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Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn with his wife Anne Sinclair - Source: Reuters -
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There is a certain cameraman I know who is legendary in the Northeast, a swaggering, bow-legged hero of current events who has burned a smouldering trail from here to New Hampshire in his endless search for money, good times, and - sometimes - news.
He's shot everything, and done everything else. If I ever find myself in the middle of a firefight, I hope he's there filming.
He's the kind of guy who, if picked up for speeding by a female cop, would talk his way into taking her out to dinner that night, and much more besides.
He's the last of a dying breed.
I'm disguising him somewhat when I say he's Serbian. He's not Serbian, but let's call him 'Ratko'.
Ratko was - where else would he be? - outside Dominique Strauss-Kahn's apartment in Tribeca when my New York cameraman and I rocked up there a couple of days ago.
He was behind the barricade helpfully erected by the NYPD. There's nothing to make you feel more like a feral animal than a barricade. Of course, without the barricade, we'd be standing on the front door step, ringing the door bell.
Ratko saw me, came running over, and punched me in the head. I kicked him in the groin. We wrestled in the mud, the blood and the beer while French intellectuals from the main Paris channels sneered at us, and quoted Mallarme to each other.
It's great to see your old mates.
After I picked myself up, and did my piece to camera, Ratko told me I had my numbers wrong.
I put him in a choke hold. I replied I'd been doing New Zealand dollars. He smiled indulgently. Then he broke my back.
Later, as he picked some of my teeth from his knuckles, he told me what he believed had happened to DSK.
"I've seen these powerful guys when they travel. They're like $#%@in kings. They have this gofer for that, and an IT guy, and a security guy. They get everything they want.
"So DSK comes to town, gives some @#$% (forgive me children, but cursing is part of doing news. It's like oxygen) a pile of dough and says he wants some Jungle Fever."
At this point, my regular cameraman, Nick, who is a misanthrope in his own way, but still an upstanding citizen, and unaccustomed to such talk, looked at the ground.
"She comes in, they do the nasty, and somehow it gets nasty."
Two days later - according to the New York Post - Ratko's version has been vindicated.
The Post insists that the maid had a sideline gig as a hooker, that the encounter with the former head of the IMF was for cash, only DSK didn't pay up. 'Cheap Trick' was the Post's headline today.
The Post's also suggested that while being put up by the Manhattan District Attorney in a posh hotel in Brooklyn, the maid was still seeing clients, and that the investigation had been bungled by infighting, administrative woes, and the desire of New York's new District Attorney Cyrus R Vance Jnr to get a big scalp.
Mr Vance's Dad was a Secretary of State, so you can see he has a lot to live up to.
What is clear is that the previous narrative of DSK as man so glutted with power and privilege that he took a maid, as one would an hors d'oeuvre, has been turned completely around.
Ratko would not be surprised.
Read more Tim Wilson opinion .
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