MORE, they cried. And more they shall have. You wouldn't believe how many people have asked for another peep into my storytelling annals after reading last week's piece about my 40 years as a journalist. They were especially interested in the full story of the gay captain of a German ship.

So who am I to deprive them?

First, though, let me tell you the amazing story of a woman who tried to sell her baby to the highest bidder. It was one of my biggest human-interest exclusives and, naively, I let it slip through my fingers.

It was in the early 1970s in the Selby area and I heard about a woman who was openly asking £1,000 from anyone who wanted to buy her baby.

Nowadays, anything goes. Surrogate mums, baby sales over the internet, soon we'll be cloning kids. But in those days, it was a bombshell. I went to see the single mum and her new-born infant and I was gobsmacked that she was quite ordinary. No horns growing, no satanic shrine in the corner of her lounge. Just an ordinary young mum like thousands of others.

I introduced myself, waiting for the door to be slammed in my face and, surprise, she let me in and started to talk. She even posed for a photograph.

It seems she could not cope with motherhood, neither could she afford it. She felt her baby had a better chance with new parents better equipped to rear her child.

My pencil flew across my notebook pages, heart thumping at the sheer scale of the story, and I thanked the Lord that I had studied hard in two years of shorthand night classes.

The story was massive and caused an outcry - from disgusted parents to outraged clergy to police who said it was illegal to sell a child. The national papers picked up the story and ran with it. The woman was deluged with bids from all over the country. Each one contained a sad story of childlessness and despair.

I kept in touch with her, doing a couple of follow-up stories. But one day when I called she seemed embarrassed and distant. She would not answer my questions.

Have you decided which offer to accept? Are you meeting the couple? How will you get round the law? How much have they offered? What's up?

She was close to tears and apologised. "I can't speak to you any more. I've signed up with the News of the World for exclusive rights. They are paying me £1,000."

Bitch, I thought. Stupid me, I thought. She got her £1,000 after all. But I knew nothing then of getting people to sign a piece of paper forbidding them to speak to anyone else.

I picked up the Sunday paper that weekend and saw a double-page spread full of interviews with the childless couples who had written to the woman in desperation. I had been robbed of my exclusive.

I don't know what happened after that. I refused to follow the story. Did she hand over the baby in a service station on the M1 in exchange for a brown envelope bulging with cash? Where are they now? Is everybody happy?

So you still want to know about this ship's captain? All right, stand by your beds.

I met him at the official opening of a new dockland wharf where the drinks flowed freely. He noticed that I had taken to this amazing drink, totally new to me, schnapps. "Ah, you like ze schnapps. My ship is over there and I have some rather fine schnapps in my cabin. Come aboard and have a drink," he said.

Now I was fairly young and very green and I expected the ship to be heaving with crew, scrubbing the decks, mending sails and scraping barnacles off the vessel's bum.

Alarm bells did not even ring when we got aboard and it was as eerie and deserted as the Marie Celeste.

We had a couple of drinks and chatted in the captain's cabin, and as he handed me a top-up he tried to kiss me.

He tried it on again and I bolted. It was like something out of the Keystone Cops. Ship's doors are sort of roundy-edged and raised off the floor.

So there was I, half cut, running through a maze of corridors, hurdling each time I came to a watertight door, with Captain Randy hot on my heels shouting "Kommen sie back and finish your drink."

On deck I found the gangplank and made it to the safety of the dockside. I've never touched schnapps since.

PS. There's more if you want it.

Updated: 09:16 Tuesday, September 02, 2003