Inside Lines: Did Iron Mike fool the dope testers, or is it a wee fib?

Faking it: Mike Tyson claims he used a false penis to provide a sample (Getty)

When Britain's Sir Craig Reedie took over as sport's anti-drugs tsar on Friday, surely the last thing he expected to have to get to grips with was Mike Tyson's fake penis.

But the sensational revelations in the former world heavyweight champ's new autobiography that he fooled UK drugs-testers in a fight here by employing what he calls his "whizzer" – a false penis filled with someone else's clean urine – while high on dope will be of as much concern to the freshly elected president of the World Anti-Doping Agency as any irregularities among Jamaican athletes or the fall-out from the Lance Armstrong scandal.

How cheats avoid being detected is very much on the agenda of the 72-year-old Scot, especially as Tyson's alleged ruse is not believed to be unique. There are certainly cases where female athletes are known to have inserted "clean" catheters before being tested.

However, Tyson's story that he secretly slipped a prosthetic penis into his shorts for a post-fight test following his 38-second demolition of fellow American Lou Savarese at Hampden Park, Glasgow, 13 years ago will be of acute embarrassment to the Board of Control testers. Frank Warren, who promoted the fight, says he is considering legal action against Tyson because if true, the fighter would have been "in serious breach" of contract.

Warren's in-house lawyers will also will be scrutinising the explosive 600-page Tyson tome The Undisputed Truth (HarperCollins, £20) when it is published here on Thursday. They have warned the publishers that certain allegations made against the promoter "are untrue and defamatory".

Warren said yesterday that he wasn't sure whether to believe the false penis story, "which could be one of those things which sells books". He added: "[Tyson] is cunning and manipulative, and when he came here to fight Savarese he was strutting around like a dog with two dicks."

Now we know why...

Roger and in?

Could the pending retirement of Tim Lamb as the chief executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance – he exits after eight years in February – herald a return to the sporting spotlight for Roger Draper?

The dear departed chief executive of the Lawn Tennis Association (dear only in the sense of his humungous salary) had experience of multi-sports administration in a previous life at Sport England. But he could expect only a sliver of his £640,000 LTA package, famously described as "unthinkable" by the All-Party Parliamentary Tennis Group chair, Baroness Billingham.

Even so, ministering to the needs of some 320 organisations might appeal to Draper, though it would be good to see an appointment from the ethnic community, notably under-represented in sports governance. While the Alliance no longer carry quite the clout they did as a ginger group in their earlier incarnation as the CCPR, Lamb, 60, has done a decent job, having helped negotiate a new funding deal with Sport England which secures their immediate future despite Government concerns about their "politicisation" under new chair Andy Reed, a former Labour MP.

No vote for Bolt

I am severely chastised by former British international athletes John Bicourt and Tim Hutchins – among others – for my recent suggestion that Mo Farah's diffidence over competing in next year's Commonwealth Games – he may opt instead for the "cash-laden" London Marathon – was unworthy enough to cast doubt on voting for him as Sports Personality of the year.

Bicourt asks: "If Usain Bolt [who also hints he may miss Glasgow] doesn't appear perhaps you can do a piece on why you won't vote for him as International Sports Personality."

Well, Bolt surely would not be so coy about competing in the Commonwealth Games if they were being held in Jamaica, or elsewhere in the Caribbean. Which is precisely why Mo should do the decent thing and support them here. Anyway, I'd vote for Andy Murray domestically and Sebastian Vettel internationally.

a.hubbard@independent.co.uk