MOTHER OF the late rock star Phil Lynott introduced two siblings he had never met to a public gathering for the first time last night.
“When I lost Philip, I died with him and I thought that was the end,” Philomena Lynott said. “Now, to have these two wonderful people loving me."
She stood beaming beside her son and daughter at an event promoting her updated book My Boy.She had not included the story of these two children, adopted in England as toddlers, in her first version of this book published in 1995.
“I don’t walk around ashamed any more that I had two other children,” she said.
Despite having been found by her daughter, Philomena (60), and son, Leslie (58), more than 15 years ago, she had kept their existence a secret until after the death of her mother and Philomena’s adoptive mother. “I didn’t want my mother to know I had two more children as it was bad enough having Philip,” she said of the stigma at the time of being an unmarried mother.
“I cared for mother until the end of her days and that is why I am able to tell the second part of my story,” she said.
Standing side by side, the similarity between mother and daughter was striking but their lives were starkly different. “My daughter was brought up by a school teacher, she is a school teacher and she is married to a school teacher.
“She lives a very solid village life, goes to church, makes honey and wine, looks after everyone,” Ms Lynott said. She said theirs was a “happy reunion”.
She proudly described her son Leslie as “something else” and added: “We are all in love with one another."
Despite being separated for decades, Ms Lynott often thought about them and had waited all her life for them to get in touch.
“Whenever it was their birthdays . . it didn’t matter where I was. If I was in a theatre, if I was in the height of top society it didn’t matter.
“I’d walk into another room and I’d have moments of, ‘where are they, are they being treated right, has life been good to them, are they dead’?” she said. “I never thought I would see them again.”
Daughter Philomena rang her mother in the 1980s and identified herself by asking if the name Jeanette meant anything (her birth name). Her son, Lancashire lighting consultant Leslie, found her in the 1990s after he heard her interviewed on the radio about her book.
