Ten years after the Humphrey hoo-ha, a cat returns to Downing Street

By JANE MERRICK

Last updated at 22:31 11 September 2007


Her predecessor was at the centre of dark suggestions of foul play involving Cherie Blair.

For Sybil the new Downing Street cat, however, it looks as though there should be no such problem.

The black and white mouser is owned by Chancellor Alistair Darling and his wife Margaret, who live in the flat above Number 10.

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Sybil the Downing Street cat

Named after the harridan landlady in Fawlty Towers, she arrived yesterday after being driven from the Darlings' family home in Edinburgh and was soon being introduced to the Press.

Asked if she would have the run of No 10, a spokesman said: "It's quite difficult to confine cats, so, yes."

The spokesman added that Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah, who live next door in the larger Number 11 flat, "didn't have a problem" with a cat padding around the premises.

All of which is somewhat different from the reaction the last Downing Street cat is said to have provoked from Mrs Blair and her husband when they moved in ten years ago.

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Sybil the Downing Street cat

In November 1997, six months after the Blairs arrived, it was announced that Humphrey - named after the Whitehall mandarin in Yes Minister - he had gone into suburban retirement.

But there were suggestions that he had been put down after it was claimed Mrs Blair (known to Richard Littlejohn's readers as the Wicked Witch) was either allergic to cats or thought them unhygienic.

At the time, Downing Street was even driven to arrange a photocall of Mrs Blair with Humphrey to try to kill off the reports, although rumours that she had a hand in his eviction persisted.

Photographers, on the orders of Alastair Campbell, were taken to a secret South London location to picture him posing with that day's newspapers, hostage-style, to prove he was still alive.

Humphrey spent his final days at the home of a Cabinet Office and his death was announced in March last year at the age of 18.

Humphrey had succeeded Wilberforce, who took office with Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1970 and was the Downing Street cat until his death in 1988.

The Brown family, like the Blairs, live in the more spacious accommodation above 11 Downing Street.

Enlarge   Humphrey the cat and Cherie

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