A FILM company making a movie about a notorious serial killer has received a snub from a South Lakeland author.

Local historian and lay reader Roger Bingham is refusing to allow a book he wrote to be featured in a film about Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

Mr Bingham said the revelation that Sutcliffe was a fan of his book Lost Resort? The Flow and Ebb of Morecambe left him cold.

Coun Bingham, chairman of Cumbria County Council and a lay reader at St Peter’s Parish Church, Heversham, said: “I’ve done many articles and taken part in television programmes because of the book, but when they said it was a film called Peter concerned with Sutcliffe I said I was not prepared to be associated with it.”

As a young man Sutcliffe used to holiday with his family at Arnside and the ashes of his father, John, were scattered in Arnside in June 2004.

Much of the film will be shot in London but several scenes will be filmed on the pier at Arnside and at the Winter Gardens in Morecambe.

Coun Bingham said: “I don’t need that sort of publicity for my books. I am in public life and I would not wish to have my public position associated with such a person.”