HONEY-TRAP GIRL PULLED A FLANKER

Journalist Louise Oswald questioned Lawrence Dallaglio intimately over
drinks in a London hotel room. MATT WELLS

WHEN Lawrence Dallaglio was approached by an attractive "public
relations executive" proposing a lucrative sponsorship deal, it would
hardly have been an unusual occurrence.

After all, sports stars are often asked to lend their considerable
appeal to endorse a vast array of consumer goods.

But when the executive in question invited the England rugby captain
to a London hotel, plied him with drink and questioned him intimately
about his scoring, he should have realised that she was not interested
in his sporting prowess.

Yet as Louise Oswald's interrogation deepened, Dallaglio's replies
became ever more lurid. As the sportsman boasted about cocaine highs,
speed trips and the joys of ecstasy, Oswald could hardly have believed
the ease by which she had lured him. (The reporter even got an
unexpected bonus - Dallaglio's unexpected confession to drunken sex
orgies with a dozen Dutch prostitutes. They gave another two pages of
material for the News of the World's five-page spread at the weekend.)

The so-called "honey trap" is a fabled technique perfected by tabloid
papers down the decades. It is almost so common that it is a wonder
that so many high-profile figures fall for it. Yet it seems that men's
base weakness for buxom blondes should never be underestimated.

Dallaglio was not the first to have succumbed in such persuasive
circumstances. Dawn Alford, an investigative reporter with the Mirror,
used her charms to great effect on the teenage son of the Home
Secretary. William Straw offered to sell her cannabis, thinking that
she was just another London party girl.

Tom Parker Bowles, the godson of the Prince of Wales and son of his
friend Camilla Parker Bowles, recently confessed his cocaine use to
another pretty young NoW staffer, Nadia Cohen. She had spent days
wooing Parker Bowles at the Cannes Film Festival in southern France,
where he had been working as a film publicist.

Many other News of the World "stings" have ensnared high-profile
stars with their noses in the coke-filled trough. In October 1998, the
Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon was forced to quit after being
exposed as a cocaine user. The Radio 2 disc jockey Johnny Walker
remains suspended after being filmed allegedly snorting cocaine.

The scene of the sting almost always involves a swanky hotel room.
There are good reasons for this - they make the "victim" feel pampered
and relaxed, while their privacy provides an ideal place to make
good-quality tape (and in the latest case, video) recordings.

Nevertheless the increasingly high profiles enjoyed by the
honey-trappers have prompted questions about their role. But the
editor of the News of the World, Phil Hall, was at pains to defend his
journalists' tactics yesterday.

His paper's investigation of Dallaglio had been "proper and bona
fide", conducted in the public interest and under Press Complaints
Commission rules.

He said that tapes and videos had been made, and promised to hand them
over to the Rugby Football Union.

The undercover reporters had obtained the England captain's
"confession" fairly, he said, adding: "It was a complete and
unheralded confession. Every quote in there was on tape. There were
four hours of tape and they are in context and I am sure that the
rugby union people will let you know that in time."

Phil Hall said that Oswald had been accompanied by a male colleague,
Phil Taylor. "The two of them were in the room most of the time. Mr
Taylor had to go to the toilet every now and then, as did Miss Oswald.
They were sitting in the room for four hours with him. The worst of
the confessions were in fact made to Mr Taylor rather than to Mr Oswald."