Boris Johnson posed as a cocaine dealer in an attempt to sting 'Fake Sheikh' News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood, it has been claimed. The now-defunct Sunday paper is said to have offered Spectator writer Lloyd Evans £5,000 to destroy the career of Mr Johnson, then editor of that magazine. But the whole scheme was a ruse dreamt up by Mr Johnson to tempt the paper with 'scandalous gossip' and thus disprove its claim to only act in the public interest. Scroll down for video . Boris Johnson, pictured in 2003 when he was editor of The Spectator magazine: He and a Spectator writer tried to fool reporters from the News Of The World into believing drugs were sold from the magazine's office . The 1999 plot was revealed in a post to The Spectator's Coffee House blog by Mr Evans, the magazine's sketch writer and former theatre critic. He described how he and Mr Johnson, now mayor of London, came up with a series of 'implausible fables' to tempt the News of the World's reporters and expose how it deals with 'punters who approach it with bits and pieces of dirt'. Mr Evans described how after calling the red-top with his claims that Mr Johnson was a high-class cocaine dealer, he was met in a pub by a reporter called Nadia and asked to sign a contract offering him £5,000 for the story. Mr Evans recounted: 'Nadia wired me up and I phoned Boris, using my codename "David". As an opener I mentioned some poems I’d sent him (in real life I’m a poet). Did he want to publish them? He sounded lukewarm, as we’d agreed he should. 'Then I mentioned "Prince Charles" and asked if he could give me a small package from "Charlie". Fine, said Boris. Nadia liked this touch. "Prince Charlie," she said, "must be real Oxford talk?" Yeah,’ I said. Boris, meanwhile, was preparing his end of the sting at The Spectator's offices. Mr Evans wrote: 'He had a plastic bag of baking soda and was stuffing it underneath a statuette that graces the mantelpiece of his office. The inscription on the fine silver figurine reads: "To The Spectator. From The Townsfolk Of Aberdare. 1929." The drugs would be produced with a flourish from beneath this official heirloom.' The Fake Sheikh: NotW reporter Mazher Mahmood was brought into the story, but before the double-cross was executed the paper realised they had already been offered another spurious story about Mr Johnson . Convinced it had taped evidence of Boris dealing Class A drugs, the News of the World mobilised its troops. A blacked-out van full of photographers was sent to The Spectator and a video camera was hidden in the handbag of a Nadia, who was posing as Mr Evans' girlfriend. They then dispatched Mr Mahmood, their chief investigator, who now faces inquiries by Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, to meet him and double-check the story. But before Mr Evans' double-cross sting worked out, the paper realised he had earlier failed to provoke its reporters' interests in a different spurious story about Mr Johnson. 'I was rumbled,' wrote Mr Evans. When he finally came face to face with Mr Mahmood, the reporter had a clear message for him. '"This isn’t the way we work," he told me,' Mr Evans wrote. '"Boris isn’t a drug dealer — in the normal sense. He doesn’t do it for a living; he doesn’t corrupt children. 'OK, dealers like that, yeah, we go after them — but not in this case. That’s entrapment. And entrapment is not the way we work." Mr Johnson published the story of how a Spectator writer almost double-crossed the News of the World in his magazine a few months later.
Mr Johnson instructed a Spectator writer to go undercover as a 'source'
NotW offered Lloyd Evans £5,000 to help catch Mr Johnson selling drugs .
But the ruse was rumbled and the paper pulled out at the last minute .
Boris Johnson posed as a cocaine dealer in an attempt to sting 'Fake Sheikh' News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood, it has been claimed. The now-defunct Sunday paper is said to have offered Spectator writer Lloyd Evans £5,000 to destroy the career of Mr Johnson, then editor of that magazine. But the whole scheme was a ruse dreamt up by Mr Johnson to tempt the paper with 'scandalous gossip' and thus disprove its claim to only act in the public interest. Scroll down for video . Boris Johnson, pictured in 2003 when he was editor of The Spectator magazine: He and a Spectator writer tried to fool reporters from the News Of The World into believing drugs were sold from the magazine's office . The 1999 plot was revealed in a post to The Spectator's Coffee House blog by Mr Evans, the magazine's sketch writer and former theatre critic. He described how he and Mr Johnson, now mayor of London, came up with a series of 'implausible fables' to tempt the News of the World's reporters and expose how it deals with 'punters who approach it with bits and pieces of dirt'. Mr Evans described how after calling the red-top with his claims that Mr Johnson was a high-class cocaine dealer, he was met in a pub by a reporter called Nadia and asked to sign a contract offering him £5,000 for the story. Mr Evans recounted: 'Nadia wired me up and I phoned Boris, using my codename "David". As an opener I mentioned some poems I’d sent him (in real life I’m a poet). Did he want to publish them? He sounded lukewarm, as we’d agreed he should. 'Then I mentioned "Prince Charles" and asked if he could give me a small package from "Charlie". Fine, said Boris. Nadia liked this touch. "Prince Charlie," she said, "must be real Oxford talk?" Yeah,’ I said. Boris, meanwhile, was preparing his end of the sting at The Spectator's offices. Mr Evans wrote: 'He had a plastic bag of baking soda and was stuffing it underneath a statuette that graces the mantelpiece of his office. The inscription on the fine silver figurine reads: "To The Spectator. From The Townsfolk Of Aberdare. 1929." The drugs would be produced with a flourish from beneath this official heirloom.' The Fake Sheikh: NotW reporter Mazher Mahmood was brought into the story, but before the double-cross was executed the paper realised they had already been offered another spurious story about Mr Johnson . Convinced it had taped evidence of Boris dealing Class A drugs, the News of the World mobilised its troops. A blacked-out van full of photographers was sent to The Spectator and a video camera was hidden in the handbag of a Nadia, who was posing as Mr Evans' girlfriend. They then dispatched Mr Mahmood, their chief investigator, who now faces inquiries by Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service, to meet him and double-check the story. But before Mr Evans' double-cross sting worked out, the paper realised he had earlier failed to provoke its reporters' interests in a different spurious story about Mr Johnson. 'I was rumbled,' wrote Mr Evans. When he finally came face to face with Mr Mahmood, the reporter had a clear message for him. '"This isn’t the way we work," he told me,' Mr Evans wrote. '"Boris isn’t a drug dealer — in the normal sense. He doesn’t do it for a living; he doesn’t corrupt children. 'OK, dealers like that, yeah, we go after them — but not in this case. That’s entrapment. And entrapment is not the way we work." Mr Johnson published the story of how a Spectator writer almost double-crossed the News of the World in his magazine a few months later.
Spectator writer Lloyd Evans £5,000 to destroy magazine. But the whole scheme was a ruse dreamt Evans' double-cross sting worked out, the paper story about Mr Johnson. 'I was rumbled,' wrote Mr