Like all good hacks, author John Burns has some colourful tales to tell about Fleet Street. MATTHEW NIXSON talked to him about his latest novel, Spike

Fleet Street lore suggests the best stories are not always those that make the front pages of the papers.

All manner of scandalous and shocking tales are covered-up or spirited away for a rainy day for all sorts of reasons. Until now that is.

'It's time to let the cat out of the bag,' said award-winning journalist and thriller writer John Burns. 'Some stories are just too good to waste.'

When he quit the Daily Express in 1995, it was as chief reporter of the paper's prestigious special investigations department.

He took with him a host of apocryphal anecdotes, hot contacts and astonishing stories which he has drawn upon in four novels featuring hard-bitten tabloid hack Max Chard.

The very title of John's latest book, Spike, refers to the stories that are killed-off before they make the paper. The novel features a whiter-than-white New Labour MP ,, allegedly having an adulterous affair with a younger woman. And, like John's other plots, it is based on real-life events as journalists get mixed up in political powerplays.

'One bright May morning I got a brief from a senior newsdesk executive,' recalls John, 54, from North Finchley.

'It was a closely typed memo from an outside source. It said this MP was having an affair with a woman living in a mews flat in Mayfair.

'We doorstepped the flat for about five days. We were absolutely mystified because the MP was a Tory and the Express at that time was solidly Conservative.'

Then, suddenly, John and his colleagues were called off the investigation without explanation.

'I was sent to demolish a Tory MP and never told why. I had my own deep and dark suspicions about why we were doing it. They come through at the end of the book.'

Today, John says he would have had no regrets about exposing the MP's adultery ,, though he refuses to name the man, now dead. It wasn't Alan Clark, he laughs.

'This MP was married and very big on family values. That was his public stance and that's why it was in the public interest,' says John.

His creation, Chard, famously hard drinking, smoking and womanising, certainly has no qualms about stitching people up in the quest for news. But that doesn't make him a bad person, says John.

'With Chard I'm trying to show his rationale and way of thinking. He cares about his job as much as a brain surgeon and, considering all the recent scandals, he's probably got as much probity as the medical profession.'

Mixed with spine-tingling intrigue, Fleet Street humour and a healthy dose of old-fashioned imagination, John's books offer no apology for tabloid behaviour.

'People get the newspapers they deserve. Many times I have gone out on a story and neighbours have come out and said 'go away you muckrakers',' he says.

'You know for a fact that they will be the first in the newsagents in the morning.'

Spike by John Burns is published by Macmillan priced £16.99. John will be signing copies at Waterstones, High Road, North Finchley, on Saturday from 2.30pm.

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In the know: John Burns and his new book Spike (inset)