Boycott is strangling crime-theme eaterie

A Middlesbrough restaurateur is considering taking legal action against local newspapers whose campaign against his decor featuring notorious criminals, he claims, has practically killed off his fledgling business.

Owner Sean Wilkinson said his 45-seat the Bench restaurant in Borough Road, offering a menu he describes as "upper-class nouvelle cuisine but without the small portions", was busy on opening day late last month. But business died off and bookings were cancelled after the media furore erupted the next day.

Lord Mackenzie, a former chief superintendent of Durham police, called upon diners to boycott the new restaurant. He said: "These murderers are not to be glamorised, but people to be despised. I would not want to enjoy a meal surrounded by some of the most heinous people Britain has thrown up." And Winnie Johnson, mother of Moors Murders victim Keith Bennett, slammed Wilkinson as "heartless".

But father-of-two Wilkinson, who has received hate mail since the controversy, denied he ever intended adding a picture of Moors murderess Myra Hindley to those of Dr Crippen and the Kray Twins on his walls.

Far from promoting crime, he said, the restaurant name referred to the nearby police station and law court, "because it was they who put people behind bars, which is where they belong."

Wilkinson, 26, who has worked as a chef in London hotels and restaurants, including the Savoy, saw the Bench as his "only chance in life" to run his own business, and said he had put everything he owned into it. Although he is hoping the boycott will run out of steam, he added that these hopes are now fading fast as his resources drain away.

by Angela Frewin and Cliff Goodwin