[Ted ("The Brat") Heath paused in the entrance…]

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Ted ("The Brat") Heath paused in the entrance to the press room. His hair clung to his forehead with sweat. Under his arm he still carried the rolled up notes for the contest.

Outside he could hear the faint sounds of hissing and booing.

The umpire was climbing from his perch with as much dignity as a man who has just been called the armpit of the universe can muster.

Inside, the murmur of the piess died away and Heath walked to his seat in front of a battery of cameras. The tall figure of the Times reporter rose to his feet.

"If I may say so, sir," he began, with the faintest of sneers on the word 'sir' is a great honour for us to ask you a few questions."

He turned to the rest of te press bench and gave a broad leer, and there was a rumble of approval.

Heath blushed. "Well thank you," he said. must say I am pretty pleased with my form. I though I hit her with the main points pretty well."

He launched into an account of his speech. A forehand down the line of the crisis; a back-hand volley on the unemployed turning to crime.

Nobody took any notes, except the man from the Newsline and he in fact was not listening to Heath but trying to decide who to tip in the next round when the Iranian hopeful came up against the Iraqi hero.

It was the Daily Mail who broke the phoney peace. "That's all very well, Ted. But can you comment on reports about your sex life?"

His eyebrows twitched convulsively as he asked this question. He tried to keep his face fixed in an inquisitorial glare but the muscles of his mouth began to judder, not quite in time with his eyebrows. A trace of spittle rolled down his chin.

Heath stared at him blankly. Before he had time to reply, a crumpled jacket and a pair of hornrimmed glasses had shouldered his way to the front.

he demanded.

And then, not waiting for a reply, produced a handful of photographs from his inside pocket.

"What have you got to say about these pictures taken inside your bathroom which show • conclusively that you have in fact taken your clothes completely off?"

His moment of triumph was spoiled.

Outside in the corridor the man from the Sun finished his phone call to an old people's home in Hampshire where an elderly but distant relative of Heath's lived out her final days in miserable confusion. She had not denied one single thing!

Even as the man from the Express produced his coup de grace, the man from the Sun threw open the door. A little shower of dandruff escaped from his head and fell gently around his shoulders catching the sun.

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Thursday 9 July 1981