LESSON FOR LAWRENCE

Like England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio, who told all to a girl reporter from the News Of The World on Friday night while "lying on a London hotel room bed".

For weeks the Sunday paper had been discussing a spurious contract under which the 27-year-old rugby star was to sponsor a non-existent shaving foam.

Then they sent in reporter Lousie Oswald, a buxom Australian with long blonde hair. The honeytrap was set. Dallaglio was hooked.

Stretched out on the bed talking to Louise, he just couldn't stop bragging. Past times as a drug pusher, getting high on ecstacy and cocaine, drunken raves after matches, kinky sex in Amsterdam. It all came spilling out.

Five pages of it, faithfully logged on a tape recorder operated by a second reporter in the adjoining room.

It could be rubbish, pure fantasy - macho rambling meant to imress a sexy blonde. True or false, the Wasps forward is in big trouble with the rugby authorities and presumably Alice Corbett, long-time partner and mother of his two children.

Clearly Dallaglio is a victim of what the Americans call entrapment. That doesn't excuse him, but it shames me - I was once editor of that newspaper.

Despite endless talk about improving standards and the creation of a supposedly tough Press Complaints Commission, it seems to me that anything goes in Fleet Street these days.

The competiton has reached lunatic proportions as circulations plummet. They are selling half as many copies as we did 20 years ago, despite making ten times more money with fatter newspapers and far fewer problems.

We got up to all sorts of tricks, but would never place staff into a stituation anonymously unless we could say it was essential trickery in the public interest.

For instance, a reporter exposing an antique dealer ripping off OAPs wouldn't get much first-hand evidence by announcing in advance that he or she was from a newspaper. Deception in such a case would be justified.

Mind you, it wasn't always that clear cut. At the height of Prince Andrew's passionate affair with Koo Stark, we booked the room next to her mother's hotel suite and picked up their conversation by listening through tumblers placed against the connecting wall.

Poor Koo never did discover how we seemed to know every move she made. Every time she met Prince Andrew our photographers were on the spot. Once we snapped him in his vest at the window of a London flat at 2 o'clock in the morning.

There was an outcry, of course, but we claimed to be meeting a legitimate public interest in the love life of the brother of the future king. A likely story!

Incidentally, their romance was another example of how times have changed. I offered Koo a cool million pounds for the story - with pictures - of her doomed love affair, but she wouldn't divulge a word and never has done.

So Dallaglio's boasting probably would have gone unrecorded in the good old bad days. Celebrities were not asked to shoot themselves in the foot while downing large amounts of booze in the company of a blonde selling shaving foam.

My advice to Dallaglio would be to say it was a load of drunken rubbish, nobody should believe a word of it - and the writ for libel is in the post.

EXHAUSTION'S TO BLAME

HAVING been there myself, I imagine Sarah Kennedy must be suffering agonies over her very public brainstorm last week while standing in for Terry Wogan on Radio 2's breakfast show.

Among other gaffes the 48-year-old presenter called the Rev John Newbury an "old prune", suggested a newsreader had soiled his pants and asked a "naughty" traffic girl how much she cost. Fellow DJ Ken Bruce was described as "an old fool".

Oh dear, oh dear. Apologies all round. Sarah's friends were quick to explain she was exhausted, not drunk, as she had had only two hours sleep. Newspapers reported the Beeb was "bombarded" with protests - well, 20 calls actually.

I'm sure lack of sleep was to blame. I filled the Wogan slot on Radio 2 for five years before the great man returned from television and there were times when I climbed the walls of the studio, bawling out everyone in sight.

Imagine having to be in bed by 9pm to get up at 5 o'clock so as to make the studio in time to prepare the day's programme. I got hooked on rohypnol - the rape date drug - but still slept fitfully and was exhausted most of the time. It's like being permanently jetlagged.

Your social life is zilch - there's a heavy price to pay in lost sleep for outings. Weekends and days off are a dead loss because you are totally zonked. Emotionally drained, too. After rabbiting on air for a couple of hours, you're not up to talking to anybody.

Friday mornings are worst because you're coming to the end of a long, painful week. That's what must have hit Sarah Kennedy. Where she went wrong was letting it all hang out on air. She should have saved for the long-suffered production staff. They get used to it.

Why do we do it? Well, wouldn't you?

REAL FOOD FOR THOUGHT INDEED

ELLEN'S got me bang to rights this time. "You can't live on air," I always tell the wife when she complains about being married to a workaholic. Well, apparently you can.

Would you believe, she's trying to get me to a lecture at Hove Town Hall on Thursday by one Jasmuheen, an Australian businesswoman who says she's a "breatharian" and has not taken food for six years.

Jasmuheen, real name Ellen Greve, lives on water, herbal tea - and air. Don't try it at home. First you have to become vegetarian and then vegan before moving on to liquids for six months and taking an initiation test.

Sorry, Ellen, can't make it - you know Thursday is my night for double egg and chips - with bread and butter. Pass the ketchup, please.

SORRY - THAT'S THE LAST TIME

WHAT a shambles! Normally I steer clear of politicians, but on Sunday night agreed to act as neutral chairman at a meeting called to hear the views of candidates in the European elections on June 10.

Stone me - do they ever stop bitching, snarling and snapping at each other like a bunch of unruly schoolkids.

With democracy in mind, I gave eight of the candidates represented at Friends House ten minutes each to put their views and announced I would then take questions and comment from the floor.

You can imagine the rest. As soon as we got to the general debate, who should demand the right to speak but the same bunch we had listened to ad infinitum.

They then started to rubbish each other and turned on yours truly when I objected.

Never again, dear friends. There's nothing like politicians to put people of politics.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.