Lorraine Heggessey involved in the dismissal of "Blue Peter" presenter Richard Bacon. In October 1998, the "News of the World" newspaper revealed that Bacon had taken cocaine, and he was subsequently sacked from his job as a presenter on the high-profile children's programme. Heggessey appeared on-screen in a specially-recorded one-minute address to viewers shown directly before the first episode of "Blue Peter" to be screened following Bacon's sacking, on 19 October 1998, to explain to young viewers why Bacon had been dismissed, claiming that he had "not only let himself and the team on "Blue Peter" down, but he has also let
Cocaine in the United States the first time. Hyperbolic reports of the effect of cocaine on African Americans went hand-in-hand with this hysteria. In 1901, the "Atlanta Constitution" reported that "Use of the drug [cocaine] among negroes is growing to an alarming extent". The "New York Times" reported that under the influence of cocaine, "sexual desires are increased and perverted...peaceful negroes become quarrelsome, and timid negroes develop a degree of 'Dutch courage' that is sometimes almost incredible". A medical doctor even wrote “cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the negroes.” To complete the characterization, a judge in Mississippi declared