WOMEN..." says Will Carling, stroking that ruggedly dimpled chin as he thinks of the tangled lovelife he has left behind.

"Women... they were a mystery to me. I used to think I understood them, but the truth is that I never really did.

"It's only recently that I've come to realise what's really important - how to give to a relationship as well as take from it.

"Some people might say it's a bit late in the day, but I've finally grown up."

He shakes his head as if he's baffled when he looks back on his behaviour. They were five crazy years, he admits.

One day he was the nation's hero, the dashingly handsome captain of England's conquering rugby team, a sporting god in a sport of fair play.

The next, he was the nation's arch-love rat. Mr Super-Cheat. King Of The Cads.

His first wife Julia ditched him amid allegations that he had been having an affair - with Princess Diana, no less.

So was it true? Will throws his arms in the air: "No, no, no - how many times do I have to say it? We were friends..."

Then he abandoned his partner Ali Cockayne to move in with Lisa Cooke, the wife of one of his team-mates.

Was that as bad as Will could get? Not quite...

Ali had no idea what he was planning until by chance she saw the start of an announcement he was preparing on his computer: "Will Carling is leaving his partner Ali Cockayne for a future with Lisa Cooke," she read.

She was pictured looking distraught, in tears in the street outside their house, clutching their year-old son Henry.

"I have to admit that I didn't handle things very well, not very well at all," Will says.

"But there are two sides to every story, and no one has heard mine. That's my choice, and I live with it."

It is a fact, he says, as he has hinted in the past, that Ali's pregnancy was unplanned.

"It was just one of those things...but there are plenty of reasons that go into the breakdown of a relationship, none of which I am going to discuss in public.

"One person is more important than anyone else in all of this - and it's Henry. The day will come when he will have to know what happened between me and his mum, and when the time is right I will sit down and explain things to him, father to son. That's my responsibility. I wouldn't want him hearing it second-hand from someone else."

There was, of course, another woman in Will's life. One whom he never dared to cross. His mother Pam died almost a year ago after a long battle against cancer.