Angus: I've been had

As the acid-tongued host of TV's Have I Got News For You, Angus Deayton is always quick to poke fun at the sexual indiscretions of others.

This week he faces some barbed comments at his own expense after it was revealed that he stripped naked and snorted cocaine with an escort girl.

Deayton, 45, who lives with scriptwriter Lise Meyer and their one-year-old son, spent two nights in hotels with blonde Caroline Martin, 29.

She told how he sniffed cocaine through a £20 note and admitted to her that he had almost been caught carrying the drug through customs after a trip to Amsterdam.

Deayton, said by his previous partner to have confessed to using prostitutes in the past, was repentant yesterday. ' I've made a terrible mistake, obviously,' he said.

He attempted to laugh off his indiscretion by suggesting that his co-stars on the BBC1 satirical news quiz, Ian Hislop and Paul Merton, will have a field day.

'I'm devastated by the hurt this has caused to those loved ones close to me,' he added, 'but I'm sure Ian and Paul will help soften the blow with their usual sympathetic attitude on the show.

'It certainly looks like I've been had in more ways than one.'

Whether Miss Meyer will take such a light-hearted view of the affair remains to be seen. Neither she nor Deayton would answer the door yesterday at their £2million townhouse in Islington, North London.

Matthew Freud, Deayton's publicist, said: 'I do not think this will be professionally damaging but it is relationship damaging. Angus will probably be doing the baby's night feeds for the foreseeable future.'

Deayton, who in 1994 walked out on pop singer Stephanie de Sykes after a nine-year relationship, seems to have been the victim of a classic Sunday newspaper sting.

Miss Martin, described by the News of the World as a 'high- class hooker', apparently met him five weeks ago in a Manchester bar and they exchanged phone numbers.

It is claimed that he did not realise she was a prostitute and simply 'chatted her up'.

They first met for sex, she said, on the night of Saturday May 11 at the Malmaison Hotel in Manchester. Deayton, a Manchester United fan, had watched the team play Charlton at Old Trafford. The following morning he was travelling south for the lavish pre-World Cup party held by David and Victoria Beckham at their Hertfordshire mansion.

'I arrived at his room just before midnight and even though it was late, Angus did not appear to be in a rush,' said Miss Martin.

'We chatted for ages. He commented on my top and I told him I had a thong to match. He was wearing a white T- shirt and said he had matching underpants too!

'Then we decided to compare our heights and that's when he pulled me into his arms and kissed me.

'Gradually we moved over to the bed where we undressed each other.

'We made love three or four times one after the other. I lost count. I had to leave early because he wore me out.'

The couple met again, according to the paper, last Friday in London at the Hilton Park Lane Hotel.

'He told me he'd been there all day because he was a guest speaker at some plastics convention,' said Miss Martin.

'He asked me to get there at about 11pm and when I arrived he already had pink champagne on ice. We drank and chatted. He made me feel very relaxed and very sexy.

'But I was astonished when he started talking about drugs and told me he'd almost been caught taking cocaine through customs. Apparently he was given a gram of coke in Amsterdam, put it in his wallet then returned to Britain.

'He said that the next day he was at Stansted Airport for a flight to Italy when some security people opened up his bag. He was terrified. He reckoned he'd be out of a job if they found the coke. They even looked in his wallet but they didn't spot the stuff.

'Mind you, I didn't get the impression that he was a big drug user at all. He told me he never takes cocaine when he's working and only uses it occasionally to relax.'

Miss Martin said Deayton went on to describe the Beckhams' party, claiming that Victoria had bragged to Graham Norton that her necklace was worth 'a million and a half quid'.

She added: 'Angus told me that he took some ecstasy once and then he said he liked uppers. It was after that he said, "I've got some coke."

'We were sitting facing each other on a sofa and he was staring at my breasts. When I told him I'd experimented with a girlfriend and had a threesome it blew his mind.

'It was then that he lined up some coke and snorted it through a £20 note. The minute he did it he was rampant.'

Miss Martin went on to describe 'incredible' lovemaking that made her 'groan for mercy'.

She added: 'He'd have gone on until breakfast but I couldn't take any more. I got dressed, kissed him goodbye and left.'

According to Miss Martin, she had never mentioned that she was a prostitute and had 'fallen' for Deayton without realising he had a partner and a child.

'I'd even decided on our next date to tell him about my escort work,' she was quoted as saying. 'He seemed the kind of man who wouldn't judge me. I was going to promise him that if we got together I'd stop seeing any clients and just be with him.

'I really thought we had something. Obviously he's a famous TV star so I wasn't expecting a white wedding after such a short time, but when a friend of mine told me he already had a partner I felt devastated. I called him, but before I could say anything he told me, "It's over between us. It was a mistake".'

Despite this apparent devastation, Miss Martin wasted no time in approaching the News of the World to share her experiences with its readership.

The account had echoes of Stephanie de Sykes's words after Deayton left her in 1994. She said he had confessed to having paid a call girl £80 for a night in an Australian hotel. The singer also claimed Deayton had hit her, and that she had found a hoard of pornographic magazines in his office.

Yesterday at her home in Woking, Surrey, Miss de Sykes said: 'He is up to his old tricks again, and I am sure his partner is devastated. I still remember how I felt when I discovered what he had been up to.

'It comes as no surprise to me - old habits die hard.'

The Australian incident also led to embarrassment for Deayton on Have I Got News For You.

His co-stars referred repeatedly to the allegations and he was left squirming and desperately trying to change the subject as guest Martin Clunes teased him.

As Deayton described the luxurious interior of the Ritz Hotel, Clunes interjected: ' Well up to the standards of Australian hotels, then?'

Deayton later said a comment made by Ian Hislop was 'below the belt.' Hislop retorted: 'I'll leave that sort of thing to you Angus.'

The son of an insurance salesman and a cookery teacher, Deayton attended Caterham School in Surrey and went on to read French and German at New College, Oxford.

As well as fronting Have I Got News For You he appeared as Victor Meldrew's neighbour in One Foot In The Grave. He is paid £50,000 for hosting the Bafta Awards each year, and presents various entertainment specials for the BBC.

He met Lise Meyer while working on the TV series In Search of Happiness. She had also dated Harry Enfield, Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Rik Mayall.

Matthew Freud added last night that Deayton 'is a bit chastened and feels like an idiot because he has been done up like a kipper by this girl.

' Obviously as someone who has spent 15 years revelling in other people's misfortune, Angus is sanguine about getting bucket-loads back.

'He will not be getting on his high horse, but it is not true to say that Angus is a druggie.'