'Well, you know, son, I once found hash in your pocket when you were a little kid,' he said quietly in his hushed Geordie accent. He often said he encountered different attitudes depending on what was happening to me in the news. I knew he walked to the newsagent's in Cullercoats, the little fishing village where I was brought up in the North-East of England, every day. 'When I went to the paper shop this morning I got a few funny looks.' 'I am a bit upset,' he said after a pause. I managed to pull myself together enough to call Dad. Of course, when they arrived I was too agitated to swallow more than a mouthful. They served the most amazing scrambled eggs at the Plaza Athenee, really creamy and perfect. When I get nervous I often want to eat, so the first thing I did was order some food. 'This is a f***ing nightmare,' I groaned.

I'd always been very close to Dad after my mother walked out on us when my brother and I were little kids. Our staff had woken me because they realised my dad, back home in England, would have seen the story before me. But what really scared me was that I knew the Press would approach our families. It was about to become open season on us in the media, and the publicity had the potential to be hugely damaging. Our record label had promoted us as the squeaky-clean darlings of the teenage pop world, who wouldn't even take an aspirin. John Taylor and I had not tried to hide our drug use from our inner circle, but until now it had remained a secret from the wider world. 'Andy Taylor has been known to collapse on tour.' 'Andy Taylor is top of the coke league,' claimed Al's article. But I was singled out as the worst offender. It was the first real act of public betrayal that we'd encountered as a band.Д«eard made allegations about all of us except Roger Taylor, our drummer, who the paper was careful to point out did not take drugs.

Al knew everything, and I mean everything. Big stars: Diana, Princess of Wales meets Duran Duran at the Prince's Trust Concert in LondonДЄl's bouncers had watched me go out to buy drugs that night.

Duran duran now