David Hunter

Delia married David Hunter in 1974, apparently in an attempt to gain social acceptability because she figured that the hostility she encountered in "normal" women derived from the threat they felt because she was sexy and single.

she found herself isolated, cutting an odd metropolitan figure in her trendy clothes at the local bars.

It seemed logical to her to blend in more by marrying. She chose the labourer son of a miner, 40-year-old David Hunter from Haltwhistle in Northumberland.

'She told me she did it to make her socially acceptable,' says Clive with a laugh. The women were wary of her on her own and she wanted to join the darts team. 'To her, it was a marriage of convenience she thought it would be a friendship.

'But they quickly discovered they weren't compatible and had a huge row. That was the end of that but she never divorced him.

In the Reeling and Writhing play, Hunter is depicted as a violent man, smashing windows and bullying her when she sought peace at Li Yuan-chia's art studio in Cumbria.

Though he is Delia's legal heir, Clive Blackburn says that "After she died we advertised for him to come forward but he never did."