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ness Agent Provocateur, was then not the best of influences on Ritchie. Guy's sister Tabitha, now a dance teacher, also mixed with an unsalubrious crowd.

To help appreciate how far the young Ritchie gained an insight into the criminal world, one need look no further than 'Winston', a character he created in Lock, Stock.

Winston, played by Steven Mackintosh, is a frightfully louche middle-class boy who, with the assistance of similarly well-bred chums and the behind-the scenes backing of a fearsome criminal, sets himself up in a London flat as a major dealer in cannabis. They make a lot of money and begin to believe they are untouchable.

'Guy and a mate rented an apartment whose street entrance door you can still see, next to the Pizza Express in Notting Hill Gate,' said a former associate.

'Guy was a good kid, but he was a little too full of himself and used to brag a lot. Bought himself a blue Triumph TR7 sports car and drove it around his patch like a lunatic, jumping lights - all bravado.' But like the fictional Winston, Ritchie ultimately came a cropper with some very nasty people.

According to one source, it was about a matter of less than £1,000.

Someone else thought slightly more. But Guy was cocky and didn't pay up. So the 'creditors', who'd not gone to a fee-paying boarding school, paid him a call. The encounter was as bloody and onesided as that portrayed in the film.

'They used a razor and opened up Guy's face,' said an associate. 'It was very messy. And his friend, who was with him at the time, was very badly beaten up in the attack. But they were lucky. In the Eighties people more often used blades to make a business point.

'Now, the young kids dealing in drugs are running around with guns and wouldn't think twice about using them if they thought you were taking the piss.' Ritchie had tough friends, but the incident proved he wasn't in their league.

The assault was a 'wake-up call' which would stay with him every time he looked in a mirror. He didn't need to be in this business for the same reasons as his contemporaries raised in South and East London sink-estate ghettos.

Shortly afterwards, he moved into the household removals business, driving a van. But he used his experience to good creative effect a decade later.

STILL, he's a tough guy within his artistic milieu. Not tall but physically strong, Ritchie is a martial arts black belt with a habit of punching male friends on the arm in macho greeting. He does this with some force. When they wince, he quips: 'Don't know me own strength.' This can annoy people.

On other ocassions he will resort to fisticuffs. There was Mr Bird and the persistent Madonna fan who got too close, both of whom Ritchie 'sorted out'. He is also reported to have punched Lock, Stock star Nick Moran, with whom he's no longer close.

The Mail has also been told about a loquacious West London artist who had words with Ritchie one night in a bar. When the young man left, Ritchie was waiting for him on the pavement outside and gave him what is known as a 'good kicking'.

Madonna liked this kind of aura. 'She feels protected by him,' says a friend. 'He can physically look after himself and her.' Not only that, he will even laugh at her, rather than

THAT ended at the time that Lock, Stock was released, and some of her friends say this left bitterness on her part at the rejection just when, after years of supporting him in his struggle for recognition, he'd made it big.

She is given a credit on the titles as one of those indispensible people 'without whom this film could not have been made'. More recently, she phoned him and asked for tickets to Madonna's 'secret' gig in November in Brixton.

'Um, I'll see if I can get you a couple,' he replied, taken aback. 'Don't give me that, you're her boyfriend. I want half a dozen,' she shot back.

It is said that after Rebecca, Ritchie's favourite chat-up line was 'Want to see my new film?' This led to a relatively short, but passionate affair with the model and TV presenter Tania Strecker. 'Guy was really in love with her for a while,' said a friend of Strecker. Then Madonna came on the scene.

'Tania caught them getting into a car together in London,' said a friend. 'Guy said something to Madonna like "Er, this is Tania,î so Madonna said, politely "Hi, I'm Madonna,î and Tania snarled back at her: "I know who the **** you are.î '

Strecker, a blonde, lissom, 'diffi-cult' young woman was not used to being surplanted by other women, let alone one almost old enough to be her mother.

In the early days of the Ritchie relationship, Madonna was flying in from the U.S. just to spend one night with him, in order, it is claimed by a friend, to become pregnant by him.

Madonna is a tough cookie, whose jealousy and protectiveness sometimes shows her in a bad light. Hollywood gossip says that she made some calls which stymied the chances of Mexican actress Salma Hayek getting a plum role in the film The Mask Of Zorro.

This was because she thought Miss Hayek was getting too friendly with her own personal fitness trainer Carlos Leon, Madonna's ex-boyfriend and the father of her daughter Lourdes.

She can be a demanding boss, and