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IT WAS A CRISP, CLEAR SUNNY DAY IN JANUARY AND I WAS feeling distinctly bored. I hadn't been on a good rip-roaring yarn for quite a few weeks, and I couldn't see any great stories on the horizon either. Nor was I looking forward to struggling through the South London traffic to spend a whole Wednesday 'creating' a convincing set of expenses to cover the previous week of inactivity.

As I lay in bed surrounded by my three baby children -who'd been kicking me in the groin for most of the night - I seriously considered not bothering to go in to work. I must be getting old, I thought to myself, at the age of twenty-four.

Then, without prior warning, a set of newspapers landed a direct hit on my weary face. My darling wife had grabbed them from the doorstep and hurled them in my direction - so thoughtful. One of the biggest annoyances about being married to a journalist is the incredible number of newspapers and magazines that end up scattered round the house. On a normal day I would have all the tabloids plus at least two so-called 'heavies' delivered to my home. So it was hardly surprising that the weight of these papers landing on my face snapped me out of my lethargy. I kept to the same reading routine every morning. I would start with The Sun, move to the Daily Mail and then switch to the Daily Mirror. By the time I had read all three, I reckoned to have taken in ninety per cent of tabloid world news for the day.

On this particular morning I went through my favoured routine, and by the time I'd got halfway through the Mirror was feeling distinctly depressed again. Quite simply, there wasn't one good story to follow up for The Sunday Mirror. What on earth was I going to do all week? I knew that my beloved news editor PJ. Wilson was obsessed by the need to follow up big stories in the daily papers, but there was nothing to chase. Another strain-free week in Holborn Circus trying to stand up useless tip-offs from desperate freelancers. What a drag.

To make matters worse, as I lay in bed I felt a pool of water forming under my thigh. No, pool is the wrong word. It was a gushing torrent, and my leg felt sticky. I looked under the sheets and noticed that my bottomless two-year-old had decided to abandon his potty training in favour of a far simpler method. It was at that unfortunate point that I turned to the Peter McKay diary page near the centre of the Daily Mirror. My attention was caught by a very strange lead article on an actor going off on holiday to the Caribbean with a sixteen-year-old girl. I read on and discovered they had only departed the day before. The actor was Oliver Reed.

Now it just happened that I lived in Reed's old stomping ground of Wimbledon and I vaguely knew his son Mark. At nineteen he was somewhat older than his old man's travelling companion. That in itself seemed a good line to pursue. The extraordinary thing about the article in question was that it didn't even name the young girl, and it also lacked details of exactly where the two had gone. But then it was only a diary story, and they tend not to be very detailed. But this was what astonished me most. Why had the Daily Mirror failed to recognise the potential of the story their diarist had written and hidden it in the column, rather than developing it into a fully-blown news story - as I fully intended to do myself?

A combination of my baby son's wee and my interest in this obvious scoop sparked me into action and I grabbed the phone and rang PJ at home. Damn. He'd already left for the office. Not surprising, I guess, since he lived in deepest Kent and faced a two-hour journey each way into work. Suddenly I felt really desperate to get into work. Having woken in an apathetic state which rapidly turned to damp depression, I had now gone full circle and felt absurdly optimistic and full of vim.

Almost immediately the curse of all Fleet Street operators set in - paranoia. What if someone else had read the article in question? After all, three million people did read the Mirror every day. I suppose it was reasonable to expect the odd journalist to be amongst them. More worrying still, perhaps one of my rivals on The Sunday Mirror was going through exactly the same thought process as myself. There was only one thing for it. I would have to get into the office at least half-an-hour early and wait for PJ to emerge from the lift so I could nab the story first. I bathed and dressed at high speed and refused all offers of breakfast. As I fought my way through the screaming babies and screaming wife towards the front door my only thoughts were on Oliver Reed and a sumptuous Caribbean location. I had to get there - I had to be the one to crack it.

Driving through the thick, slow South London traffic, I twisted and turned into every short-cut I knew in a crazed attempt to get to that office before anyone else. Forty-five minutes later I drove at breakneck speed down the '5 mph Max' ramp into the Mirror's underground car park, ignoring the cursing of the attendant and various other unfortunates who got in my way. Just a few minutes later I emerged from the lift at the fifth floor and ran into the open plan office that doubled as newsroom and rubbish tip for The Sunday Mirror.

Not a soul was in. I had missed breakfast, nearly killed myself on the streets of South London, and even ignored the Chairman when he'd tried to stop for a chat - all to make sure I got in with the story first. And no one was fucking well in! Rather than drown in my own disappointment, I decided to take the Ollie Reed story as far as I could on the phone while waiting for PJ to appear. I started ringing round all my Wimbledon friends in an effort to locate Reed's minder who, according to the Daily Mirror piece, had accompanied the two on their sojourn in the sun.

It was during one of these calls that PJ merrily strolled in to the newsroom looking, as he always did, as if he hadn't a care in the world. 'Morning, Wense,' he yelled across to me, failing to spot the telephone receiver glued to my right ear. I nodded and at the same time established that the contact I was talking to didn't have a clue where Reed's minder had gone. I slammed down the phone and made for PJ's desk. But at that precise moment he picked up the phone and dialled out. My heart sank. I had to tell him, and now. So I walked round to the area right next to his chaotic desk and stood deliberately close by, hoping he would feel so inhibited by my presence that he'd stop talking on the phone and give me my story. Unfortunately my ploy failed completely. PJ could be a pretty thick-skinned person at times - and this was one of them. After ten minutes of shuffling round his desk, I turned to walk away, completely deflated by my failure to talk to him. Then I heard the welcome clunk of the receiver hitting the cradle and I turned back to have my say.

'PJ, look at this,' I said, thrusting the McKay column under his nose.

He looked blankly at it. Obviously he hadn't even noticed it whilst reading the papers on the 7.40 from Faversham. The silence was killing me so I committed a sin that tabloid journalists regularly manage. I took a flyer. By that I mean I pretended I was already in possession of new information about the story that would guarantee I would be assigned it.

'I know where they're staying in the Caribbean and I've got the home address of the son and minder. With any luck I'll soon have the details on the girl as well,' I lied blatantly.

PJ looked ecstatic. He'd obviously been feeling the same way about that morning's papers as I had, and wondering where he'd find a hot story to put on the schedule for the first editorial conference of the week later that day. He was more than happy to clutch at the odd straw and, let's face it, that was absolutely all I had to offer at that stage.

'Fantastic, mate. Get stuck in to it. You'll be on your way to the West Indies at this rate!' he said, not meaning a word of it.

I was like a bull in a china shop. I had to have this story at any cost. Within seconds of leaving PJ's side I was hitting the phones in a desperate search for all the information I'd told him I already had. It's funny how things go. If you really believe you're going to achieve something, nine times out of ten you do. Especially if you put the extra pressure of a few lies to live up to on yourself. That is precisely what happened that morning. I was doggedly determined to take PJ up on his promise of a glamorous trip to the Caribbean. Soon I had the name of the street in Wimbledon where Reed's minder lived, I had Mark Reed's phone number and address, and I had established that the girl lived near Ollie's country seat in Ockley, Surrey.

By lunchtime I was knocking on doors in a shabby road in downtown Wimbledon, speaking to neighbours of the minder. One old dear happily volunteered the information that he was in Barbados for two weeks with 'Mr Reed, the famous film star'. I was beginning to get somewhere. Next came Mark Reed. He was the spitting image of his old man - tall and dark, with those piercing blue eyes that made Reed one of the best looking actors of his day. The problem with Mark was that he wasn't a thespian he was a salesman, and he lived, to a certain degree, in the shadow of his father.

He wasn't at home when I called round, but when I telephoned half-way through the afternoon Mark answered the phone and couldn't resist filling me in on the details of his Dad's holiday plans. Mark only knew the girl's first name, but what he did do was give me the name of the villa on Barbados where they were all staying. I honestly don't think that he actually realised why I was asking until after I'd put the phone down.

By this time, the only thing on my mind was the weather in Barbados at that time of year. Everyone kept telling me January was the ideal month, not too hot but not too rainy either. It all sounded perfect to me, but before my beach'n'cocktails dreams came true I had to take a slightly shorter and less agreeable trip to Ockley, in Surrey, to carry on my research into the girl's family.

Ockley is a strange place. It's neither real countryside nor real suburbia - and certainly lacks the charm of a village a long way from London. My first objective was to find Ollie Reed's house near the village and work outwards from there. It wasn't difficult to track down. As I drove along what seemed like a quiet country lane I couldn't help but notice a life-size plastic rhino standing by the gates of an impressive looking country house. I had arrived at the court of jester Reed.

The house was completely dead - not surprising, really, when you consider that its master was six thousand miles away lapping up the Barbados sun. But by finding the house, I could establish a most important bit of background info - where the nearest pub was. I didn't need to be Einstein to know that any local hostelries would know all about hard-drinking Oliver Reed.

It was about seven in the evening when I walked into Reed's local. It was a Wednesday and I knew the only flight to the West Indies that would get me there in time to complete the story and file for the first Sunday edition was at nine-thirty the next morning. It was the ultimate incentive.

In the pub I approached the locals tactfully - no mention of being a newspaperman. That would be the worst move of all. I said I was a friend of Reed's and couldn't understand why he wasn't in because I had an important appointment with him.

'Oh, he's gone off on holiday,' said the landlord. How did the landlord know you might ask. It turned out Reed had hosted a massive farewell party at the pub the night before his departure. He must be one of the few people in the world who has a farewell party just before he goes on a two-week holiday!

Soon I had established all the facts I needed. The name of the girl, where she went to school, and - most important of all -where she lived. As it happened it was opposite the pub. My luck was in and I was sure I was on my way to Barbados.

A hard knock on a thick wooden door belonging to a rather twee little house was my next move. It was the home of Josephine Burge - Ollie Reed's Barbados companion. A young man answered and told me his sister was away in the West Indies without even bothering to ask me who I was. It is extraordinary how many people will tell you all sorts of secrets before even making that simple request.

Not surprisingly my reply, when he did finally ask, didn't go down too well and - not for the first or last time in my career - the door was firmly closed in my face. But I didn't care. I already had enough. I was cock-a-hoop.

There was now just one small obstacle between me and the beach - PJ. Wilson. When it came to crunch time, PJ had to be certain it was worth sending me, and that meant a sixth degree interrogation. Finding a phone box in a place like Ockley shouldn't really have proved too difficult, you would have thought... wouldn't you? It took me over an hour of cruising round vandalised phone boxes before I managed to get through to PJ, by now back at his own country home in Kent.

'I've got it all, PJ,' I exclaimed.

'Great, mate,' he replied hesitantly. I knew he was considering backtracking on the Barbados carrot that had been dangled before me so enticingly just a few hours earlier. Immediately I began bombarding him with the facts I had established.

By the end of the conversation he asked me, typically, 'Are you sure, Wense?'

I took a gulp and assured him: 'I have no doubt that Reed, the minder and the girl are in Barbados now. You've got to let me go there.'

'What time's the flight in the morning?'

'It leaves at nine-thirty. There's not another one till Friday.'

'Oh, right... ' PJ sounded heartbroken that I was so far ahead of the game. Maybe he was hoping that I wouldn't know the flight times and that would mean a further delay. No chance. I was a Fleet Street journalist for Christ's sake!

A short silence followed. I didn't know what to say so I just held my breath.

'Off you go then, mate. Ring me from the airport.'

I couldn't believe my ears. He'd given the trip the go ahead. I laughed out loud to myself as I walked back to the car. I was delirious.

Little did I know what lay in store for me.

 

I got home at about eleven that night. The whole family were asleep so I crept into bed and just lay there, veering from joy to dread and back again as I thought about the adventure I was about to embark on. It was slowly dawning on me that I had committed myself to success on a story that would cost The Sunday Mirror thousands of pounds in air fares and expenses alone. In reality I still had a long way to go before I had the complete tale. Barbados, in fact. If this didn't turn out to be one of my best stories, I'd need my best excuses when I got back.

Next morning I was up at the crack of dawn. As usual the babies were sprawled across the entire bed, having all insisted on sleeping with us. I packed my ludicrously small overnight bag without once thinking about the hot climate I was about to travel to. But the weather in Barbados had long since left my thoughts. I was panicking. I was terrified. Maybe the whole story was going to be a massive cock-up. Maybe when I got there I'd discover that Reed et al had decided they couldn't take the heat and taken the first flight back to good old England.

It was a pointless line of thought, but PJ's last words to me kept ringing in my ears: 'Are you sure they are there, mate? I'd hate you to go all that way and find they're not around.'

I drove to Heathrow Airport in a sort of daze. Why the hell had I pursued the story in the first place? At the check-in I was as nervous as an unaccompanied minor. I broke out in a hot sweat, and as the perspiration streamed off my face the check-in lady from British West Indian Airways looked terribly concerned. 'Are you OK, sir?' she asked with a delightful West Indian smile. 'Fine,' I said. It didn't exactly describe my feelings, but what else could I say?

Then came the big moment. The check-in phone call to PJ. Wilson. Would he tell me to abandon the trip? I hoped so. I was by now utterly paranoid. I'd decided a trip to Barbados was the very worst thing one could experience in life. Or maybe the pessimist inside me kept thinking that way so I wouldn't be too disappointed if PJ called the trip off. I was in such a stew I didn't know what I was feeling. As it happened, PJ didn't have a great deal to say to me except: 'Get on the plane, mate. You lucky bastard.'

 

I have omitted to mention so far that I am terrified of flying. I'd even forgotten this myself - until I boarded the plane and felt my stomach lurch. It turned an entirely civilised flight with BWIA into a second nightmare that competed violently in my head with my fears and doubts about the story I was chasing. When the ropey old Tristar finally touched down at Bridgetown Airport, I was one hell of a relieved man, I can tell you. On one count, anyway...

In any other business of an international nature, a colleague or contact would normally be at the airport to greet you on arrival in a strange and foreign land. Not so in the highly organised world of tabloid newspapers, I am afraid. For half an hour I wandered around aimlessly looking for a car hire office. It was Thursday afternoon local time and I couldn't afford to wait till the morning to start work. To be honest, in the back of my mind was the thought that if the story proved to be a red herring I could take my red face on the flight back to London the next day and no one but PJ would know I'd had anything to do with this disaster.

Eventually I managed to hire a beaten up old Datsun and, with my accommodation details scribbled on a scrap of paper, I set off up country to the exquisitely named Coconut Grove Hotel. Funnily enough, it was not a difficult place to find and I checked in at high speed, anxious to sling my stuff in my room and zoom round to the villa where the Reed ensemble were gathered.

My luck still seemed to be holding. The hotel manageress knew exactly where the villa was - just half a mile up the road. Within minutes of checking in, I was struggling up the west coast of this famous island in search of a film star with a reputation for thumping people, his minder - no doubt a hard nut too - and a sixteen-year-old girl. I should have known better!

The villa was surrounded by a ten-foot-high wall, and locked gates blocked the entrance to the driveway. But through the wrought iron I could see Reed in the garden, so I hailed him brightly.

'Hello, Mr Reed, could I have a quick word?'

He ignored me. Nothing unusual in that - except that I was standing in a roadway in Barbados and he didn't even know what I wanted. But nothing was going to budge our Ollie. He steadfastly refused to acknowledge my existence. I felt deflated. Then another man approached me from a side entrance to the huge villa. He looked well hard, and I didn't need three guesses to work out that he was the minder. 'I don't know what you want, but why don't you fuck off,' explained the minder gently.

It dawned on me that someone in England - probably the son Mark - had tipped them off that the press were in hot pursuit. But in case I was wrong I wasn't going to say anything about being a journalist just yet.

'You work for the Mirror, don't you?'

I tried to look flabbergasted.

'Come on, mate. We knew you were on your way.'

Suddenly I felt as if I was the one being exposed. My cover was blown and I'd only been on the island for about an hour.

'Just fuck off out of here and don't come back.'

'But you don't even know why I am here,' I protested lamely.

It was no good, I was on a hiding to nothing and I knew it. I retreated to the relative safety of my hotel.

I was feeling down but certainly not out when I flopped onto my bed, exhausted from the jet-lag and the disappointment of not scoring a direct hit on my first attempt.

Then I suddenly remembered that I had the phone number of the villa and I decided to give it a call. The minder answered and he seemed in a much better mood for some odd reason. Maybe Ollie wasn't in the room so he didn't have to act tough. Anyway, he seemed vaguely willing to have a conversation with me.

'I'm sorry I had to give you a bollocking, but Ollie's like a raging bull at the moment. He's got the flu and he's feeling very protective towards Josephine. He feels a responsibility to look after her and he doesn't want to upset her mum back in England since they are neighbours.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was most definitely a very encouraging step. The minder just seemed happy to be talking to an English voice. You know what it's like when you've been stuck in a foreign country' for days.

Anyway, I decided it was time to move in for the kill, so I asked the minder casually: 'Why don't you come down here to the Coconut Grove and have a drink? It's the least I can do in the circumstances.'

'I might very well do that. I feel right cooped up being here all day and night, and I'm desperate for a bar and a cold beer,' said the minder.

We bade our goodbyes and I lay down on the bed and wondered whether he would really turn up.

About an hour and a half later the phone in my room rang. No, it wasn't the minder. I was disappointed. Instead it was Charles, a local photographer commissioned by my office in London to accompany me round the island. Basically they were too sharp to send a snapper with me from London on such a long-shot assignment, so they hired some cheap labour instead. Charles was in reception waiting for me, so I strolled past the pool and the obligatory palm trees through to the lobby of the hotel to meet my brand new colleague.

Just as I had shaken his hand, a familiar sight approached me from the main entrance to the lobby. It was Minder, all six feet square of him, and he looked really pleased to be at the hotel. But it was the person with him who left me open-mouthed. She looked about sixteen, slight with elfin features.

'This is Josephine, mate,' said Minder, failing like the rest of the world to remember what my name was.

She looked shyly at me and shook my hand, but said nothing apart from, 'Hello.'

I couldn't believe my luck. Just a few hours earlier I couldn't even get through the gates to their villa but now here was Josephine coming into my hotel for a drink, and with me. It was bizarre to say the very least.

Meanwhile, sweet old Charles the photographer looked on in amazement. He had never even heard of Ollie Reed, and must have wondered what on earth these two had to do with his assignment.

So we all sat at the bar and I ordered a round of rum punches - what else do you expect in Barbados? I ignored Minder's plea for a cold beer, despite our earlier telephone conversation. Chatting was not easy to start with. I deliberately avoided all mention of Mr Reed and talked about the joys of living in the countryside instead. It was hardly a subject I know much about as I was born and bred in London, but they weren't to know that. The rum punches were soon going down at a tremendous rate but still I hadn't dared bring up the subject at hand. In fact, instead of us all relaxing and having a laugh, the going was getting stickier by the minute.

Then, without warning, Josephine turned towards me and said, as cool as a cucumber: 'He's a fantastic bloke and I don't care what you write about us.'

Minder nearly dropped his drink. No doubt Reed had briefed them both not to get pissed and start talking about anything vaguely relevant and here she was volunteering info.

I took an enormous risk and said to her: 'Look, we're not here to talk about all that. We're just here to have a good drink and nothing else.'

Minder looked relieved. What he didn't realise was that I had decided the best way to get the maximum out of her was to win her trust. That's why I had changed the subject so fast. Besides, neither of them was yet pissed enough to spill the beans completely!

It worked a treat. Josephine looked thankfully at me, and we got stuck into another four or five rounds of rum punch. Only after that did I steer the conversation gently in the desired direction. This time, Josephine really opened up. As they say in Fleet Street, she told the lot.

At this delicate stage you might be wondering why Minder hadn't stepped in to protect innocent young Josephine. The answer was quite simple, really. The rum punches had somehow got the better of him and he had zonked out on a sofa. As he snored away like a contented baby, I continued to pump Josephine in the nicest possible way. As the evening progressed I began to realise that Josephine was really quite mature for her years. In fact she was a rather motherly type - the perfect companion for the enfant terrible.

Charles, my friendly native snapper, still couldn't believe his eyes. This obviously wasn't the way journalists on the Barbados Times behaved. But to his credit, he never once complained. Instead, he politely refused every single one of my offers to buy him one of those lethal concoctions.

Drunk I may have been, but I still retained my professional nous, as Charles was about to find out. I knew the only thing missing from my great coup was the man himself, Mr Oliver Reed, and I knew I had to get to him. However, I hadn't forgotten what Minder had told me earlier, that Reed was in a foul mood because he had caught a bout of flu. How, you may ask, can someone catch flu in ninety degrees of sunshine? It seems that Mr Reed and Josephine had stopped off in Vermont, USA, for a spot of skiing before arriving in the Caribbean. Not surprisingly, the sudden change in temperature had the undesired effect on the normally robust Mr Reed. The result was what Minder pleasantly described as 'a bear with a fucking sore head'. And he even warned me: 'He'll fucking kill you if you go anywhere near the villa again.'

With that dire warning still ringing in my ears, I took a mighty gulp of my rum punch and decided there was only one thing for it - I would have to launch an Entebbe-style raid on the villa in question. God alone knows how I came to this foolhardy conclusion. I guess that although I hadn't completely taken leave of my senses I must have been in possession of several gallons of Dutch courage. Snorting appreciatively at the dregs of my punch, I told myself that nothing and no one was going to stop me seeing Mr Oliver Reed that evening.

But I still had to devise a way of slipping out of the hotel bar with Charles unnoticed by Josephine. Not an easy task in the circumstances. A mixture of pure good fortune and utter greed brought on by the vast amounts of alcohol I had consumed resulted in a plan that to my befuddled brain seemed little short of Napoleonic.

'God, I am fucking starving,' I shouted towards Charles and Josephine (Minder was still snoozing on the sofa). 'Can we get some dinner here?' I asked the bartender. The answer was no, as I very well knew it would be. It was ten-thirty, and they'd stopped serving dinner at least an hour earlier.

'Where can we grab some food, Charles?' I asked with a definite slur.

'There are some chicken bars near here. We could go to one of them,' came my comrade's answer.

One of the many strange things about Barbados is the vast number of Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaways that litter the roadside. With a speed limit of twenty-five mph throughout the island, you can hardly fail to notice them.

Anyway, at this point I turned to Josephine and Minder, who was just struggling to awaken from his slumber, and said 'I'm just popping out for some takeaway grub. I'll be back in five minutes.' They nodded in approval and I made sure Minder bought another round of rum punches to convince them I would be back as soon as I said.

As soon as I had squeezed into the passenger seat of Charles' tiny Mini, I turned to the increasingly bemused snapper and said: 'Forget the chicken, mate. We're off to Reed's villa.'

Now Charles was beginning to look positively scared, but he wasn't about to back out now and we set off with a prolonged rattle and a blast of exhaust. It was great to see that the relationship between reporters and photographers had not declined to the point it had in London, where snappers would often refuse to go on certain of the more intrepid assignments. Clearly Charles knew I was in charge, though he probably wished I wasn't. Within two or three minutes we were approaching the villa. We were in luck - the gates were open. Tut, tut. Minder and Josephine had failed to shut them on their way to meet me. I barked at Charles to drive in and up the two-hundred-yard private driveway that led to the villa itself. Charles was looking even more unrelaxed but I was way past caring. The combination of Dutch courage and pure excitement was driving me on relentlessly.

On getting out of the Mini, I noticed all the doors and windows were wide open so I took that as a welcoming gesture on the part of the Reed household and ran - well, weaved is probably more like it - up the steps to the porch. Inside a TV was blaring and a half-empty glass was sitting on a table. I knew my prey was here so, being a well-mannered sort of chap, I knocked on the door. There was no reply so I knocked again and called out, 'Mr Reed. Mr Reed? Are you in?' It's an incongruous habit of many reporters to call their victims 'Mister'. It's almost as if we need to lure our subjects into a false sense of security before launching our front-page splashes. Anyway, calling Reed Mister didn't work particularly well on this occasion because he still wasn't answering. I began to get frustrated. I knew he was in the villa and I knew I had to see him.

'Bugger this,' I thought to myself. 'He's in here and I'm going to find him.' I was about to take a huge risk with a man who was renowned for his ability to punch. But, as Mr Reed himself would no doubt agree, drink does that to you. Here goes...

I decided there and then to search the whole house from top to bottom. Charles, who wasn't privy to my innermost thoughts, had managed to read my mind - more than I was capable of, quite frankly - and he stepped back into his Mini and waited while I carried out the raid. I realised there was no way a local coloured photographer would want to be caught trespassing in a million-dollar villa, so I didn't try and drag him in with me. The first room I searched was the drawing room. It didn't take much intelligence to realise he wasn't there but I checked the huge cupboard there all the same. In my drunken state, I was convinced that Reed, sorry, Mr Reed might try and hide from me, but the cupboard was a particularly unlikely spot - it was just about large enough to hide his drink supply for that week but hardly to conceal a sixteen-stone man.

What, you might wonder, was driving me on to do this daft deed? Drink, as you know, and excitement... But also P.J. Wilson, my beloved News Editor back in London. I was convinced I'd never get another foreign assignment if I failed on this one, and I kept remembering his last words to me before I took off from Heathrow: 'Don't bother coming back if you fail!'

Now I was sweeping through all the rooms at a pace that would have impressed the Flying Squad. But still there was no sign of this lumbering giant of the big screen. Then I came to a locked room. It really annoyed me that it was locked and I started pulling the handle up and down in fury. What right I had to be angry I really don't know. After all, here I was virtually breaking and entering someone else's home. All I lacked was a pair of leather gloves and a jemmy.

Something bothered me about this locked room so I bent down and looked through the keyhole. My instincts, as usual, hadn't failed me. There, lying flat on his back on a single bed, was our Mr Reed. I cannot believe this, I thought to myself. Then the words came out of me defiantly. I must have been completely mad. 'What the fuck are you playing at, Mr Reed? I haven't flown six thousand miles for you to refuse to talk to me.'

He still hadn't moved so much as an inch, so I displayed even more Netherlands-style bravery.

'Everyone wants to know why you've run off with this girl,' I yelled. 'Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible?'

Just as I was thinking what a hypocrite I was, the door burst open. Surprise, surprise. It was Mr Reed, and he was puce with rage. I did the only thing any self-respecting survivor could do - I ran like fucking lightning through the house, with Mr Reed in hot pursuit. He was shouting stuff at me along the lines of 'Her family know all about it,' and 'We are just having a lovely time. It's no business of your's or anyone's,' and 'I don't give a damn what people think,' and 'The lady hasn't been kidnapped.' It was all marvellous stuff, even if it was somewhat unusual for an interview to be conducted as the subject chased the journalist through his own house!

As I emerged on to the porch, clever old Charles had already started up the trusted Mini. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion he was about to piss off and leave me high and dry, but we never bothered broaching the subject as it didn't actually happen. Mr Reed was about five yards behind me, shouting and yelling at the top of his voice as I slammed the Mini door shut and screamed at Charles. 'Let's get the fuck out of here.'

My unhappy snapper was looking frankly horrified, so, as the car screeched out of the driveway, I said to him: 'Welcome to Fleet Street. I suppose we behave a bit differently from the way you do over here.' Charles laughed nervously and sped back (at only twenty-five mph of course) in the direction of the Coconut Grove and my two other punters.

At least thirty minutes had elapsed since I'd left Minder and Josephine to got out for some chicken, but when I walked back into the bar there wasn't a flicker of suspicion in their faces. Minder just seemed relieved to see us because he had bought the last round and didn't like seeing drinks wasted.

Not surprisingly, the evening's fun atmosphere had evaporated somewhat following my absence, and with my two new friends now much sobered up I decided it was nightcap time.

Within half an hour they had wandered off into the night, blissfully unaware of the havoc I had caused back at the villa. I went to my room and fell into a deep sleep within minutes, happy in the knowledge that I'd already got enough in the bag to write a cracking good yarn, as PJ would hopefully call it.

 

Next morning I was awoken by a call to my room. It was about six and I felt dreadful. The combination of rum punches and jet-lag had certainly taken its toll. 'Hello,' I moaned, wearily convinced it was PJ harassing me for my story.

But no it was Minder. As I heard his voice I felt a definite tingle of fear sliding down my spine.

'Some bastard broke into the villa last night and tried to get an interview with Ollie. He's furious.'

My God, I don't believe my ears, I thought, he hasn't realised it was me!

'Do you know if there are any other journalists on the island?' asked Minder.

Despite my throbbing head, it wasn't hard to come up with the right answer.

'Yes, I think there's someone from The Sunday People sniffing around,' I answered, lying through my teeth. 'Well, if you see him, tell him he'll get a fucking thrashing if he comes near the villa again.'

It's funny how both drunkenness and hangovers make you brave. You'd think one would learn from the other, but it never quite happens that way which is why I asked more than a little naively: 'What about Mr Reed giving me an interview? Then that would kill the story for the others and we could get it all done and out of the way.'

'He wouldn't even give you the fucking time of day, mate,' answered Minder. End of phone conversation.

My next caller was, in fact, PJ. Typically, he wanted me to try for much more from Reed. He was oblivious to the goings-on in Barbados. He just kept saying, 'You haven't got enough yet, matey. We want the works.'

Unbeknown to me, the Fleet Street gossip machine had already got wind of my trip to Barbados. It was probably a combination of pub chat and the fact that we shared a travel agency with our stablemate and deadly rival The Sunday People.

I spent the morning pottering around by the pool, wondering if it was madness to try for another chat with Mr Reed and Co. Meanwhile my rival - a freelance reporter based in the States - was experiencing exactly what I was relieved to have avoided on the previous night - in other words, a right old bollocking. I later discovered that the reporter in question innocently arrived at the Reed villa and strolled through the gates just as I had hoped to do sixteen hours earlier. On seeing Mr Reed in the grounds he told him who he was... Needless to say, before he could start probing the salient points, Reed and Minder set upon him and chased him down the driveway. One of them was rumoured to be in possession of a meat cleaver at the time, but you know how these stories get exaggerated.

What amused me most was that apparently Reed thought the man was me - because we had similar features - while Minder thought it must be the 'mystery' intruder from the previous night. All in all I felt pretty pleased with myself. More fool me...

By late afternoon I had come to the sober conclusion that there was absolutely no point in pushing my luck and I'd better tell PJ I was still trying to get more from Reed while in fact avoiding him at all costs. As far as I was concerned it was only a matter of time before they put two and two together and worked out it was me who'd raided the villa the night before - remember I knew nothing of The Sunday People reporter at this stage. I had even had the good fortune to trace a photograph of Ollie, Josephine and Minder taken by a local restaurant photographer, so I didn't have to worry about making sure Charles got a photo. I told him to wander up and down the beach near the villa and see if he could snatch a shot of the two together, but I wasn't too bothered because I knew I had the whole thing in the bag.

I had just ordered my first rum punch of the day as I sat at the poolside bar when the waiter said there was a call for me. PJ again, no doubt, I thought. Probably going to pile on the pressure just once more. He just couldn't stand the thought of me relaxing and enjoying myself - as if I'd ever do that, I smirked to myself, taking a long sip through a straw. Fully prepared to tell PJ whatever he wanted to hear, I strolled over to the phone, picked up the receiver and said 'Hello.'

'You little cunt,' came a voice from the other end of the line. It certainly wasn't PJ. I'm going to get you unless you get off the island now!

This certainly didn't sound like a Fleet Street executive speaking to one of his reporters. In any case the line was far too clear to be from London. Fucking hell, it was Mr Reed himself. I'd come all this way to talk to him and here he was ringing me at my hotel. I should have been pleased. Instead I was fucking terrified. I needed this call like a hole in the head and I knew it.

'How dare you fucking well break into my home. I'll fucking have you if you come anywhere near me and my friends.'

To say I was petrified would have been the understatement of the century. Then it was Minder's turn.

'Ollie's furious. He knows it was you who came round last night and then this morning he attacked another reporter he thought was you and nearly killed him. You'd better get out quick or else he'll come looking for you.'

Now I was not only shit scared of Reed, I was nervous for my story too. Having a rival on the island was almost as serious as the prospect of being murdered by a raging bull of a film star.

'All he said was that he was from the People. If he's one of yours I suggest you advise him to fuck off as well, otherwise this will all turn very nasty,' added Minder.

Bloody hell, he's from the People, I thought; that's the worst possible news of all. At least he doesn't seem to have got anything - yet. The phone went dead and, to be frank, I knew how it felt. I feared for my health and I was terrified that the story I'd risked life and limb to get would end up on the front page of every Sunday in Britain. Still, first things first. I had to move fast. Reed and Co knew where I was staying so I had to check out as from now. The hotel manageress thought I was crazy. She was used to tourists booking in for two peaceful weeks of paradise and here I was charging out of the premises after just twenty-four hours, even though on arrival I had assured her I would be staying for at least five days.

Paranoia was now setting in with a vengeance. Before all this frenzy had blown up I had arranged to meet Charles the snapper in an hour's time. I immediately telephoned him and cancelled the meeting, saying there was no need for him to carry on working for me. I had decided I didn't trust him and he might tell Reed where I was going. It was a ludicrous thing to imagine, but when you're feeling paranoid on a strange island you do some silly things.

My next move was to look for a really secluded hotel, somewhere Reed and Co would never dream of looking for me. You may wonder why I didn't just ring PJ and tell him what was going on and get him to pull me back to London. Unfortunately life in Fleet Street just isn't that simple. There was no way I could ring him and admit what was happening. It would be an admission of fear, and in the macho world of tabloid newspapers nobody but nobody gets frightened off.

No, I had to stick it out all on my own. I knew the way to survive the onslaught of Reed and Minder was to keep on the move. I certainly managed that over the following twenty-four hours. I booked into no less than six different hotels - only to check out within hours because people were looking at me strangely in the dining room or the bellboy was acting suspiciously. By the time I had moved into my seventh hotel it began to dawn on me that perhaps I was being a shade paranoid, which is not something that usually dawns on you when you're feeling monumentally paranoid.

I was just walking up the marble steps to the lobby, feeling drained of energy but relieved that I had at last come to terms with my own ridiculous fears, when I heard a bellowing voice:

'He's tall, heavily built and has a moustache...

I stopped in my tracks and saw the unmistakable back of Oliver Reed's head. He was dressed in one of those tropical off-white suits and I could see the beads of sweat running down his neck. Shit, I thought, and turned around and ran like greased lightning back down those steps and into my tatty rented Mini-moke jeep. All that paranoia had been well founded. Reed himself was doing a hotel-to-hotel check in a furious effort to find me. Jesus, he must be steaming...

Eventually, after hours of agonised searching, I found a most unlikely spot to lay my weary head. It was a package tour hotel filled to the brim with fat American tourists eating equally fat US-imported barbecue steaks for dinner. I felt secure amongst the hordes of squealing yanks. There was no way Reed would find me here.

All the same, I had a sleepless night. I was worried about Reed; and I had to spin my story together on paper so that I could file it to London first thing the following morning.

I got up at five to phone the article through. With a four-hour time difference I knew I had to get it to London early if I was going to ensure it got in the paper that Sunday.

'Hell-raising actor Oliver Reed has spoken for the first time about his latest leading lady.

'Ollie is holidaying on a sunshine isle with sixteen-year-old schoolgirl Josephine Burge...' I filed every comma, dot and spit from my 'on the run' interview with Reed and my drinking session with Josephine and Minder. PJ was deliriously happy, and I managed to get the sort of front-page treatment in The Sunday Mirror that every reporter is competing for. It might have been bylined 'From our sweating, terrified, hungover and exhausted man in Barbados', but mercifully it wasn't.

The rest of that Saturday was spent checking in with PJ in London in a token effort to make it look as if I was still working on the story. Let me explain. Every two hours I ring London and say the immortal lines, 'Just checking in, PJ. Any problems?' To which he would always reply, 'Gissa call in a while, mate.' It was his own inimitable way of making sure I was kept on my toes, even though I had filed the story and had little left to do.

At around six that evening I performed what I hoped would be my last check-in call of the week. The only words I wanted to hear now were PJ saying, 'Get the next plane home mate.' Barbados may sound idyllic, but when a film star hunk and his beefy minder are trying to seek and destroy you, it really does make you rather anxious to leave.

'You've done a brilliant job, Wense. The Editor's told me to pass on his congratulations. Well done, mate,' said PJ.

I was delighted. You know what I wanted to hear to round off a momentous chapter...

But instead PJ asked me, 'How far are you from Antigua?'

What sort of question was this, I hear you ask. My answer was perplexed to say the least.

'Oh it's at least three islands away, PJ,' I said, without actually having a clue where Antigua was. 'Well, as a reward for doing so well on the Reed story, we'd like you to go and dig up something on the English cricketers who've just arrived in Antigua for the start of their tour of the West Indies.'

My heart sank. Not another beautiful island paradise. I couldn't take the strain. I'd run out of clean clothes, I'd been run ragged by Reed and his henchman, and now was just desperate to get off this fucking island.

'OK, PJ, what exactly do you want me to do?' I asked weakly. My biggest fault in life is that I can never say no. Rather than admit my newly developed loathing for the West Indies, I swallowed my fears and homesickness and headed for the airport to get the next plane to Antigua. It was quite late on Saturday evening by this stage, and I have to say I was just relieved to be getting off the island, even though I wasn't going home to London. The airport seemed strangely empty, but I thought nothing of it as I hurried to the travel inquiries desk to find out the time of the next flight on the infamous island-hopping service that runs between the main Caribbean centres.

Funny, no queue - apart from two European types looking pissed off. I still hadn't added two and two together, though if I'd bothered to look at the departures screens I'd have noticed the dreaded word 'Cancelled'. There was a strike, and I seemed to be the last person in Barbados to have found out about it.

It was the last straw. In fact I'd put it more strongly than that. It was the final nail in my coffin, or so I thought at the time. After half an hour of brain-aching inquiries, I established there was one flight out at six the next morning. There was no way I was going to try and find another hotel to stay in. I'd have to kip at the airport.

It was just then that I noticed a familiar hulk storming into the airport terminal. It was Reed's minder. Not far behind, I truly feared, would be the man himself. I didn't wait to find out, but fled to the gentlemen's - not a pleasant place to hide in a Caribbean airport, I can assure you. For forty dreadful minutes I huddled in a stinking, shit-filled cubicle not daring to move. God knows what all the other regulars at Barbados airport gents thought. I didn't really care about anything except saving my own skin. I'd never felt more paranoid, and never had better reason for it.

When I emerged from my lavatorial hideout, Minder had gone and so had Reed, if he was ever there in the first place. To be quite honest, I'll never be certain whether or not that whole episode was a figment of my imagination, which at the time was entirely controlled by fear.

 

The next morning I flew off to Paradise Two. It all came to nothing. Even Ian Botham wouldn't talk to me, and by Wednesday I was happily ensconced at my South London home.

But the Ollie Reed story ran and ran. By the Saturday after my return to England, PJ had me and another reporter from The Sunday Mirror camped outside Reed's Surrey home. Inside was another Sunday Mirror journalist - a rather sexy brunette who was working for us as a freelance. PJ had the 'brilliant idea' of sending this voluptuous creature into the Reed lair to get the penultimate interview on his Caribbean holiday.

But the plan backfired when said reporter knocked on the door on the Friday evening. Eventually she rang PJ and offered to file the real story about 'how wonderful Oliver Reed really is'. At this point Reed himself came on the line and thanked PJ for sending him such a charming scribe. He even said that he had personally dictated every word she was about to file to The Sunday Mirror as a 'world exclusive'. We never really found out if it was all an elaborate wind-up by Reed.

But PJ slammed the phone down on him and told colleagues at The Sunday Mirror newsdesk: 'She's flipped. I've gone and hired a mad woman as a freelancer. She's finished.' Not a word appeared in the paper the following day, but myself and fellow Sunday Mirror man Nick Ferrari were almost run over by Reed and lady hack when they sped out of the drive to his home in a Panther de Ville sports car.

I'll never know if he pointed the car at me deliberately because of my antics in Barbados, but an interesting thing happened when he finally broke his silence about his love for Josephine during an unofficial press conference in his local pub the following week. For when I shouted a question about the romance at him across a crowded saloon bar, he gave me the biggest wink and a smile I've ever seen. It was saying, 'Well played old man.' It was a nice gesture when you consider that this was the man who, not two weeks earlier, had looked verv much like he wanted to kill me.

The story had the best possible ending. Some years later Josephine and Reed were married, and have lived happily ever after.