THE estranged daughter of the 77 year-old former Wisbech mayor, councillor and newspaper editor Roger Green has spoken of her disappointment at being airbrushed out of her late father’s funeral reports.

Amanda Starkey, who lives near Boston, Lincs, said she had not spoken to her father for 17 years following an acrimonious split that was never healed.

She said many of the 600 people present at the funeral of Cllr Green – who was killed in a car crash on the A47- would have known her and wondered why no mention was made of her.

The order of service for Cllr Green’s funeral, held on August 2 at St Peter’s, referred only to him as a father to Karen and to a deceased second daughter – but with no mention of Amanda or her children.

She said “All I want to do now in speaking out is to notify my friends and my former school friends in Wisbech that I am fine. I have never been one for discussing what happened with other people I felt it to be important, however, now to let people know that I am indeed still alive.”

Amanda revealed she had recently undergone an eight and an half hour cancer operation and she was still recuperating when news reached her of her father’s accident.

“Everyone is telling me I should have gone to the funeral but to be honest I had to think of me,” she said. “If I went I was only likely to have got abuse. What’s done is done but my step mother purposely missed my name out of the obituary to publicly snub me. I have not been allowed to grieve nor have my children.”

She added: “I don’t want to rubbish my late father’s name but I don’t want Margaret (Roger’s second wife) to deny my existence or imply I am deceased which the funeral service did imply. I am alive and kicking.”

Amanda said by not including her in the obituary notice it looked “all part and parcel of a vendetta because we haven’t exchanged a word in years. I did, however, get a message – and I can’t say from whom- not to go to the funeral. It was just another way to fire a bullet at me.”

Amanda said she had seen her father over the years at family gatherings but had not approached him- nor had he approached her.

The obituary report mentioned just two grand children but Amanda said both her children and her late sister Lynda’s children were not mentioned as being part of the family.

Cllr Green was a former town and district councillor, former mayor and former editor of the Wisbech Standard.