Novelist admits taking heroin on Major's plane

LONDON, April 19 (Reuter) British author and journalist Will Self has
admitted snorting heroin on Prime Minister John Major's election campaign
jet.

``So I was smacked out on the Prime Minister's jet, big deal,'' one of
Britain's most fashionable and shocking writers told The Independent on
Sunday.

The Observer newspaper, which employed Self as a restaurant and television
critic and occasional columnist, sacked him after being told of the incident
by another journalist.

Self, a selfconfessed former heroin addict, whose novels include ``My Idea
of Fun,'' ``The Sweet Smell of Psychosis'' and ``Scale,'' had originally
denied the allegations.

But in an interview with the Independent on Sunday, he said: ``I confessed to
(Observer Editor) Will Hutton...that I'd had a bad patch with smack and as it
happened I did take a little.''

In his article about his day with Major's press party, published in last
Sunday's Observer, Self was scathing.

``So sparse is the content of the campaign, we were reduced to manufacturing
news among ourselves,'' Self wrote, presumably unaware that he would become
the news event from that day.