Mystery continues to surround Christopher Shale’s death at Glastonbury after a pathologist's tests came back inconclusive.
The Tory official, 56, who was a close friend of David Cameron was found dead in a Glastonbury toilet hours after receiving a phone call from No. 10 Downing street warning him that a leaked memo was going to be published in a Sunday newspaper.
He was discovered slumped in a toilet cubicle in theVIP area of the festival on Sunday morning after the alarm was raised by concerned family members at Worthy farm.
It is believed his his body may have lain undiscovered for up to 10 hours.
Festival organiser Michael Eavis initially said he believed it was a ‘suicide situation’, however this has been denied by the police.
Shale was chairman of the Conservative association which covers Cameron’s constituency of Witney, Oxfordshire. On Saturday Shale received a call from Barry Norton, the Prime Minister’s election agent, warning him that an article, due to be published by the Mail on Sunday the following day, would reveal a critical memo that he had written about the failings of the Conservative party.
In the memo, Shale describes parts of the Tory party as “crass and grasping” and said that, “we are not always a group of people to whom many of our potential members are going to be magnetically drawn.”
However, according to Downing Street, Shale was not being rebuked for the memo and his death was not related.
The inquest, which lasted just a few minutes, was adjourned until a later date by East Somerset Coroner Tony Williams.
