LAWYER FACES LIFE BEHIND BARS

FORMER high-flying lawyer and international sportsman James "Jimmy''
Neale is today facing life behind bars for masterminding a UKP 5 million
drugs smuggling operation.

Ex-England hockey star Neale, who during the 1970s and 1980s enjoyed
the high life in East Anglia with his beauty queen wife, has been
convicted of smuggling Australia's biggest haul of pure ecstasy.

Under tough Australian anti-drugs legislation, 56-year-old Neale has
been told to expect to spend the rest of his life in prison, with no
prospect of parole. He will be sentenced later this year.

It represents the final shame of a man who once appeared to have
everything: a successful career, a glamorous lifestyle, a palatial
home near Colchester, and a happy home life.

He first fell from grace in 1985 when he was struck off as a
solicitor. Two years later, he was branded a disgrace to his
profession by a judge who jailed him for two years for cheating banks
and clients out of UKP 200,000.

After his release he re-established himself in the business world, but
in 1995 he was jailed again, this time for 18 months, for fraud.

His wife Rosemary, a former Miss Ipswich and Miss Norwich, left him.
Then, in 1999, she was battered to death by the couple's mentally ill
son Jonathan. The 21-year-old schizophrenic was detained indefinitely
under the Mental Health Act.

Last night, Rosemary's father Gordon Chatten, said Jimmy Neale had "no
heart and no conscience. He will get what he deserves.''

Mr Chatten said: "As far as I am concerned he will get what he
deserves, I can't be sympathetic.

"The trouble with Jimmy was he was always after the big money. He had
the world at his feet but it was never enough. He was greedy, and even
when he had everything going for him he went for bigger money and lost
it all."