Bunhill: Lamb on warpath

THE DECISION to release the long-awaited Chadwick Report into the collapse of the Isle of Man-based Savings & Investment Bank is in many ways a vindication of the tireless efforts of a Middlesbrough housewife, Gwendoline Lamb.

Newspaper reporters know her for her long phone calls punctuated by the word 'scandal'. She admits she had an axe to grind. When the SIB went down in 1982, she lost pounds 30,000. Coinciding with that catastrophe, she lost a further pounds 60,000 to Justin Frewen, an old Etonian financier later jailed for fraudulent trading.

Ms Lamb was no innocent abroad, however. A modest inheritance from her parents was quickly transformed into a handsome sum, first through property investments and then by playing the markets.

In 1982 she put pounds 30,000 on deposit for a week with the SIB, ready to buy a bungalow on the island she says she had fallen in love with. Three days before the money was repayable, the bank lost its licence.

It was the lack of any hint of problems at the bank that triggered her offensive. 'Nobody tipped me off about anything,' she said later.

And once on the warpath, it now seems there is no getting her off it. Two years ago, she was among viewers who forced a Chatline television advertisement off the air. Earlier this year, she was in the headlines again - first for accosting John Major while he was on a prime ministerial walkabout in Teesside, and then for demanding legislation to make parents responsible for the actions of their children.

Not a person to be ignored.