Donald Trump, the property mogul and co-owner of the Miss Universe contest, is threatening to strip Miss USA of her crown after multiple allegations of underage drinking and bad behaviour. Mr Trump, also the host of the reality television hit The Apprentice and a man on his third marriage, will decide next week whether to fire Tara Conner, 20, as Miss USA 2006.

The scandal comes just a month after Miss Great Britain, Danielle Lloyd, lost her crown for agreeing to pose for Playboy magazine and dating the footballer Teddy Sheringham before he judged the contest.

The Miss Universe Organisation said yesterday that it was evaluating Miss Conner’s “behavioural and personal issues” after media reports that she had been drinking her way around a string of trendy New York bars and bedhopping her way across the city. “We have to make a decision,” Mr Trump, 60, said. “There is no question about that.”

Lark-Marie Anton, a spokeswoman for the Miss Universe Organisation, said: “Miss USA is a role model. There are moral rules that we go over with them.” She added that underage drinking was clearly prohibited. Miss Conner turns 21 next week, the legal age for drinking in America.

Miss Conner won the title in April but has clearly come a long way from her home town of Russell Springs, in the heart of the Bible Belt in south-central Kentucky, where many counties still prohibit drinking.

She has been living in a flat in Trump Place towers, the entrepreneur’s Manhattan skyscraper. Her flatmates have been Katie Blair, 18 — Miss Teen USA — and Zuleyka Rivera, 19, Miss Universe. If Miss Conner is removed, Tamiko Nash — Miss California, the runner-up in April — will assume her duties and take possession of the coveted tiara.

Since arriving in New York Miss Conner has broken off her engagement to her high school sweetheart and has been linked to a series of men.

In 1973 Marjorie Wallace, the first American Miss World, was dethroned for dating too many men, including the singer Tom Jones and Jimmy Connors, the tennis star. Vanessa Williams, who was the first African-American Miss America, resigned in 1984 when sexually explicit pictures of her appeared in Penthouse.

Eighteen years later, in 2002, Oxana Federova, the Russian Miss Universe, was fired by Donald Trump for repeatedly refusing to attend events. He called her a “total disaster”. In the same year, Rebecca Revels was fired as Miss North Carolina after her former boyfriend e-mailed to pageant officials topless photos of her. She unsuccessfully sued the organisers to get her title back.

Perhaps the beauty queen with the biggest exposed secret was Leona Gage. Crowned Miss USA 1957, she was stripped of her title soon after- wards when it emerged that she was married with children.

Times Recommends

• The Japanese Prime Minister is doomed: or is he?
• Brighton company 'involved in cyber attack'
• The art of survival: it's all in the mind