Victim apologises to Lord McAlpine after admitting abuse claims were a case of mistaken identity The man who accused a senior Thatcher-era Tory MP of abusing him while he was a resident of a north Wales care home has apologised after admitting his claims were based on a case of mistaken identity. Steve Messham, who appeared on Newsnight to make the allegations about the anonymous Tory, said that it came to his attention that a photograph handed to him in the 1990s, which he was told was of Lord McAlpine, was in fact not the former treasurer. Mr Messham offered "sincere and humble apologies" to Lord McAlpine and his family. It comes as solicitors for Lord Alpine confirmed they would be taking legal action against those who had linked him to the historical abuse claims. In a statement on Friday evening, Mr Messham said: "After seeing a picture in the past hour of the individual concerned, this [is] not the person I identified by photograph presented to me by the police in the early 1990s, who told me the man in the photograph was Lord McAlpine."