NICK LACHEY - LACHEY FIGHTS OFF MORE CHEATING ALLEGATIONS

NICK LACHEY is fighting off yet another report that he cheated on his wife JESSICA SIMPSON - and this time the accusations come from one of his childhood pals.

Just last week (ends07OCT05), Lachey dismissed claims that he recently spent time in an Columbus, Ohio, hotel room passionately kissing a 19-year-old college student.

And now bartender CHAD LESLIE, one of Lachey's oldest friends, has stepped forward to allege that the pop hunk got a little too cosy with his then-girlfriend ANGELA BARTLETT, 25, when he was in Cincinnati, Ohio, last month (SEP05) backing his former 98 DEGREES bandmate JUSTIN JEFFRE's unsuccessful mayoral campaign.

Leslie tells In Touch Weekly, "Nick and Angela came into the bar where I worked at about 3:30 in the morning. Angela asked for my house keys and said she was going to drop Nick off at the Cincinnatian Hotel, and go back to my place."

But Leslie claims that when he arrived home at 4:30am, Bartlett was nowhere to be seen, so he passed by Lachey's hotel and saw her car parked outside.

Once getting through to her on her mobile phone after several attempts, Leslie says, "I asked her where she was, and she wouldn't tell me. I told her, 'I know you're upstairs, please come down, I just want my keys so I can go home.'

"(Later) I told her, 'I need to know what happened in the room.' She said they opened a bottle of wine and Nick tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away. Obviously, she was trying to hide something. She was in that room for an hour and a half, not answering my calls."

In supporting a statement by Lachey's representative that the story is "absolutely not true", Bartlett blasts, "Nothing happened at all."