Tindall admits he told lies over drunken night with blonde: Shamed England star now faces fresh questions from Zara

• He went onto second bar with smooching girl
  
• There was no cover-up says England manager

By Simon Parry
Updated: 07:09 EDT, 2 October 2011

England rugby star Mike Tindall was last night facing a fresh inquisition from his wife Zara Phillips after admitting that he lied about his drunken night out with a mystery blonde in New Zealand.

Tindall - newly married to the Queen’s granddaughter - had insisted he went back to his hotel alone after CCTV captured him canoodling with the young woman in the Altitude bar in Queenstown.

Now an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has forced Tindall, 32, to confess that he and the blonde went on to a second bar, Cowboys, where they behaved like a smooching teenage couple in full view of other members of the England party.

Canoodling: Tindall and the blonde in the Altitude Bar before going on to Cowboys

The Mail on Sunday has been given a startlingly clear image of the blonde - who has still not been identified - which was captured on the high-tech CCTV cameras in Cowboys, where she spent more than an hour with Tindall.

When witnesses first claimed that Tindall and the blonde had gone on to Cowboys together after leaving Altitude just before 2am on September 12, Tindall assured England team managers and his public relations representatives that the claims were false.

He was so vociferous in his insistence that, embarrassingly, a partner from the Queen’s law firm Farrer and Co, acting for the Rugby Football Union, was duped into calling The Mail on Sunday last Saturday to claim falsely that Tindall had gone straight back to his hotel alone.

The denials came after Zara, 30, flew to join Tindall in New Zealand last weekend for a reconciliation. They ate out happily together after last Saturday’s victory over Romania, appearing to put behind them the controversy over the first CCTV film, which was shown on YouTube.

Last Saturday, media lawyer Julian Pike, of Farrer and Co, had phoned The Mail on Sunday to say it was ‘categorically untrue’ that Tindall had gone to a second bar with the woman.

He said: ‘They did not go to a second bar. He was shoved in a taxi by some mates back to his hotel.’

The call was designed to stop a story, quoting witnesses who had seen the couple, from going to press last weekend.

When The Mail on Sunday contacted Tindall and Zara’s spokeswoman at Juniper Sport PR last Saturday at 3.59pm for a comment about our story, she said: ‘We won’t be making any comment. If I have any other questions, I’ll come back to you.’

At 7.04pm, she called back to confirm that the bar in our story was called Cowboys.

Hotspot: The Cowboys Bar where Tindall went with the mystery blonde after leaving Altitude

At that point she added: ‘Mike wasn’t in that bar. Mike wasn’t in any bar. Mike went home after Altitude. This is totally not for printing. We have no comment on this story.

‘Off the record, he did not go to any bar after Altitude bar. He went back to his hotel. The team hotel. I don’t want to be quoted on any of this. I’m just telling you that he did not go to another bar.’

But on Friday, after our continuing investigations confirmed the existence of date-stamped CCTV footage proving beyond doubt that Tindall was in Cowboys with the blonde, the player finally admitted that he was there. Tindall’s public relations company Juniper Sport issued a statement pinning the blame on its client.

It said: ‘Mike Tindall gave his PR consultants and the Rugby Football Union his assurance that he had not attended the Cowboys bar, having left the Altitude bar.

Reconciled: Tindall with Zara last weekend, when he denied going to a second bar

‘In good faith, his PR consultants, the RFU and the RFU’s solicitors relied upon that assurance when dealing with last week’s story.

‘However, Mike now accepts that his recollection was incorrect and he apologises unreservedly for this misjudgment.’

Tindall now faces explaining to Zara – who left New Zealand early last week but is expected to return to watch him in the later stages of the Rugby World Cup - why he tried to cover up his visit to Cowboys. Its owner Leo Molloy earlier confirmed that Tindall and the blonde had been captured on the bar’s high-tech CCTV cameras.

But he refused to show the video, saying: ‘Our position is that if it’s not a crime, then we won’t release the footage. Rooting [having sex] isn’t a crime in New Zealand.’

A witness who has viewed the Cowboys video said it could create severe matrimonial friction for Tindall, who only married Zara at the end of July. It shows the blonde chatting to other members of the England party as well as planting kisses on a clearly-drunk Tindall.

Clips of the film have been shown to Mail on Sunday journalists in response to Tindall’s denials that he was at the bar.

In the earlier CCTV footage from Altitude, leaked on to YouTube by bouncer Jonathan Dixon, Tindall was alone with the blonde while other players had left.

In Cowboys, he appears to have rejoined a party of at least half a dozen players and people from the England party.

‘What might upset Zara about the Cowboys video is that he’s surrounded by people who she probably knows and who she might have expected to step in and tell him to behave himself,’ the witness said.

‘Instead, you can see that they act as if they know the woman and aren’t at all surprised to see her and Tindall getting cosy with each other.’

Another person who has viewed the video said: ‘You can see by the way she moves and conducts her-self that she is a middle-class, Home Counties girl. She is socially confident and seems to know the England players and the people with them well.

Man of action: Tindall played for England in their victory over Scotland yesterday

‘It looks from the way she chats to other members of the England party, and touches them on the arm, that they know her, too, and they are very friendly and familiar with her.’

THREE ENGLAND STARS SAY SORRY TO HOTEL GIRL OVER 'LEWD' COMMENTS

Three England rugby players were ordered to apologise to a female hotel worker  for 'lewd' comments they made to her, it emerged today.

James Haskell, Dylan Hartley and Chris Ashton said sorry to 23-year-old Annabel Newton after she complained about their crude banter.

England rugby manager Martin Johnson, pictured, has reprimanded the players for their conduct and left them in 'no doubt' about his anger.

According to the Sunday Mirror, Ms Newton said the men 'treated me with no respect' after she was called into a hotel room to retrieve her walkie-talkie.

Addressing the allegations over player conduct in the team hotel, Johnson said: 'I was angry with them. It is just the sort of thing we have talked about.

'What they thought was humour and a light-hearted exchange has clearly not been taken that way by Annabel, the girl involved.

'At the time they apologised when they realised they had stepped over the mark. They had no idea how upset she subsequently became.

'We were in Queenstown for a few days. When we returned I spoke to the hotel manager, apologised to him for the disturbance we had caused to him and his staff.

'The guys formally apologised. They were shocked when they understood how upset she had become.

'We investigated the facts fully. They have been disciplined. They have been reprimanded for their behaviour and left in no doubt.

'If you leave yourself open for these headlines to be written it drags us all into it and that is what makes me particularly angry."

The incident reportedly occurred in the days before England moved from Dunedin to Queenstown, where a number of players enjoyed a night out, which also hit the headlines.

Describing the blonde’s antics with Tindall in Cowboys, the first witness said: ‘She is extremely flirty and does 99 per cent of the running while Tindall sits slumped in his seat.

‘She’s a very good-looking girl and she knows it. She goes over and kisses him and tries to drag him up to dance but you can see he’s too trashed to get out of his seat - so she leaves him there and comes back to him from time to time.

‘He only kisses her back once. In every other case, it’s she who kissed him - she’s obviously making a big play for him.’

In one CCTV sequence, the blonde kisses Tindall full on the lips as he sits in his seat. In another, she walks behind Tindall in a corridor next to the toilets in Cowboys and stops to chat to another woman who is with the England party.

The final film sequence shows the blonde leaving the bar with Tindall shortly after 3am while a friend, believed to be a fellow England player, helps to support the newly-wed, who bumps into a wall and can barely stand.

There is no suggestion that the blonde went anywhere else with Tindall after Cowboys. Other witnesses have said Tindall took a taxi back to the team hotel alone.

The second witness said: ‘It is possible that Tindall has no recollection of going to Cowboys and that’s why he denied it. But there were other people from the England party in the bar, so he must have checked out what happened with them.’

Filmed on 16 high-definition digital security cameras, the Cowboys video is much clearer than the relatively grainy images from the Altitude bar. In one sequence, the blonde’s face is clearly visible as she walks in the corridor outside the bar’s toilets.

Zara Phillips’ spokesman has said the woman in the video – who looks to be in her early 30s - is an old friend of the couple who attended their wedding and lives in Australia. Tindall has reportedly told Zara that the woman is a former girlfriend.

Jonathan Dixon, 40, the bouncer who claims he leaked the CCTV footage of Tindall - who was injured in England’s 16-12 World Cup win over Scotland yesterday - and the blonde in Altitude on to YouTube partly because he was ‘outraged’ by what he called Tindall’s ‘sleazy’ behaviour, is due to make a second court appearance in Queenstown tomorrow, accused of accessing a computer system for a dishonest purpose.

England boss Martin Johnson said any misleading information Tindall gave as to his whereabouts that night was a simple mistake and 'not a cover-up.'

He added: 'If he was inaccurate in his recollection of the events of the night and his specific whereabouts, he certainly didn't mean to mislead anyone. It was not an orchestrated cover-up,.

'It was simply an error on his behalf which he apologises for."

Asked whether he would consider sending Tindall home, Johnson added: 'His recollection is wrong of where he's been, and the order he's in there, and that is what it is.

'There's video footage that was available at the time so I don't think he'd be foolish enough to think he could get away with lying because of the situation he's in and the evidence that's available.

'So I think it's an innocent mistake and his recollection was incorrect.'