The Burton Mail has shown the power of regional newspapers’ contacts when it beat the nationals with the story of a blonde woman who has been thrown out of a local firm for providing £10-a-time sexual favours to fellow staff.

While the News of the World was waiting outside the B&Q distribution depot run by logistics firm TNT in Staffordshire, the Mail was able to break the exclusive after speaking to a number of workers at the plant.

And two days after the Mail’s front-page story, The Sun also carried its own ‘exclusive’ report on the saga.

Mail chief reporter David Powles was tipped off about the scandal. He said: “I had a call from one person who told us about it and said the News of the World was down there.

“It’s a big company so I got on to people I know that work there. We waited until we knew it was safe enough to run the story – it was obviously true as people had been saying exactly the same thing independently of each other.

“We’ve had a big reaction – workers have been phoning in confirming that it’s true, but TNT are still denying it.”

Following the Mail’s exclusive, David was contacted by The Sun.

He said: “The guy at The Sun phoned up and asked me loads of questions – and then they’ve run the story and slapped an exclusive on it.”

Mail deputy editor (content) Andy Parker said: “The Sun has quite blatantly stolen our story – but that’s the kind of thing they do.

“We got the story because we’re the local paper and we’ve got local contacts.”