Still I breathed a small sigh of relief when I heard that it

Still, I breathed a small sigh of relief when I heard that it was going to be easier for my American PET, Jo Ellen Gryzb, to meet me at her smart north London office rather than mine. Britain's latest cultural import from America is the PET or "Personal Effectiveness Trainer". These individuals offer "one-to-one `personal effectiveness' training that provides unbiased support, objectivity, motivation and a place to off-load with no career-limiting consequences". As if the "personal trainer", that creature permanently on hand to stop you reaching for the Mars Bars and count your sit-ups, was not already bad enough. A pale young man came up and offered to sell Charles a suit, which he was carrying in plastic wrapping, as if freshly laundered.As Charles was shaking his head and holding up both palms and saying, "Nah, matey, not for me," the suit-dealer realised whom he was talking to and said, "Oooh! You!", before turning away with a half-formed grin..

"People are asking me, `When are you going on television again?' And they're asking me that on their television show." Charles said he was considering a book deal, but wasn't sure whether to do it as a novel or as an autobiography, "a kind of from-cradle-to-court-thing with emphasis on Red Dwarf. We turned out of the sunlight into a shaded passageway and there we got approached by a hustler - some sort of clothes pusher. Or maybe I should do the Red Dwarf book as a separate deal and just do this as a novel."When we left the caf (passing the actor Tim Piggot-Smith who rose from his table to give Charles a kiss), something happened which rather bore out Charles's image of himself as a hapless magnet for potential trouble. It's been swamped with journalists."It's early yet, but evidently the work offers are beginning to come. I mix with the top bods and I mix with the man in the street I'm not a snob But I'm not a pervert, either I don't go around looking for strippers They come to my local pub. I'm an approachable guy and I get approached."As fas as having a kind of split social life - I'm not two separate people I don't even watch the strippers half the time I play the games and the pool In any case, I've had to start giving the place a miss. I walked into that pub having bought that house - I didn't know what went on in there I don't go to stripper places, I go to my local pub I mix with everyone.

"Am I Captain Stud or something? I doubt I've even got into double figures, never mind bedding 60 strippers."The night before Charles turned up at the Clapham estate, seeking a bacon buttie from an ex-girlfriend, he had dined at L'Escargot. What appeared to emerge from the trial was the picture of a dual social life, one in which Charles would socialise with BBC brass and then adjourn to a strip- pub in Kennington."Look," he said "The Queen Anne is opposite my house It's my local. I lost You're Booked [a books programme, handed to James Whale] I lost untold corporate work These accusations can change the way people see you. Mud sticks."This is what Charles fears will hinder his comeback - not the rape charge, which was dismissed, but the things the case brought out about his social life He had to admit to some cocaine use "That's in the past I haven't taken drugs, one day at a time, in a long time. I'm happy to be well out of it." One tabloid pondered the possibility that Charles had slept with 60 strippers "Get a life," Charles said to me. Missed me! Ner ner! K-k-k-kssssshhhh." Worst of all, he said, was the prison officers coming up with their jokes "Here, Craig, I've got one for yer.