A STRANGE sound can be heard in L.A. late at night, when the traffic has finally begun to die down, Mickey Rourke has parked his Harley, Bruce Willis has turned off his 1,000 megawatt speakers and the denizens of the Dream Factory are getting ready to embrace the great unconscious.

It is a low-pitched grinding, crunching sound, like the clashing of a thousand gears and the scraping of a 10,000 fingernails down a blackboard. It starts somewhere in Beverly Hills and slowly spreads down through valley. Sometimes it is accompanied by a terrible abandoned caterwaul and the pungent, sweaty odour of fear.

Some say it is the Big One, the shifting of rock and molten lava deep beneath the earth as the San Andreas fault gets ready to wipe out this city of sin and excess once and for all. But I never placed much faith in apocalyptic sermons. I have a theory of my own. I know a wailing and gnashing of teeth when I hear it.

This is the sound of the Pepsi corporation, where the curse of the soft drink has struck again and no amount of fizzy cola, or any other substance for that matter, is going to calm the nerves of fraught executives watching their latest figurehead go down, taking their image and sales with him.

Mike Tyson was a heavy hitter for Pepsi before they found out he was also laying his gloves on Robin Givens and gave the world champion the heave ho (or, in the language of corporate America, released him from his lucrative contract). Now he languishes deep in the bowels of an American penitentiary, labelled a rapist.

Madonna emerged as a noted Pepsi drinker but the company dropped her like hot tomatoes when she stopped behaving like a virgin to go romping with a black Jesus on the video of her Pepsi theme song, Like A Prayer. No sooner was she released from her contract than she was posing naked with a gang of S&M lesbians and extolling the virtues of free sex (well, not quite free, retail price $50).

Now their latest and greatest star is hold up in a Singapore hotel, suffering from migraine and dehydration while the world's media hound him for alleged child abuse. Coca Cola, never accused of being tasteful, may be taking advantage of the situation with their Dehydrated? There's always Coke adverts but what I want to know is what have they been putting in the Pepsi? It tastes like boot polish to me but, on the evidence available so far, it appears to do wonders for the sex drive.

I always thought Michael was a hormonally deficient, androgynous celibate. Now it is alleged he's a screaming red-blooded pervert. It's got to be an improvement. Maybe they should start marketing Pepsi as some kind of hyped up aphrodisiac. The bubbles that bring out the beast in you. Michael's been trying to tell us he's bad for years. It's about time he did something that was at least naughty. Pyjama parties with pre-pubescent boys might not be much but at least it's a start.

The spin doctors are out in force, trying to minimise damage to Michael's billion-dollar career. He has already lost a million dollar contract to perform the theme tune to the sequel to The Addams Family, inappropriately titled Addams Family Values. The first film featured black magic, torture, attempted fratricide and a whole range of ghoulish activities but apparently alleged child abuse is just a sin too far.

Let me make myself clear, I have no position on Michael's guilt or innocence. That is for court of law to decide. It's probably all got about as much veracity as Cliff's colostomy bag, but why worry about the truth when the rumours are so printable? This could herald a return to the good old, bad old days of Hollywood Babylon, when stars were stars and the only scandal that mattered to them was not getting their name in the papers.

Did anybody complain when Errol Flynn was prosecuted for the statutory rape of a teenage girl? Well, not the girl herself, who, cross examined in court about the star's wicked ways admitted "I didn't have no objections." Flynn's notorious behaviour spawned the phrase "In like Flynn," trumpeted by Allied soldiers as they went into battle. This was the kind of perversion that helped us win the war.

Stars have predictably been quick to jump to Michael's defence. Elizabeth Taylor, who once said Wacko Jacko was the most normal guy she knew, which suggests she doesn't get around too much, flew to Singapore and took him to the zoo. Just what Michael needed. Not likely to run into too many children there, eh Liz?

At the MTV awards Peter Gabriel went on record to say that he was sure Michael was innocent, although as far as I knew he is not privy to any information that is being kept from the rest of us. His statement of support appears to stem from the same kind of conviction that Liz has. I mean, not Michael Jackson! He seems like such a regular guy!

Of course, the alleged sexual abuse of a thirteen-year-old child is no laughing matter, as doubtless Sinead O'Connor would be quick to point out. Never one to keep her head when all about her are losing theirs, Sinead piped in with her own tuppence worth. "Whether or not he did the thing is not the point. The point is that he is a man that needs a lot of love," she said, demonstrating a very shaky grasp of the law.

Michael's representatives are not thought to be pursuing this as a potential line of defence, but it did at least demonstrate a very understanding attitude on Sinead's part. Perhaps the Catholic church and the members of her own own family that she has publicly accused of abuse will be next in line for this brand of forgiveness.

So far, of course, the police haven't turned up any hard evidence of illicit behaviour in their investigation of Michael Jackson. But maybe they should pursue a new line of questioning. What I'd like to know is what has this freak-faced, white-skinned, thin-nosed, pencil-lipped, make-up plastered alien sex fiend done with the cute little African American kid who used to front the Jackson 5? Let's lynch him and find out.

Michael isn't the only denizen of Hollywood to be having trouble with the scandal sheets. Heidi Fleiss is awaiting trial accused of running a vice ring, supplying hookers to the movie business. Madonna is reportedly hotly pursuing Heidi to buy the film rights to her story, although Heidi's lawyers have advised her not to sell until after the trial, in which she will be pleading innocent, perhaps in order to ensure that a script is not produced in court and used against her. And of course, one cannot discount the possibility of counter offers coming in from those who might be a tad nervous about Heidi's tale actually making it to the screen, like her rich and famous clients. Still, if it ever does get made, I hope they call it Heidi Does Hollywood. Or did I already rent that once?

Burt Reynolds, no stranger to malicious gossip and rumour, has been having a spot of bother too, although this time he brought it on himself. In the '70s the gossip was that macho Burt was gay, the only supporting evidence ever tendered being that he wore lumberjack shirts and a moustache. He did his best to dispel this by carrying on a series of extremely public affairs with the likes of Sally Field. Yet when he became ill in the '80s with a viral condition that led to weight loss, the rumour merchants were quick to suggest that he was suffering from AIDS.

Burt's career was fast going down the tubes but by the end of the decade he had recovered his health and much of his popularity, marrying pneumatic actress Loni Anderson, starting a family and starring in a hit TV sitcom, Evening Shade. He used the American tabloids and in particular the scurrilous National Enquirer to hit back at the gossip and publicise his new career, granting a host of exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to his private life. But, as the saying goes, if ye lie down with the lion ye won't get much sleep. Or something like that.

When his marriage ran into a spot of bother this year, he tried a bit of damage control of his own, announcing the sad news exclusively to readers of the Enquirer that he and Loni were splitting because they had grown apart due to the demands of his renewed success. Loni, electing not to play the game, was in the Enquirer the following issue to declare that she was in a state of shock and that they were in fact splitting because Burt was having an affair with a Florida waitress and she would be socking her soon-to-be ex-husband for a $13 million dollar settlement and custody of their adopted five-year-old son, Quinton.

Not to be outdone, Burt was soon back in the Enquirer, countering in sad tones that he had originally been covering up for Loni, but the real reason for the divorce was that she had been flagrantly unfaithful since the beginning of their marriage.

"Test Burt for drugs!," bellowed the incensed Loni in the next issue of the Enquirer.

Burt has risen to the challenge, suggesting that he and Loni take competing drug tests to determine who started sleeping around first and who has had the most affairs during their five-year-old marriage. In confident if vindictive form, he has staked everything Loni is suing for (the millions and custody) on the result, and promised to throw in his ranch, his house and "a lot of western art she doesn't want" on top. Loni, meanwhile, has been finding comfort in the arms of her lawyer, Geoff Brown, who, she was reported saying in the Enquirer "Is everything Burt wasn't . . . he's got a pure animal magnetism that drives me wild."

Burt's response to that slight on his testosterone levels is eagerly awaited by the readers of the National Enquirer, which, as a film critic, I subscribe to purely in the name of research, you understand.

And while we're talking about the finest and most upstanding members of the Hollywood community, Pee Wee Herman, the child star whose career went into a Jacksonian nose dive when he was caught masturbating in a porn cinema (well, what the hell else are you supposed to do in a porn cinema, one may well ask?) has been offered a film to direct - a movie version of children's TV, er, classic, The Brady Bunch. Putting this fresh faced gang of infants in the hands of a known sex fiend is about the best thing Hollywood could do with them, if you ask me. Perhaps they can even tempt Michael Jackson to do the soundtrack.

Hey folks, like the man said, tell 'em that it's human nature.