A story about Sidney appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post, published on June 5 2002, the day of Charlie's funeral and was obviously set to tie in with it.

It was actually Sidney's daughter Joyce, who lives in Ontario, Canada, who chatted about her father. She pointed out that Sidney would be 93 that month and was the only remaining Uncle of the Lennon clan. Unfortunately, Sidney couldn't be interviewed as he was suffering from Parkinson's Disease.

Joyce recalled that the last time Sidney spoke to John was in 1967 when he and his wife Madge immigrated to Canada to join their daughter, who was now living there. She recalled that John had come to live with them in their home in Magull for a few months when he was a child. Joyce was four years older than John at the time and recalled, "He was a sweetheart, a nice little boy. He was very bright and my mum just idolized him. It broke her heart when he was taken away."

This was due to the fact that Sidney and Madge thought they would be able to rear John themselves. He lived in their Maghull home for approximately nine months when John was four, shortly before John's mother, Julia, placed her son in the care of his Aunt Mimi.

Sadly, Sidney and Charlie had no contact once Sidney moved to Canada.

Scott told me, "It was good to learn that Sidney was still alive. Obviously the story about Sidney in the Daily Post only ran because of the tie-in with Charlie's passing - in fact the photo that ran with Sidney's story was (no surprises here) a very nice colour photo of Charlie! If they subscribe to the Daily Post up on Cloud Nine, John must have had a good laugh at that.

Scott also related, "I remember Charlie telling me that when Sidney packed off to Canada - you did say it was in 1967 - he completely washed his hands of the rest of the family and didn't want to know. I remember Charlie said that he personally never did have a clue as to why Sidney broke it off with them. Certainly, whenever he spoke to me about Sidney over the years, it was in a sad, regretful, I'll-never-know-what-I-did-wrong tone of voice that made your heart break for him. No question but that he took the estrangement very personally indeed.

"For that reason I never pursued the subject of Sidney once we had briefly discussed it on videotape for the record. As I think about it now, surely it must have grieved him deeply to have a brother whom he loved but who wanted nothing to do with him and never told him why. I should think the hurt must have cut twice as deep after Alfred died and Charlie and Sidney truly became the last of the Lennon's, two brothers separated by far more than an ocean.

"Piecing together the story of what Charlie did between 1946, when he was discharged from the Royal Artillery, and in 1982, when he ended his working career and returned to Liverpool, is a challenge for any researcher. I'm not going to do my head in trying to dig for facts that may be well and truly lost to the world, but I do plan to publish as much accurate information about Charlie's working career as I can in my book.

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