DRUGS, PRIVACY AND THE PRESS

Mark Honigsbaum, Yvonne Ridley And Denis Campbell On The Week In Which A
Succession Of Juicy "Exposes" Rebounded On Their Instigators

When Lawrence Dallaglio arrived at Langan's brasserie in London's Mayfair to
meet two representatives of Gillette six weeks ago, he had no reason to be
suspicious. The 6ft 4in England rugby captain had spent the earlier part of
the evening of 22 April at a testimonial dinner for another rugby player,
Damien Cronin. By the time he arrived at the swish West End restaurant at
11pm he was already the worse for drink.

Accompanied by his agent, Ashley Woolfe, Dallaglio was convinced that
Gillette was about to offer him a lucrative, two-year sponsorship deal.
Negotiations had begun on 14 April when Woolfe was approached out of the
blue by a creative director purporting to represent 'a major American
multinational client'. At a subsequent meeting at a bar in Sloane Square the
advertising rep had revealed to Woolfe that the client was none other than
the shaving products manufacturer.

Over steak and lobster washed down with champagne, the Gillette executives
warmed to their theme. If Dallaglio would agree to endorse Gillette's
products, the company would pay him A3500,000 and associate his name with
grants to inner-city rugby teams.

Dallaglio was thrilled. Ever since dropping out of Ampleforth, the Yorkshire
public school, ten years ago, the 26-year-old Wasps flanker had harboured
dreams of bringing rugby to the inner city. He readily agreed to accompany
'Miss Wood' and 'Mr Taylor' back to their suite at the Park Lane Hilton to
discuss the deal in more detail.

Two hours and five bottles of champagne later, Dallaglio emerged unaware
that he might have just destroyed his career. For Miss Wood and Mr Taylor
were respectively Louise Oswald and Phil Taylor of News of the World. The
meeting with Dallaglio was an elaborate ruse.

The planning had begun three months ago with a tip-off to the NoW's newsdesk
that Dallaglio was a secret drug user and culminated with a second, even
more elaborate, sting at the Conrad Hotel in Chelsea, west London, ten days ago.

This time Dallaglio thought he was being asked to attend a Gillette photo
'shoot'. Indeed, when he arrived at the suite at 8pm on 21 May he was
greeted by a NoW photographer and make-up artist. It was only at the end of
the photo session, during which Dallaglio posed with various Gillette
shaving products, that Oswald invited him for another drink.

Three days later the transcripts of the two booze-fuelled conversations,
during which Dallaglio appears to confess to taking cocaine and Ecstasy,
were splashed all over NoW's front page.

It was the first in a series of questionable tabloid exposes. On Monday came
the Sun's tale of an Australian receptionist's supposed midnight 'romps'
with comedian Lenny Henry. On Tuesday, the paper splashed with news of
another Australian's 'sex sessions' with ex-cricketer Ian Botham.

But it was the Sun's decision to bare royal bride-to-be Sophie Rhys-Jones's
breast on its infamous Page 3 on Wednesday that finally turned the tables on
the red-tops. All of a sudden it was not the hapless celebrities who were in
the dock, but the tabloids themselves. Step forward public enemy number one:
Sun editor David Yelland.

Despite Yelland's hasty and far from grovelling apology, the result is that
once again press intrusion is the issue of the day. In particular, there are
mounting concerns that what looked at the start of the week like a fair cop
for Dallaglio may actually turn out to be something altogether different.

Just as questions were raised about the NoW's recent expose of London
Burning star John Alford, so Dallaglio's people are now suggesting he may be
more sinned against than sinning. 'It's not that he doesn't remember, it's
that he genuinely doesn't understand what happened,' claims his PR Sara Pearson.

Then there is the issue of the reporters posing as representatives of
Gillette without the company's permission. 'In America a journalist simply
cannot impersonate people,' comments Mark Stephens, a media lawyer at
Stephens Innocent. 'Once you start lying, where does the lying stop?'

In this week of all weeks that is not an easy question to answer. However,
for those wishing to avoid being pilloried - whether they be sportsmen or
editors - one lesson is already clear: beware of blondes bearing gifts.

Just as Dallaglio was undone by the young and buxom Oswald (another
Australian blonde), so Yelland was undone by the older model: Kara Noble, a
44-year-old blonde radio presenter.

Rumours about the pictures had been circulating in Fleet Street for years.
But it wasn't until 2 March that the Sun got confirmation the snaps existed
when an enterprising reporter rang Capital Radio's Chris Tarrant.

Yes, said Tarrant, Noble had taken the snap of him jesting with Rhys-Jones
in the back of a car during a Capital roadshow in Spain in 1988, but the
photographs were hardly 'X-rated.'

Once the news was out, Noble was besieged by offers - and not just from the
Sun. NoW editor Phil Hall told the publicist Max Clifford he thought the
pictures might be worth A350,000. And despite the Mirror's claims this week
that it would never have 'countenanced' publication, sources close to Noble
insist the paper's editor Piers Morgan had also been interested.

At first Noble, who had graduated from weather girl at Capital to co-hosting
her own show on London's Heart FM, assured her boss Richard Huntingford, the
managing director of Heart's parent company Chrysalis, that she had no
intention of selling the photos.

Just to be sure, however, Huntingford proposed that Heart buy the copyright
and, after making a donation to Noble's charity of choice, assign the photos
to Rhys-Jones. Unfortunately, at a dinner at the Hyde Park Hotel on 25 March
with her former employer, Brian MacLaurin, Rhys-Jones rejected the deal.

'If I can't trust Kara, who can I trust? Besides if I try to buy the
photograph it looks like a cover-up and I have nothing to hide,' she said.

MacLaurin believes it was that snub that laid the foundations for the
extraordinary events of last week. 'This was never about money for Kara, it
was about fame. She was desperate to move into television and she thought
that a story about her role in handing over the pictures would do it.' In
April, Clifford claims Noble approached him via a lawyer to broker a deal,
but he rebuffed her. Then in early May she opened negotiations with Yelland.
Noble's price was A3100,0000, plus 25 per cent of the overseas syndication.

According to sources at Wapping, Yelland - desperate for a big scoop to
impress Rupert Murdoch - rapidly agreed. The result was that by last Sunday
he thought he was sitting on not one scoop but three.

The first came on Monday. With his rivals still distracted by the Dallaglio
revelations, the Sun splashed on Lenny Henry's night with 26-year-old Merri
Cheyne in a hotel in York. Then, on Tuesday, he followed it with Botham's
'steamy sex sessions' with Karen Berrells in Hove.

On closer inspection, however, both stories bore the signs of being hastily
cobbled together. Merri Cheyne's romps with Henry turned out to be a litany
of innuendo - reporters had spotted her entering Henry's hotel room at 11pm
and leaving at 11am the next morning, but no one could confirm they had had
sex. Similarly the Sun had not managed to verify Berrells's occupation.
Also, it was hardly news that 'randy cricket legend' Botham - a man whose
autobiography, Don't Tell Kath, is addressed to his long-suffering wife -
had been caught with his pants down yet again.

Nevertheless that afternoon, as Dallaglio held a press conference admitting
he had taken drugs as a youngster, Yelland believed he was about to emulate
Manchester United's bid for the treble.

The only other people who knew of the deal were his deputy Rebekah Wade, his
number three Andy Coulson, and Les Hinton, chief executive of News
International. The Sun's royal correspondent was kept in the dark and a
spoof first edition was prepared to throw rival newspapers off the scent.

At about 9pm Yelland, Wade and Coulson slipped into Joe Allen's, in London's
Covent Garden, to toast their coup with champagne. But the celebration was
premature.

By the time Yelland left the restaurant at around midnight, the Mirror and
Daily Mail's second editions, accusing the Sun of a crass error of judgment,
were already on sale. And when the first edition of the Evening Standard hit
the streets at 10am on Wednesday, emblazoned with the one-word headline,
'Cruelty', the battle was as good as over.

Yelland's fatal mistake, like Dallaglio's, was excess hubris. News of the
Sun's real front page had leaked when the paper tried to book airtime on
Capital and Heart FM's to promote its story.

The result was that by 5.50pm on Tuesday MacLaurin was already planning how
to hit back. First he called the Mail and the Mirror, then he phoned Chris
Tarrant to help him with his broadside on his radio show the following
morning. By Wednesday afternoon the establishment had closed ranks and
Yelland was public enemy number one.

It remains to be seen whether his decision to pull the remaining photos will
get him off the hook. Instead of grovelling he affected a light-hearted tone
in his apology, saying the picture was nothing more than 'playful fun' and
joking that he did not 'expect to be invited to the wedding'.

'My feeling is that this could turn out to be another Hillsborough,' says
Max Clifford, referring to the Sun's unpopular coverage of the disaster at
Sheffield Wednesday's ground ten years ago. 'Yelland should have bought the
pictures and sent them gift-wrapped to Sophie and Edward as a wedding
present. Instead of being the villain he would have been a hero.'

Whether NoW fares any better remains to be seen. This weekend the Daily Mail
was desperately digging for dirt on Oswald and other so-called 'Hall's
Angels' - the coterie of female reporters chosen by Phil Hall as much for
their physical attributes as their investigative skills.

As a result, Hall has threatened to sack anyone caught indulging in anything
other than alcohol on the premises.

This weekend it was rumoured NoW was planning to publish further revelations
of Dallaglio's drug taking. But Dallaglio's advisers insist that whatever
happens he will not be making further comment.

'His future is now in the hands of the RFU,' says Sara Pearson. 'His view is
that once this thing has blown over he could be a very good ambassador for
young people - someone who, having messed around with drugs in their youth,
is trying to put it all behind him.'

That has still to be proven. But if arguments for a privacy Bill banning
press intrusion into private lives gains strength, the tabloids may come to
rue last week as much as Dallaglio.