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Anorak News | Street Walking

Street Walking

by | 21st, June 2006

AFTER the tale of Two John Prescotts, the Mirror sticks with its own story of confused identities.

Someone should tell the paper that Coronation Street actor Craig Charles is not a Kate Moss look-alike.

But having scored a hit with those infamous shots of ‘Cocaine’ Kate in a London recording studio, the Mirror is now the paper of celebrity drugs, and duly brings news of the lumpy-faced Charles.

After yesterday’s shots of Charles taking what might have been crack cocaine in the back of a car, the Mirror’s front page shouts: “THE £25,000 DRUGS BINGE.”

“SHAMED” Charles, says the paper, has spent £25,000 on drugs and sex. The whistleblower is Charles’s personal driver Richard McKenna. And he recalls one journey with his client.

They were driving by London’s King’s Cross station, and Charles spotted a prostitute on the street. McKenna says Charles called her over and, allegedly, secured her services for a share of his crack. The pair then made their way to a Travelodge hotel and “started to smoke the Class A drug”.

“At noon the next day, I knocked on Craig’s room and was invited in,” says McKenna. “He was in bed with the girl. She was helping him learn lines for Coronation Street.”

McKenna says the girl called Charles a “sad case”. He says he told Charles that he was “risking so much” by hiring this prostitute and taking drugs.

Indeed, he was. Not least of all was the risk Charles ran of his driver telling his story to the national press.

And now there is a risk to Charles’s acting career. The Mail says his career is “in tatters”. The Star says he has been ordered to stay away from the TV studios where the hit soap opera is filmed. And the Sun says “Crackpipe Craig” has been suspended for his role as a – irony of ironies – taxi driver.

But Charles should not fret. Now he is “Crackpipe Craig” he can do as ‘Cocaine Kate’ did and turn the bad news to his advantage.

It won’t be long before the modelling contracts come rolling in, and Charles’s is soaring higher than a… well, an actor in a Travelodge…



Posted: 21st, June 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink