Victim of the classic tabloid sting

When England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio met Louise Oswald he probably thought she was a young fan who would be impressed by his boasts of wild partying and drug taking. Instead she was a honey-trap from the News of the World, probably tape-recording every word he said.

He appears to have fallen for an incredibly successful modus operandi the London tabloid newspaper has been using for many years to expose public figures, and, particularly recently, those who take hard drugs.

The paper often assigns pretty female reporters to such stories, either working alone or in pairs with male colleagues.

A friend or associate of one of the England team's players probably tipped off the paper about Dallaglio's alleged drug taking.

Once assigned to infiltrate Dallaglio's circle, Oswald may have had to wait days, weeks or even months to get the opportunity to talk to him in an environment in which he would feel at ease. At this point a meeting is usually staged at a party or, as possibly happened in this case, at an official function. He would have invited her back to his hotel room probably flattered by the attention she was lavishing on him.

Hotel rooms are the perfect place to extract a confession out of a celebrity: they offer intimacy and privacy and there is no background noise to interfere with the quality of the recording.

Once in the room, Dallaglio clearly relaxed, stretched out on his hotel bed and apparently poured his heart out to Oswald. He allegedly told the reporter: "I used to be a drug dealer. I made big, big money dealing in drugs. Why do you think I know so much about drugs? I was surrounded by it. I used to drive from one end of London to the other with five or six ounces of it (cocaine). That's how I used to make money before I took up rugby."

At one point in their conversation he appeared to proposition the reporter, allegedly saying he no longer took cocaine but offering to make an exception and snort the drug off her body that night.

He is then reported to have talked candidly of his exploits with prostitutes in Amsterdam during rugby tournaments. "It's the forbidden fruit over there. That's the ethic though, isn't it? If you work hard, you've got to play hard."

Unusually, it appears that Dallaglio needed little prompting to talk about his exploits. Celebrities and public figures rarely feel relaxed enough to go into such detail about their habits to a near stranger. But he was obviously keen to impress his new friend.

If Dallaglio did say the things he is alleged to have said, he will no doubt regret it But one phrase in particular is likely to haunt him. "Women are my achilles heel," he said. This turned out to be all too true.