohol abuse was to reduce overall consumption.Dr Rae defends the group’s actions: “It is perfectly proper to pay people who are asked to do a review… We wanted advice on how to counter some of the arguments of the book we regarded as biased. The board meets approximately every two months, with representatives from each group.Their choice of director, Dr Rae, had been headmaster of Westminster School for 16 years. Frightened by the increasingly tough alcohol laws in the US, they decided on self-regulation before the same happened here.The group consists of the seven biggest drinks manufacturers – Bass, Guinness, Scottish Courage, Allied Domecq, International Distillers & Vintners (IDV), Seagram, and Whitbread – which between them contribute pounds 2m a year. Essex social services applied to the High Court after interviewing the Cooks about the circumstances in which Sarah went to live in Turkey in November.
Shortly after her mother left town, Sarah held court in the Yasar pastry shop, a focal point of social life in a town famed for its ice cream, fine honey and pistachio cakes.Sarah ate nothing, however, this being the fasting month of Ramadan in her adopted Muslim religion.

She said she was very happy, that she wants to stay in Turkey and that she loves 18-year-old Musa Komeagac, the seasonal resort waiter whom she “married” two weeks ago in a religious ceremony not recognised by Turkish law. She also said she was not pregnant.The headstrong girl spent the day in triumphal progress around town, being showered with presents from ordinary citizens and community leaders. “If she stays and gets properly married – possible in eight months’ time, under Turkish law – we’ll give her a furnished house. I’ll give her one of the best we have,” said Ali Sezal, the pro-Islamic welfare party mayor of Kahramanmaras.Sarah finished her tour with a visit to the prison outside town where Musa’s fellow inmates have been treating him as a romantic hero.

He added a new note of melodrama when he warned that they both might kill themselves if she had to leave. But he said that he would go to England as soon as he got a visa “I do believe that Sarah will be a good housewife,” he said. “She’s learning very fast.”But if Sarah’s wilful defiance of parents and homeland is any indication of the future, Musa may find that his sweetheart from Braintree does not quietly follow the traditional Turkish path from honoured new bride to obedient daughter-in-law Love, law and good old moral outrage, page 13. THE strange story of Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s eccentric and devoted mother, will be remembered at a Dublin ceremony on Saturday to mark the centenary of her death. She was a mother who created a son in her own image, revelled in his glittering success, but suffered alongside him in his downfall.

When she died at 75, nine months after he was jailed, there was no memorial to the woman who had taken the literary world by storm long before he did, and no compassion from the Establishment. Her deathbed request that Oscar be allowed to visit her was refused.
She was buried in an unmarked grave in Kensal Green, west London. If Oscar had still been feted by society and free, instead of incarcerated in Reading jail, Lady Wilde would no doubt have had her tombstone. But in an apparent omission, a token sum was never paid by any other relative to ensure the cemetery marked her grave.Now the contribution of a woman who did so much to shape her brilliant son is to be recognised in a plaque unveiled by Mary O’Rourke, deputy leader of Fianna Fail, on the last empty panel on the family grave in Mount Jerome, Dublin It reads: “Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde ‘Speranza’ of The Nation.

Writer, translator, poet and nationalist, author of works on Irish folklore, early advocate of equality for women and founder of a literary salon.”Merlin Holland, her great-grandson, whose surname remains a testament to the social ostracism that forced Wilde’s children to change their name, says: “Oscar and ‘Speranza’ adored each other. Genetically, he got an enormous amount from her – the rebellious spirit, the love of all things Irish, and conversational brilliance.”Born Jane Elgee in Dublin in 1821, Lady Wilde began her career writing poetry for the revolutionary nationalist newspaper The Nation under the name John Fanshawe Ellis. When the editor asked to meet “this Mr Ellis” he was amazed to see a tall girl with “flashing brown eyes and features cast in an heroic mould”.At 30 she married William Wilde, a polymath who combined ear and eye surgery with antiquarianism, pioneering statistical work and a devotion to Irish folklore. He also had three illegitimate children.Lady Wilde, as she became in 1864, ran a successful literary salon, first in Dublin, then London, attended by the likes of W B Yeats, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Ruskin and Browning.Oscar, her younger son, used it to practise his wit, but it was his mother who led the way But as Oscar’s star fell, so did Lady Wilde’s. Guests at her gatherings in Oakley Street, Chelsea, remarked spitefully on her bizarre dress sense, unconventional attitudes and the way her hair hung down her back.When Oscar was finally jailed for homosexuality after a damning, widely reported trial at the Old Bailey, a sad anecdote has the elderly Lady Wilde turning over in bed and saying only: “May it help him.”. THE Falkland Islands have been invaded again.