My Greatest Mistake: Baz Bamigboye, showbiz columnist for the 'Daily Mail'

'I hired a chimpanzee to have tea with Michael Jackson while I interviewed him. My rivals called in the RSPCA'

I remember being asked by one of my editors here at the Daily Mail to do a story involving Michael Jackson. He had a chimpanzee called Bubbles and someone thought it would be funny if I were to hire a chimpanzee – because he wasn't allowed to bring Bubbles into the country, for quarantine reasons – and take this chimpanzee to have tea with Michael Jackson. He was staying at the Mayfair Hotel. I'm quite good-natured in the morning, and agreed. What I hadn't thought about was that the hotel would be surrounded by journalists and photographers. So there, the next day, appeared pictures of me and this chimp with picture captions such as: "The chimpanzee is the one on the left". I didn't even get an interview with Michael Jackson, but I spoke to him. I think the comments were something to the effect of: "That is not my Bubbles." To cap it all, one of the journalists rang up the RSPCA to say I was mistreating the chimpanzee. That was pretty stressful, but I can laugh about it now. If you are going to make a fool of yourself, there is no point in doing foolish things by half.

Once I did lose a big scoop by being too trustworthy. Andrew Lloyd Webber intimated to me that he and Sarah Brightman weren't splitting up, and I believed him. Two days later, it was all over the Sundays and that made me look very stupid. It taught me a lesson to be very cautious about what people tell you – particularly celebrities. When I used to cover crime years ago, the criminals I dealt with were more honest than a lot of people in show business. I don't know the psychology of this, but this is the case. Then, I had this rosy-coloured vision that no one lied to me.

When I was on The Sun, there was a hot story about Ronnie Biggs being kidnapped. It was a spoof story, but everyone jumped on planes from New York on the midnight Caribbean flight and headed for Trinidad. There was Fleet Street's finest – George Gordon, Phil Finn and Brian Vine. We were all on the plane. On arriving, everyone rushes off to get hire cars and taxis to find Ronnie Biggs, or at least the person who was accused of kidnapping him. Brian Vine was hanging around the luggage carousel. We were saying are you coming, Brian, or shall we all go ahead? He said they had lost his luggage, so we left. It was only when we got to the hotel that we realised that Brian Vine hadn't checked in any luggage. He carried it onboard. We drove back to the airport and he had disappeared with the person we had all been chasing.

The mistake was not to watch what Brian Vine was up to. I was the youngest journalist and thought these old guys won't get the story, but it taught me to watch these people like hawks. When you have been beaten, you make sure it never happens again. His ilk are some of the sharpest reporters ever. I don't think we will see their like again. We don't have those sorts of mega stories that require this kind of cunning.