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If, like me, you’d completely forgotten about the bekilted, not-so-gentle giant that used to ruin afternoons on Wheel of Fortune and Blue Peter, well, bad news.

John Leslie is back. Back down the police station, back in the tabloids and back in the public consciousness.

That’s another annoying Scottish accent we’ll be having to listen to, then. As if Gordon Brown and Lorraine Kelly weren’t bad enough.

Leslie hit the news on Monday when he was arrested in connection with a sexual assault that dates back to 1995. He later gave a statement condemning his arrest as “trial by media.” Which is ridiculous. Are there any women who were sexually active in the 90’s who haven’t accused John Leslie of assault? It’s not so much trial by media as trial and error.

For any of you wee eyebrow readers that don’t remember the days of Caron Keating and Yvette Fielding, Blue Peter used to be a nice, wholesome TV show where nothing bad ever happened. Pets were “retired” as they got older, sticky-backed plastic rained like manna from heaven and Richard Bacon wasn’t trying to be funny.

However, after the inauguration of John Leslie as a badge-wielding TV babysitter, things took a turn for the worse.

Post Leslie (who somehow managed to date Catherine Zeta-Jones during his brief moment of glory), Blue Peter became corrupted by sleaze and debauchery. In 1998 came Richard Bacon’s cocaine shame, handily captured on camera by The News Of The World.

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The Shame: Catherine Zeta Jones used to date John Leslie

Then, in 2002, Matthew Wright “accidentally” named Leslie on live TV as the mystery man accused of raping weathergirl Ulrika Jonsson in her autobiography, Honest. As in, it was a slip of the tongue, honest.

As allegations of assault started flying at Leslie faster than he could say, “Now here’s one I did earlier,” his lovable TV persona crumbled. He was suspended by daytime talk show “This Morning,” then sacked, after pictures emerged of him taking cocaine and enjoying a leather-clad threesome with then girlfriend Abi Titmuss.

The threesome’s “guest star,” Jayson Blayde, told a Sunday newsaper that Leslie encouraged him to feel Titmuss’ breasts, saying, “Have a turn. After all, I paid for them.”

One out of the alleged 20 rape charges against Leslie went to court, but was dismissed by the judge after new evidence came to light.

The judge told Leslie that he left the court “completely innocent, and without a stain on [his] character.”

Except for the fact that his TV career was over and the general public thought of him as a nasty, misogynistic sex pervert. Not even Shout will get that out.

For the last five years, Leslie has been making a lucrative, if discreet, living for himself as a property developer in Scotland. He’s also said to have accumulated a personal fortune of £4 million, with which he enjoys his relatively quiet lifestyle.

However, as yet another rape allegation emerges, it probably won’t be long before we see him on Celebrity Love Island or Big Brother.

Is this, as John Leslie calls it, “the mother of all stitch ups”? Or is it just a cunning ploy to reinsert himself into the cultural zeitgeist? Only time will tell.