Mayor Rob Ford’s wife worried about her husband’s drug addiction and asked for help getting him clean shortly after he was elected, according to a new book.

“He still thinks he’s going to party,” Renata Ford told a confidant in a Tim Horton’s parking lot outside Etobicoke. “He thinks that he, oh, you know, ‘I’ll get off the pills, but I’m not giving up the blow.’”

That conversation, which the Star’s Robyn Doolittle heard on a recording, is one of several newly uncovered details from her book Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, to be released Monday. It raises new questions about Ford’s substance abuse and offers further insight on the inner circle that tried to get him help.

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After speaking with Renata on Thursday, Ford’s lawyer Dennis Morris said the conversation never happened.

“She doesn’t know any male person that she’d be in a car with at Tim Hortons,” Morris said. “So she denies that she’s said whatever’s alleged.”

Renata didn’t know that the man she said she trusted was secretly recording the conversation in the car that day, according to the book.

Ford’s wife stressed that the mayor is a public figure and worried he would “ruin” his life — that people were out to get him.

Allegations about abusing drugs and alcohol now surround Ford after the Star and Gawker first published stories last May about the existence of a video showing the mayor smoking what appears to be crack cocaine.

The scandal widened when it was revealed that a dedicated team of investigators from the Toronto police homicide and drug squads have carried out a months-long investigation into Ford’s activities and those of his friends.

Throughout all this, and throughout much of Ford’s life in public office, Renata has remained unseen and unheard. Apart from a Toronto Life article published in 2011, there has been little insight into her life.

Doolittle’s book details how Renata was given advice by the confidant — a man referred to in the book as “John” — about “methadone, withdrawal symptoms and clinics that will be discreet.”

In an interview, Doolittle said the conversation likely occurred in late 2010 or early 2011, after Ford was elected mayor. She said there are other recordings of Renata discussing more intimate family details that few would know about.

In November, police documents released following a court battle launched by the Star and other media outlets, showed many of Ford’s staff, some who have since resigned, believed Ford had a substance abuse problem.

The allegations in the police document have not been tested in court.

The recording detailed in Doolittle’s book indicates that those closest to Ford had concerns about his well-being from his early days in office.

Doolittle’s first experience covering Renata was in 2008 as the Star’s police reporter. Ford — then an Etobicoke councillor — was charged with assault and threatening death against his wife.

“I went to his house and I actually spoke with her parents about it. And those charges were dropped, but … you could tell something was going on at home,” Doolittle said.

Renata wasn’t a presence on Ford’s campaign trail and was rarely seen after the election, said Doolittle, who switched to the municipal politics beat in 2010.

But in 2011, Doolittle heard allegations of more domestic issues brewing at the Ford home, and in December that year she wrote another story detailing troubling 911 calls.

The Star’s editor, Michael Cooke, said Ford’s personal and professional life can no longer be separated in print.

A turning point, he said, was when Renata stood next to Ford at a press conference as he apologized for lewd comments he had made about their relationship. Afterwards, Ford pulled his wife by the hand through dozens of reporters and camera crews instead of exiting through a side door.

“We tried to respect his family’s privacy. But when the mayor dragged her out in front of that press conference, all bets were off,” Cooke said.

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Almost always, Doolittle said, the Star’s decision has been that details about Ford’s personal life are not of value to the public.

“I really struggled with the Renata question,” she said. “I certainly came across a lot of information about her, but I do constantly ask myself: what is the public interest in this?”

But Doolittle said there are aspects of Ford’s personal life that reflect on his duties, his character and whether he is being truthful. Recently, the question of substance abuse has been at the forefront.

“He oversees a $9-billion budget, tens of thousands of employees. If he’s struggling with these issues, I think his personal life is relevant at least until he can fix these issues,” Doolittle said. “Because I think that they’re linked.”

While both Ford and his brother, Councillor Doug Ford, have repeatedly blamed the media for invading their private lives, Doolittle said the mayor has often used his family as a shield.

“He is masterful with the way that he frames the media,” she said.

In the early days of the crack scandal, Ford denied having a substance abuse problem, telling reporters at a May press conference: “I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine.”

But in November, he famously admitted to smoking crack cocaine in “one of my drunken stupors.”

Later that month, Ford also said he was giving up alcohol. But in January, after a new video appeared of Ford rambling, at times incoherently, in Jamaican patois at the Steak Queen restaurant in Etobicoke, he admitted he had been drinking again.

The unproven police documents indicate a more persistent problem — allegations of empty vodka bottles in Ford’s office, the mayor snorting cocaine at the Bier Markt and driving while drinking.

After hearing the recording of Renata asking for help, Doolittle wondered about the conversations that prompted those pleas — discussions in which Ford supposedly refused to give up the “blow,” as described in the recording.

“That’s crazy,” Doolittle said. “He is a character that is truly stranger than fiction.”

Ford and Renata did not respond personally to detailed voice mails, emails or letters left by the Star.

Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story, published by http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670068111,00.html Penguin Canada END , is available on Feb. 3.

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