Skegness Magazine

Source Skegness Standard 1st December 1971

Photo: Norman Beckett

Leone is definitely one of the family. Not only does the seven-month-old lioness live and sleep in Aby Grange, Alford, with her owner, Mrs Diane Clarke, but she has her own settee from which she watches television – colour, of course.
But then Leone has a special interest in the screen She is one of the film and television animals who will be housed in a zoo opening at Mablethorpe next Easter.
She has toured the country for the Wild Life Trust, and has appeared on television herself several times.
On Friday her travels took her to the neighbouring town of Skegness, and a curious crowd gathered at the post office to look at her chained up in the back of a parked estate car.
Later Mrs Clarke and her husband, Royston Clarke, who is curator of the new zoological gardens, gave Leone chance to stretch her legs by taking her for a walk on a lead in Algitha Road.
Other pedestrians looked on with amusement – but kept well out of the way. A passing policewoman cadet decided there was no law against it, and quickened her pace.
Walkies over, Leone bounded into the car for the journey home. But not before she had shown just how friendly a lion can be by giving Mr Clarke an affectionate cuddle.
She was born at Mablethorpe in the first litter of newly-arrives African parents. Her mother abandoned her after only a day, and she had to be reared on a bottle.