Article: FOCUS BATTLE OF THE WILL: ANIMAL TRAGIC His family accuse his friends of `brainwashing him'; his friends say his family abandoned him: the feud that soured the last months of Johnny Morris has become angrily public with the news that his will is to be contested. Olga Craig and Macer Hall discover the background to all the bitterness

AS JOHNNY Morris's mahogany coffin was lowered into the clay beneath the beech trees in the garden of his home, next to his late wife, Eileen, who had been buried 10 years before, his stepson Stuart Munro stepped forward to deliver the eulogy.

"No one can replace him," he told the mourners in May at Morris's luxury barn conversion on the outskirts of Hungerford. Johnny, the Animal Magic presenter who enchanted generations of children with his gift for animal mimicry, had in recent months, Stuart told the congregation, given up the will to live. He had, he said, refused all visitors.

"In his last few months, we were unable to see him, talk to him or commiserate with him. We were unable to say ...

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