The girl who cried wolf

As criminal masterminds go, no-one's every going to confuse Paris Hilton with Professor Moriarty. She only stays in her family's hotels as an aide-mémoire for spelling her own name.

Why else would she be caught out, not once, not twice, but three times in a single summer for alleged drug possession?

The first time could reasonably be written off as a case of over-zealous police spotting an easy target. The second time the mud starts to stick. But the third arrest means that she's probably carrying more drugs than a dodgy pharmacist.

On Saturday morning, everyone's favourite social-blight and her boyfriend were snagged by Las Vegas police at a traffic stop, when officers claimed that they could smell “the strong odor of marijuana coming from [their] vehicle.”

Displaying near super-human levels of quick thinking, the trouble-making tart made a dash for the bathroom, citing embarrassment and a desperate need to pee. She also, quite rightly, added that she needed to apply her lip-gloss - because no-one wants cracked, dry lips when they're giving the mugshot camera their best duck-face.

At this point the canny cops noticed that there appeared to be a 'bindle' of cocaine in Paris' purse, especially when the clueless car-wreck tipped it straight into the officer's outstretched hand. Come on, don't act like you've never inadvertently dropped a wrap of class-A into a policeman's palm.

Before you could say 'TTYN', Paris was arrested and charged with felony cocaine possession. This time, however, it doesn't look as though the charges will be dropped as quickly as when Paris was fingered at the World Cup. No, not like that - get your mind out of the gutter.

Given that Paris seems to live her life as though she's appearing in an early season of Beverly Hills 90210, her first excuse was that she didn't know the cocaine was in the purse. She could account for the bundle of cash, the credit card and a broken Albuterol tablet, but stressed that she'd never seen the coke before.

That story didn't seem to fly, so Paris decided to cry victim and allege that she'd been set up by some unscrupulous party-goer, telling friends "It could be a setup. Everyone knows how against cocaine I am."

But the best alibi to emerge from this whole preposterous palaver, is the one offered by a 'source' who spoke to The Sun. They told the tabloid "This purse in question was a high street brand - and by no means up to her high fashion standards. Paris is hoping authorities will see sense and let her off the hook." Now there's a rock solid defence if ever there was one.

At least now we're one step closer to understanding the logic behind the long-running reality show 'Paris Hilton's My New BFF' - which depicts her tireless search for new best friends. With such a prolific drug habit, it seems that she's always going to need a host of sacrificial lambs to take the fall, whenever she gets grabbed with a gram in her Gucci.