The philosopher proposes marriage publicly to the masseuse he met 24 hours previously. Amanda, a creative soul on the dole, cries with anguish in front of near-strangers then recites John Donne. And Adrian, a venture capitalist and closet harmonica player, sings a sentimental Swedish song. The course leader says you can have whatever you can imagine. So we scream, sing and improvise.

This is The Mastery, an Actors’ Institute weekend course where you learn to express your creativity. Most of the aspiring poets and musicians (chartered accountants to travel agents) haven’t performed before. But we’ve all learned a two-minute piece.

We wear name laqels in true self-development seminar style and go into the hall where fruit and fruit teas are laid out next to the notice board with a card saying: ‘Wanted. New home for 2 terrapins.’

Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Roberts, actress and management trainer, is the course leader and turns out to be insightful and brave. (The course is confidential, so the other names have been changed.) This is not the National Theatre, she says, but a place to take risks.

Seventeen participants and 10 helpers listen attentively, with recycled notebooks on their knees. Why are we here? One person is ‘here to change’, another to ‘gain confidence’ and another to ‘be a better performer’. The helpers introduce themselves. Marco, an actor and Buddhist; Cynthia, who interprets sign language . . .

Now it’s our turn to tell the group about ourselves. Fear of humiliation rears its head. ‘Breathe and dare to make eye contact,’ Ronnie implores, for the first of five million times. The atmosphere becomes confessional. Andrew, a former surveyor, reveals that he had an affair while he was married. When he’s through, the audience claps acknowledgement. Clarissa is shy and a senior civil servant. She recently did a leadership course – potholing, climbing rocks – and feels born again. More clapping. Clive, the philosopher, doesn’t like telling the truth and is a compulsive smiler and yawner. Clap, clap. There are tears and laughter until 1.30am. Homework is to write three goals for the weekend and spend five minutes looking in the mirror. Next morning, participants say they haven’t slept. Too excited. Up drinking tea and coffee and chatting. They feel energised, I feel tired.

Now it’s time to relate what happened while looking in the mirror. ‘I looked in my eyes and saw all the pain,’ says one. ‘I looked at my mouth and saw a hard line.’

‘The first thing I noticed,’ says another, ‘was that I assumed I was going to look very ugly.’

A management consultant says her goal is to make a speech in front of 400 people. A girl in apres-ski boots and flowery shirt says she’d like to learn to cope with her emotions. And John is ‘up for a row with anyone who wants one’.

Next we take one corner and call it Love, another Anger and another Need. Participants stand in each and express the feeling of that corner to participants in the other two. In the Anger corner you see contorted faces, screaming and stomping. ‘I L-O-V-E you,’ responds the man, down on his knee in the Love corner, crying. ‘I need more love in my life.’

‘Why don’t you listen to me. I neeeeeed you,’ a woman shrieks to him from the Need corner. Ronnie encourages and motivates. Which results in more happy-clappy people. More tears. And more recycled Kleenex.

‘Keith, I feel you’re dead inside,’ says Ronnie, kindly. He agrees. Ronnie works with him, coaxing and challenging like a shrink on holiday. Later Keith, a Jesus Christ lookalike, looks as if he’s been born again. ‘A minor miracle,’ he says.

Now what do we want to communicate in the two-minute pieces we have prepared? Someone wants to express her sensuality; another her lovability. What does Adam want to do? ‘Two poems. One God one. Another lust and gutter job.’ He farts creatively.

A girl in purple leggings and political T-shirt recites Jack Kerouac. ‘Doing this is very scary,’ she says, trembling. Next Susie, resonant and powerful and in platform shoes and green jeans, sings an aria from La Boheme, in Italian.

The venture capitalist is on the floor expressing the defiance of someone on skid row. Carl recites Louis MacNeice: ‘I’m not yet born . . .’ And the gay guy curtsies after his performance. The pieces these amateurs produce are heartfelt and inspiring.

On Sunday, the room is filled with beaming faces. Ronnie has drawn out of people what didn’t seem possible. Strangers have gelled and there is a feeling of possibilities.

So it’s time to get physical with Gary . . . with Marilyn Monroe exercises, Bette Davis muscular stretches and exercises other classes don’t reach – including a crotch exercise. They once had a nun in a tracksuit on the course who laughed so much that she wet herself.

Then we do improvisations: one group enacts being a pizza, others act out their goals. Someone says he loves shouting. Another enjoys being a fool. The participants agree to meet again in three weeks, stating what they want to achieve before then. Andrew holds a magic wand and says he wants to book a flight to Swaziland to see his aunt. Sebastian wants to become a garden designer and recite his poems publicly: ‘Thank you for helping me believe in myself.’

It’s an intensive, personal workshop. Participants talk about having changed their lives. Faces show relief. It’s emotionally draining, moving, poignant and supportive. Like a marathon therapy session crossed with an improvisation workshop. Very Me Generation. Very New York. Very good. Oh, and I sang Blue Moon to 30 people. Next stop the Royal Albert Hall. * The Mastery takes place approximately every three weeks and costs £195. Telephone 071 251 8178.

Whether you want to improve your improvisation techniques or unleash the exhibitionist within, The Mastery encourages shameless self-expression. drops her inhibitions and opens her heart, lungs, mind and wallet.

Victor Edelstein, one of Princess Diana’s favourite designers, is having a mid-life crisis. He’s 46 years old, has worked in fashion for 32 years and has clients from the Duchess of Kent to Princess Yasmin Aga Khan. Now he’s closing his couture house and starting his second life. ‘I’m going to be very poor for a long time,’ he says. ‘But I don’t mind. I want to be free.’ In 1967, aged 21, Victor was assistant to Barbara Hulanicki at Biba. Next he was assistant designer at Christian Dior. Then in 1977 he started on his own, but went bankrupt. Instead of slinking away and becoming a pattern cutter, he salvaged something out of his liquidation and moved into couture.

At its height in 1989, the turnover was £1 million a year. (His dresses – flattering, elegant and heavenly – start at £2,500.) Now he refuses even to look at his accounts. Couture, he says, is no longer fashionable and he doesn’t have the resources to wait for a revival. ‘I don’t want to get deeper and deeper into debt.’ He intends to spend his time painting watercolours, writing travel articles, illustrating a Cinderella book and designing for the stage.

Victor has an unconventional marriage and lives alone in a one-bedroom flat. He stopped living with Annamaria, his Catholic wife and dealer in old master drawings, 12 years ago after eight years of marriage. They never divorced, remain good friends, still go on holiday, spend four nights a week together when she is in London, and divide their time between four properties in Paris, Spain and London.

‘Now we’re together for more than half the year. A lot of people envy our marriage,’ he says. ‘We both have flats in London. Sometimes we entertain or spend the weekend in the other’s flat. It works marvellously.’ He doesn’t always include Annamaria when he’s entertaining, and isn’t offended if she doesn’t involve him. ‘I don’t feel insecure. She’s like a second self.’ He first met Annamaria at a friend’s party. ‘I saw her and in some weird way just knew that we were going to get married.’ She had a boyfriend at the time, but they met again six months later when she didn’t – and married in 1973.

Why did they break up? ‘She had this job buying works of art and was away half the time. We were apart too much and the whole thing went sour.’ They split but never stopped seeing one another. ‘We’re together now more than ever.’

Are they sexually loyal? ‘It’s not discussed. We do what we like. There are no rules. Whatever happens happens. But what we like is to be together. Whoever we meet, there is a kind of inevitability that we’re going to remain together.’ He says he doesn’t feel sexual jealousy or possessiveness. ‘The way you keep the love of your life is by making that person feel absolutely free.’

They don’t have children. ‘It wasn’t a decision not to. But nothing happened and she felt there was no point investigating and going through hell trying to have them. She felt if it was meant to be we would have them. I’m sorry we didn’t. But it’s too late now.’

Victor is wearing a Ralph Lauren paisley tie and Prince of Wales suit, and has the looks of a Sir Ralph Halpern crossed with a sartorially equipped daddy-longlegs – he’s 6ft 4in with long face, long hands and long legs. He speaks in a mannered way and is charming and courteous. He’s Mr Nice Guy: ‘I’ve never lost my temper in my whole life. I wish I were more confrontational.’

He is a ‘lapsed’ Jew of Russian Polish extraction. (‘I do have a faith. I believe in God.’) His father and grandfather were dressmakers, and his family was close. As a child, he read a lot and played with a toy theatre. ‘School was hell until the last couple of years because one was artistic, sensitive and taller than everybody else.’ He was already more than six foot at the age of 12.

‘I was quite weedy and used to get knocked about. Thank God I didn’t go to boarding school. I’d have been one of the children who hung themselves in the first week.’ He went to the local grammar school and gained six O-levels.

His father died when he was 19. ‘It was horrible. He was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer.’ His mother then worked as a secretary. ‘Six years of father being ill depleted what money there was.’ Victor was fired from his first job, and then sacked from the following six. ‘I was too dreamy. You imagine yourself throwing lengths of silk over beautiful models and then find yourself chained to a pattern-cutting table.’

He works very hard but is moderate elsewhere in his life. At the age of 21 he got drunk at a Biba party – and has never done so again. Nor has he ever touched a cigarette. And drugs? ‘Well, one’s had the odd joint. But one’s getting old.’

He’s excited to be entering a new era where he’ll be rid of hemlines and deadlines. ‘Lots of people are stuck in jobs and think, ‘God, if only I could do something else’. Well, I can.’ The official reason for the closure is his financial problems. But that is only part of the story. ‘Balenciaga said before he died that a couturier’s life is a dog’s life. It is in many ways. I’ve spent 11 years being polite and constantly watching what I say. I hold an awful lot back. I look at something that’s tight and instead of saying, ‘We’ll let that out’, I have to say, ‘We’ll ease that over the hips’.’ Doesn’t he feel like crawling up the wall? ‘Why do you think I’m stopping?

‘I’m certainly not retiring. I can’t imagine myself staring at the walls or the television from now until the Big Day.’ He thinks of himself as lazy. ‘Like most lazy people I work twice as hard to fight it off. I’ve always had this suspicion that left to my own devices I’d do nothing. Now we’ll see.’ What is he going to live on? ‘That’s my business. Not a lot.’ He’s not materialistic or avaricious. ‘Most of the time I’ve had so little that I count myself as very happy when I know I can pay my bills.’

We return to the subject of his sexuality. Are his inclinations exclusively towards women? He pauses. ‘How are yours?’ he says curtly, before replying in the affirmative. In an industry where many designers are homosexual, he admits he has a feminine side. ‘Maybe she is just getting out in those dresses,’ he says, hamming it up. ‘But I’ve certainly never felt tempted to put them on!’

I am dining with Jonathan Meades. The restaurant critic, presenter of Abroad in Britain, and now author of Pompey – the fattest and most scatological novel in recent memory – has a fearsome reputation. ‘He’s detached from the human race and would be just as happy to meet Dennis Nilsen at a dinner party as Mother Teresa,’ says a rival food critic. ‘He enjoys poking about in the nasty bits of pigs’ guts and people’s lives,’ comments another. ‘He borrows an intimidatory technique from Brando, of staring and pretending to be deaf.’

Meades, 46, is known for wearing black, a fedora hat and National Health tinted spectacles. But he arrives in purple tie and suede shoes with accommodating manner. He’s also renowned for his arcane vocabulary (it’s likely that the OED takes its lead from him) and uses words like eldritch, mansarded, naphthalic and salchows.

He’s currently making a film about vertigo for a new series, Further Abroad. ‘I suffered so badly from vertigo once that I had to crawl back along Clifton suspension bridge.’ And one about pigs. ‘The good thing about pigs is that they can be your best friend and you can eat them as well.’ His book, Pompey, is populated with people like a loopy paraplegic ex-comedian, a firework-maker and his four children by different mothers: one sees his father eaten by a crocodile in the Congo, one is a porn star, another brings an Aids-like disease to Europe as a result of eating a pygmy.

Does Meades aim to shock and repulse? ‘These things don’t seem that abnormal to me. I revel in them. Maybe it’s a question of the ancient truism that your subject chooses you . . .’ Does that make him a revolting person? ‘No. I’m absolutely charming, like a little old lady out of Muriel Spark.’ Not a psychopath? ‘I regard myself as an absolute paragon of normality. One does, doesn’t one?’

He’s renowned for his prodigious appetite. It is said that when he dines, the waiters queue up on the pavement to serve him. And he ‘probably’ drinks too much, becoming boorish. So will he eat black pudding or entrails en croute? He belies his offal reputation, choosing only a little goose liver and guinea fowl and mineral water. ‘I quite like dead guinea fowl.’ Would he eat people? The pianist tinkles in the background. ‘I don’t know. I wouldn’t eat dog. I loathe dogs. To eat something is a way of cherishing it. Of keeping it inside and paying it some sort of posthumous compliment.’ He laughs. ‘My idea of a good dog is one that’s just been run over.’

A lot of things prompt anger in Meades. ‘Traffic, Esther Rantzen, dog shit, Michael Parkinson. Normal things which any sentient civilised person would be provoked to anger by.’ He hates conformity, ditherers, pseuds, the stupid and drab. ‘I hate provincial GPs. I hate the provincial professional classes. I can’t say I hate the working classes in toto but . . .’ He toys with his puree of peas, goose liver, tagliatelle and truffles. ‘I enjoy hating. It gives me pleasure. It’s like a carousel of misanthropy which is fuelled by new hates all the time.’

Meades lives in Kilburn, where he reads eclectically. Twice married, he has four daughters, including 12-year-old twins. He doesn’t want any boys. ‘They’re extremely aggressive and very alarming. Backward compared to girls and very unsubtle.’

His first marriage lasted three years. ‘I don’t have any comments about relationships. They either come off or they don’t,’ he says camply. He remarks that his campness is a form of irony.

He was brought up in Wiltshire and went to Salisbury Cathedral School and various crammers. ‘I walked out of school at 16. It was too illiberal. I had to go to chapel all the time.’

An only child, his father was a Crawford biscuits salesman and his mother a teacher. ‘Most of my friends had parents who were much younger. I envied them quite a lot.’ His mother was 37 when he was born. ‘My childhood wasn’t particularly happy or unhappy. I was very much left to my own devices. I was at quite a loose end most of the time.’

He was trained at Rada in the Sixties. Naturally he landed a role as a deaf-mute child murderer in a film that never got made. He liked acting but despised the luvvies. ‘I dislike theatre because it’s so boring.’ What sort of actor would he have made? ‘I was good at simpletons and psychopaths. I dare say I could have broadened my range to include upper-class bastards.’ This, he says, has nothing to do with identification.

Meades doesn’t expect anything from life. ‘I’m completely nihilistic and don’t believe in anything. I don’t even expect a certain degree of material well-being.’ The death of his father and split with his long-standing girlfriend when he was 32 affected his attitudes profoundly. ‘You become brutally insensitive.’ He’s taken the line from Joe Orton and doesn’t really believe it of himself.

‘I think it’s mad to expect happiness,’ he continues, in lachrymose tone. ‘It’s nice when it happens, but counting on it is a ludicrous presumption. I remember when I was 17 and cycled from school with two litres of cider to Cothay, a medieval house in Somerset. I was happy that particular day. That’s 29 years ago,’ he says, deadpan. ‘One’s been happy since for brief moments.’

In his writing, he refuses to give moral assurances. ‘I don’t have any great hope for the future. I don’t think things get better.’ He puffs on his Marlboro. ‘I think we’re in a state of original sin. We’re born imperfect and remain that way.’ He doesn’t believe in redemption for anything except perhaps overeating.

He’s heavy-weight, very clever and with a timidity hidden beneath the act. Perhaps the Meades beneath the fedora and scatological misanthropy is just a nice middle-class boy?

Imagine the sound of Approaching Menace music, the inquisitorial spotlight, the camera zooming in, the terrified man sitting in the famous black leather chair, the nervous flinching and twitch of the mouth . . . this afternoon we have polymath Magnus Magnusson in the hot seat with 45 minutes on The Life and Reign of Magnus Magnusson, Mastermind quizmaster.

This is the beginning of the first, nail-biting round. ‘How about a bottle of medium white wine?’ asks Magnus, showing his virtues as questionmaster. ‘Oh, do we have to?’ squeaks his producer. They then do battle for the title (of ‘dry’ or ‘medium’). ‘Medium dry!’ says Magnus, showing a talent for compromise. Beep beep beep. That brings us to the end of this fast, furious and high-scoring round.

Magnus, you’re a writer, broadcaster, scholar and chairman of the Scottish National Heritage Board. You have an honorary knighthood for your service to National Heritage, but as an Icelander you can’t be called ‘Sir’. You’re not allowed questions on orthopaedic bone cement in hip replacements or routes to anywhere in mainland Britain from Letchworth by road, but you can be quizzed on anything from notable British poisoners to the life cycle of the honey bee. Your chosen specialist subject? ‘Icelandic sagas or the history of Lindisfarne.’

Right. You’re 63. Are you going to retire as Mastermind quizmaster? ‘Mastermind has lasted 21 years. I see no reason why it shouldn’t last until 25.’ He clears his throat defensively. ‘The game depends on speed. If I did get slower, I think I’d like to be put mercifully out to pasture.’ Correct. How long have you been married to Mamie? ‘Thirty-eight years, 10 months.’ That’s astonishing and unusual, isn’t it? ‘It’s not unusual,’ he says, frostily. ‘More people remain married than don’t get married.’ What’s the secret of marital longevity? ‘Marrying someone nice.’ What else? Pass. What has he learned from his marriage? ‘That it would be much too tedious to separate.’ What else? Pass.

He’s a kind, soft man with gravitas and dignity. But he’s initially prickly and shirty if a question is any more intrusive than ‘What’s the monetary unit of Japan?’. He’s also pedagogic.

He sports a blue/green jacket, green tie with an otter on it (‘from the island of Isla which I visit quite a lot because we have a goose problem . . .’) and blue eyes. His hair is silver and he trims his eyebrows. ‘It’s genetic. My father needed a topiarist to deal with his.’ He sticks a pencil in his pipe, rakes the tobacco, lights it, never smokes it and looks like a pre-Socratic philosopher.

Back to the quiz. Tell us some funny stories about Mastermind, about a contestant passing on all the questions, for instance. ‘That’s not funny. That’s tragic,’ he says, stormy-faced with frightening intensity. ‘Our job is to bring out the best in people. There was one woman who sang her last answer.’ Correct.

You missed out the laboratory technician who was disqualified because she entered twice, first as Mrs Denyer, her first husband’s name. ‘Oh yes,’ says Magnus, nodding. ‘She didn’t think she was doing anything wrong. She felt she was a different person having had a bad marriage, remarried, changed her hair and reconstructed herself.’ Correct.

Instead of the crisp tones and fast delivery seen on television, he speaks in a soothing broadcasterly Scottish burr. He’s also the sort to pronounce correctly any Japanese, Swahili or Gujarati words. Why is the programme so popular? ‘We’re trying to celebrate what the human noddle can do . . . and at home you compete, shout answers at the screen and think, I got one quicker than those brilliant little bastards! I always think that when I watch University Challenge and see those hideously, formidably brilliant little sods!’ Correct.

How would you define Mastermind contestants? ‘They’re people who like taking part in quizzes. I also think they’re crazy. You’ve got to be a wee bit potty to go in for Mastermind. I wouldn’t for all the tea in China.’ Why? ‘You’re putting your pride on the block. By applying, you’re implying you have a certain good conceit of yourself and there’s a danger that you’ll come a cropper.’ Correct.

Who is the questionmaster’s questionmaster? ‘My ideal quizmaster is Bamber Gascoigne, the king, the best ever,’ he answers with conviction. ‘If I were as good as him, I’d reckon I’d done a pretty good job with Mastermind.’ Are you not as good as him? ‘Of course not. Nobody is. He’s miles above everyone.’ Do you know your subjects? ‘On the night,’ he laughs. ‘Then I know all the possible answers to all the questions.’ Correct. If you were given six months to live, what would you do? ‘I’d carry on doing what I’m doing now. I hope I wouldn’t be thrown into a flat spin by it. I think I would cultivate my garden a bit more.’ Do you want that quote in French? ‘Ah, you know your Voltaire.’

How would you describe yourself? ‘As an ordinary guy who got notoriety through doing parlour games on television.’ Beep beep beep. Let us glance at the scores. Magnus, you’ve scored 50 points and several marital passes. It’s easy to play games. But Magnus has had tragedy in his life. Siggie, his 11-year-old son, was killed in 1973 as he jumped off a bus on his way home from school. ‘It’s curious,’ he says, softly, ‘but in a perverse way his death brought us all closer together and made us even stronger as a family. We’d taken for granted that we were all immortal and happy, and that things only happened to other people. You realise then you can’t take happiness for granted. That you have to work at it and help create it. His loss was a grievous and shattering blow.

‘I remember him a bit like Keats’s Grecian Urn. He was just on the threshold of puberty. He’d started worrying about whether he should kiss a girl in his class. The night before he died, he came and sat on my knee and said, ‘Dad, do you think it’s OK if I kiss her?’ I said, ‘Of course’, and he ran off to play.

‘We often wonder what path he would have taken. He’d have been 31 now. He’d probably have gone into broadcasting.’ His four children are in broadcasting. Magnus smiles and shrugs his shoulders. One is left with the impression of a gentle gentleman with great intellectual curiosity. * The Mastermind final is on 16 May.

My chauffeur is a homosexual with spiky hair and red-framed glasses who speeds me on a Yamaha XJ900 motorbike to meet the lesbian couple. He is Peter Brunnen, the gay rights activist and Labour councillor. And they are the businesswoman and former nurse who this week won a three-year battle to become foster parents. They fear exposure and refuse to be named, photographed or visited at home. So we meet in Brunnen’s office, where he greets a waiting lad with a kiss on the lips.

Hampshire councillors this week overturned their earlier ban which rejected the couple as potential carers because of their sexuality, thereby entitling them to foster children under the age of six for short periods. Jane, 35, and Susan, 36, (not their real names) have been together for 10 years. Susan, an ex-nurse turned part-time A-level student, was once married and has two children: a boy, 13, and girl, 12.

Are the couple open about their lesbian relationship? ‘We don’t go around waving flags, but our friends and neighbours know,’ says Susan. Her children’s classmates also know. ‘The smallest lad picked on my son who just laughed at him and locked him in his locker,’ she laughs.

‘Then let him out,’ Jane adds, hastily.

They aren’t overtly demonstrative in front of the children. ‘We hold hands or hug,’ says Jane. ‘That’s all I consider appropriate for any child to see . . . I think people make too much of sex.’ Their son (as they both call him) stopped telling people he had ‘two mummies’ when he was seven. They maintain firmly that their children don’t receive a distorted view of the world – and they don’t actively promote homosexuality. ‘Quite the opposite,’ says Jane. ‘You don’t say, ‘This is us and this is how it should be.’ ‘ Jane has sincere eyes, ponytail and teacherish clothes, and Susan wears short hair and jeans. They wear wedding rings to symbolise their mutual attachment.

Susan was married for six years and Jane had ‘lots’ of heterosexual relationships. They’re not men-haters. (Susan lusts after Lovejoy.) And they’re not militant feminists, just common-sensical about women’s rights. Susan wants to foster because she has valuable nursing skills to offer. ‘When I worked in hospitals, I saw the state of these children and know how difficult it is for them to find foster parents.’

And Jane? ‘I want to give something back. Something to people who are less happy. I’ve had a pretty good life and have a stable relationship.’ Most fostering reflects the norms of society and they don’t dismiss the traditional Happy Family model. (‘It can be good or awful.’) But they see nothing unsuitable for children about their home. ‘Single-sex families are not that different from ordinary families,’ maintains Jane.

They don’t deem the lack of a male role model a problem. ‘It’s important to have both points of view, but not vital to have both available within the household. You make sure the children have contact with positive, successful males,’ says Jane.

‘Anyway, it’s mostly the mother who takes over the care in a normal family,’ adds Susan. They would never enact male/female roles, considering such behaviour ludicrous.

They will only foster short-term, so cannot understand the press interest. They only want a young child, so as not to compete with Susan’s offspring, and don’t mind about the child’s sex. They’ll happily care for the mentally or physically disabled – ‘to give their parents a break’ – and different races.

It’s likely they’ll be given children who are neglected and unwanted. ‘That’s the point of doing the job,’ says Susan. But aren’t they putting them at a further disadvantage? ‘All that matters is that the child goes to someone who is going to listen, provide for all his needs, food, warmth and security.’

Wouldn’t it be harder for such children to grow up with a positive image of men? ‘I don’t think that living with two women means that you won’t trust men,’ says Susan. ‘You can have your father in the house and discover that men are untrustworthy.’

They think abused children would actively benefit in a single-sex family of the opposite gender to the abuser. And a teenager questioning his sexual identity might be helped. ‘It would give him the space to come to terms with whether or not he’s gay,’ says Jane.

Susan’s father was a sheet-metal worker and Jane’s a plant operator. They say they had happy childhoods and that their parents’ marriages were ‘fine’. Both women are agnostic (nominally Church of England). They weren’t exposed to lesbianism as children. ‘I didn’t know it existed until I was 19. Stupid me!’ says Jane. Surprisingly they say their parents weren’t upset by their relationship.

Jane considers Susan an excellent parent: ‘I know the children come before me.’ She would have liked her own children and would have had artificial insemination. ‘I don’t feel sad though. I’ve done my share of parenting.’ But she applauds their arrangement. ‘We probably go more out of our way than most to make sure our children grow up without prejudice and treat them as individuals. Ours is a happy, nurturing and stable family.’ They are loving and patient and there is no reason to disbelieve them. They’re not interested in political correctness, just in a child having the most appropriate placement for his needs. There is little research on children brought up by lesbian couples and no evidence that it harms them. I start to ask whether they’d prefer . . .

‘Yes,’ interrupts Susan. ‘I would prefer my children to get married and have children. They both talk about doing it. That’s what they want and it’ll make life a lot easier for them.’

Hello, good afternoon and welcome back, as someone might say. Welcome to Sir David Frost OBE returning after more than 20 years to a live studio audience with The Frost Programme. But Frost off the box is a hard man to penetrate. He seems to be stage-managed.

Unusually for a newspaper photograph, he insists on being made up and appears with puffed-up hair, foundation and lip-liner. Even the management of that time-warp restaurant Odin’s protests there is only one table he’ll sit at.

This is the 54-year-old co-creator of That Was The Week That Was – television producer, author, joint founder of LWT and TV-am, and famed interviewer of Richard Nixon, the late Shah of Iran, five prime ministers, six American presidents and assorted royals. The one-man conglomerate, as he was once described, has ink on his fingers, teeth that look like they need a dentist and television screen spectacles that magnify his eyes so that it is hard to gauge his responses.

How would Frost interview Frost?

‘Aahhhaa,’ he says, as if pricked with a pin. ‘I’d be . . . interested to quiz . . . myself (cavernous pauses) . . . about why I get such a buzz from doing a lot of work. Getting to the roots, which I suspect are partly to do with my parents and Methodist upbringing, and that magical quantity, adrenaline.’

What technique would he use to make himself reveal the real David Frost? ‘Make myself forget I was interviewing myself and just have a conversation. That’s the key to a good interview.’

Frost should also ask Frost why his trousers are frayed. ‘Aahhhaa. Very observant of you. They were made a fraction too long.’

Whether he’s sold out and gone soft by accepting a knighthood and doing Hello!-style interviews. ‘I don’t know whether there is an Establishment any more, or whether the Establishment has joined me!’

About his salary. ‘Before not answering your question, you could guess $1 million a year or some nice meaningless figure.’

Whether he still has the stomach for confrontational Sixties-style interviews. ‘Yes.’

Why his friends are all movers and shakers and famous. ‘Dunno. Why not?’ (Laughs.) Why he works so hard at being liked. ‘Dunno that I work particularly hard.’

What he dislikes about himself. ‘As Ned Sherrin said, ‘David always learns from his mistakes without admitting he’s made any’.’

Why he’s driven so frenzied by the pursuit of fame and work. ‘People talk about the terrible pressures of fame. The pressures of failure would be a bloody sight worse.’

Then he should move on to romance. He is happily married to the former Lady Carina Fitzalan Howard, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. Before their 1983 wedding, was he unlucky in love?

‘I rarely talk about my private life.’ He had high-profile affairs – and was twice dumped virtually at the altar – and a 17-month marriage to Peter Sellers’s widow, Lynne Frederick.

‘Jeanette Scott was my first really serious girlfriend. I was 15 when I saw her first screen kiss in Now And Forever. I leched after her like mad. When our relationship came to an end in 1965, it was a real shock to the system.’ But all his girlfriends were ‘terrific’ and ‘wonderful’. And Lynne?

‘We ought to have kept it as a terrific affair.’ What went wrong? ‘We got married.’ And marriage now? ‘I’m incredibly lucky to have played the field and then to have fallen in love more than I’d ever fallen in love and to have three children.’ He became a father at the age of 44 and now rates family and work a ‘joint priority’.

Next Frost should ask Frost that age-old Frost question of whether he believes in God or knows there’s a God. ‘I’m nearly in the second category,’ he replies. ‘I’ve never varied from being in the first.’ He says grace before meals, goes to church once a week and prays almost daily. What does he pray for? ‘To be at my best, most thoughtful, caring, cheerful and awake to the potentialities of any situation for the best.’

Frost is more relaxed live on television than live in person. But he still talks in the famous inebriated voice with moist lips, flickering ironic smile and head thrown back for that car engine warming-up laugh. He fiddles, rubs his hands, crunches paper, moves back, moves forward, holds on to the chair.

‘I don’t think it’s nerves. I’m waiting for the photographer to go so that I can have a cigar.’ He thinks Lew Grade has copyright on that shot. Jack (as in Frost), as he was known, had an ordinary, secure childhood, although money was tight. His Methodist minister father earned £350 a year. ‘My parents wrought financial miracles. We had a joint, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, every week.’ He was 14 years junior to his youngest sister and thus effectively bought up as an only child. He has never confessed any unpleasant childhood memories. What would he tell a shrink? ‘I’d bore him to death with how happy my parents were, and he’d despair!’ Ask Frost to press Frost and he recalls his woodwork master punishing him with a steel ruler. He whacks his hands in a graphic demonstration and winces. ‘I can still feel the agony.’

We’re now sitting in a taxi, Frost famously clock crunching, en route to a board meeting. He flatters, asks questions, expatiates, is unthreatening, solid and jocular; the sort of person you would want as an uncle. Does he believe in Heaven? ‘Yes. One day we will all be submitted to the ultimate interview. Goodness knows what the interviewing style will be.’ Like his? ‘I don’t know. I think it will be a no-nonsense interview.’ Before then Frost should inform Frost that what you see is what you get.

Former hairdresser Barbara Harmer yesterday became the first woman to pilot Concorde. A convent-educated Action Woman, she qualified on Sunday and is now the most senior woman on the British Airways flying staff. We talk over breakfast in a tin can 29,000 feet off the ground, her ‘natural environment’.

She flew Concorde (under supervision) for the first time last year. It’s known to be a slippery, demanding beast. ‘When you apply the power, you feel a nudge in your back and it goes off down the runway like a scalded cat. You can’t believe the acceleration.’

She wasn’t scared and doesn’t worry about emergency landings over New York, hijackers or wings dropping off. She’s pragmatic about the dozen or so occasions when she’s had passengers on board and found one missing but with his bag in the hold. And about the three times she’s had engine failure during her 11 years of licensed flying.

‘On one flight to Jersey, there was lots of noise, the aircraft rolled violently and all the passengers were screaming in the back,’ she says. ‘The engine had completely disintegrated and blown itself apart.’ She shut the engine down and came back into Gatwick where all the emergency services were waiting. ‘Your mind is so full of where you’re going to go and talking to ground control that you don’t have time to think about how you feel.’ She’s never had more than her pride hurt in a plane. Things were fine when she flew Eric Clapton, and dandy with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, Lord David Owen and even Sarah Brightman. But Baroness Thatcher, ouch. ‘She was travelling under an assumed name in Concorde back from New York in February. My landing at Heathrow was my worst ever. I thought, ‘I hope they don’t tell her it’s a female at the controls. I’d hate her to think we can’t cope’.’ A carton of orange juice, Danish pastry and broken plastic cup dripping tea arrive.

Harmer has an open face, bright eyes and toothy smile. She wears a red drummer boy’s jacket, girly pleated skirt and the heady smell of Opium scent. She is positive, determined and has a dirty laugh. She claims she’s 40 years old – but is, in fact, only 39. ‘I’m practising getting used to the big four-o.’

She’s unmarried but has a design engineer boyfriend. He lives in Teddington and she lives near Bognor Regis. This is geographically close for Ms Biggles. ‘I used to commute to Anchorage in Alaska where I had a boyfriend. I took 22 flights in three years.’

She’s an extraordinary woman. She works out in the gym three times a week, skis (and has the tan to prove it), sails (racing in the Solent on a 32ft yacht), cycles in the summer (does the London to Brighton ride, 60 miles in three-and-a-quarter hours, and this year wants to do the 100-mile centenary ride) and plays tennis. At one time she played golf, but says it takes too long. She also drives a sports car. ‘I used to break the speed limit. But since flying, I’ve learned to slow down.’

Another amazing thing about her is that she left school aged 15 but has 11 O-levels and four A-levels. She was educated privately at a convent. (‘If the nuns had known I was going to be a pilot they’d have said, ‘Don’t be so ridiculous’. I suppose the discipline was helpful.’) And she was ‘a rebel’ at school. ‘I just didn’t work.’

When she took her A-levels, she was working as an air-traffic control assistant at Gatwick. ‘I just ordered the syllabuses from the examining boards, bought the recommended texts and looked at past papers. I did it all by myself, with no tuition.’ (After our meeting she’s addressing a Manchester school at a seminar on women at work.) Her father was a commercial artist, her mother a haberdasher and she was the youngest of four girls. Two of her sisters are now unexceptionally married with children, but the other is a missionary in the States for born-again Christians. Harmer was brought up in Essex and wanted to work with horses, but her parents said there was no money in four-legged creatures, so she went into hairdressing for six years.

She flew for the first time on Boxing Day in 1975, in a two-seater Cessna. ‘It was only the second time I’d ever been in a plane. I was 24 years old and I’d never even left England before.’ She found it exhilarating and frightening. ‘I liked driving. Flying is similar to driving or sailing, just a different mode of transport.’

She didn’t go on a course, but simply built up the requisite 700 flying hours while still beavering as that A-level-studying air-traffic-control assistant. ‘I’m what they call a self-improver. I paid for myself.’ It cost £15,000 to be a self-improver, and she borrowed £10,000 from the bank. In 1982 she passed her exams and started working as a pilot. Fast forward to 1992. It is, she says, the dream of every pilot to fly Concorde and speed through the air at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound. Her training took six months and cost £100,000. This time she wasn’t a self-improver, and Lord King picked up the tab. She now earns £37,000 and is ambitious to become a captain for £60,000.

British Airways has 2,682 pilots, of whom 40 are female. It only started recruiting women pilots in 1987. What’s it like being the first woman to fly Concorde? ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever been first at anything. It’s mind-blowing,’ she says, perkily. Of course she’s endured lots of unrepeatable jokes about, er, women drivers. But she says there’s no discrimination. ‘Just much more pressure on you to be equal to – or better than – the boys.’

So is she as robustly confident as she appears? ‘Of course not,’ she laughs. ‘But this is my environment. I’m used to spending my time in an aeroplane.’ This is, by the way, a Shuttle en route to Manchester. Bet you thought we were in Concorde, didn’t you?

She had sex and showbiz parties in her Kensington home, was loved by Moors murderer Myra Hindley, kept a pet goose when she was a child, was tried at the Old Bailey, owned a Rolls-Royce, ran a call-girl agency for diplomats and aristocracy, was sent to prison where she wore a mink coat, appeared topless at a world premiere in Piccadilly, is a long-standing friend of Lord Bath, released a single with The Clash and was kept by a colonel. These are incidents from the life of Janie Jones (born Marion Mitchell). She was the little-known cabaret singer, and vocalist on the Sixties hit Witch’s Brew, who became the most talked about madam in town. She became infamous for her alleged involvement in the 1971 Payola scandal – accused of offering sexual favours to disc jockeys as an inducement to play her records, but found not guilty. And in 1973 she was sentenced to seven years for controlling prostitutes and attempting to pervert the course of justice by threatening violence to witnesses. She was dubbed ‘an evil woman’ by Judge Alan King-Hamilton but released on parole in 1977.

Now she has written a book, The Devil and Miss Jones. She hasn’t named Lord Y, the peer who made love to girls dressed as school children carrying teddy bears. But Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Cat Stevens and Roman Polanski all appear in her book . . .

She also writes about her former prison friend Myra Hindley (‘The Devil’ of the title). In prison, Hindley swore passionate love for Jones (‘revive me with your kisses,’ she wrote to Jones). ‘She fancied me rotten. She came over as a timid, little-girl-lost Princess Di type.’ Hindley fooled her that the Moors murders ‘were committed only by Ian Brady’, and Jones subsequently protested her innocence publicly.

Jones felt inspired to write the book following Hindley’s confession in 1987 about the whereabouts of Pauline Reade’s grave, because she realised that Hindley had conned her. ‘She’s very complicated, conniving, convincing and hypnotic. She should never be released,’ she says.

Jones is sitting in her Campden Hill Road house, scene of her sex parties with the infamous seven-foot bed and two-way mirror. The front window is stuffed with soft toys and dolls (odd). Eric, a bespectacled former county court clerk and one-time self-confessed slave who said in court that he was a virgin, opens the door. ‘Eric, coffee,’ shrieks Jones.

Jones once had 120 call girls (‘out-of-work actresses and models’) on her books. ‘A Lord would say to me, ‘I need 24 ladies to go out for dinner’,’ she says, straight-faced. ‘At my parties, stars had a free-for-all on the bed,’ she recalls in her Durham accent. ‘One disc jockey would lock the door and conduct an interview for a secretary.’

She maintains she was wrongly convicted, denying that she was paid. ‘A girl would visit a diplomat in Claridge’s. If she dropped her drawers or anything kinky, she’d arrange the money.’ It’s difficult to believe Jones did it, well, for love. ‘No it’s not. It’s just something I got inveigled into through my own stupidity.’ Was she ever a prostitute? ‘No.’ But she once went topless as a publicity stunt to a film premiere in Piccadilly. ‘I don’t crave attention. I got into these situations because I’m outrageous.’ Her sister joined in. ‘I said we’d steal the show with topless long dresses and a Rolls-Royce. We practised in the Edgware Road first and a passing car bumped into the one in front. I said to my sister, ‘Just imagine the top of the dress is there and think, what are all these idiots looking at?’ ‘ Jones always persuades herself that the Emperor has a lot of clothes on.

Jones is fiftysomething (‘39 for ever,’ she says, aggressively), plump and colourful in applique jumper and crushed-velvet skirt, with a rag-doll-painted face, Barbara Cartland lashes and peroxided hair. She has the tough voice of a survivor and a powerful, theatrical presence. She is unstable and inhabits a self-protective fantasy land. ‘It’s best sometimes to go off into your world of fantasy. I don’t like the world we live in. When I was in prison, I wasn’t in prison. The music was on and I was in a recording studio.’

Her prison experience was grim and she still has nightmares about it. ‘One girl burned herself alive in the hospital wing. I can still smell that burning flesh in my dreams. I was in a house full of murderesses who all had the needle because I had a date to get out.’

She also claims to have had psychic experiences in prison. There is an episode in the book when she asks God for a sign to indicate Hindley’s innocence: ‘She appeared to be coming off the bed, floating upwards, and she was surrounded by the most beautiful colours.’

She found many prisoners ‘evil, vile and jealous’ – and her mink coat was burned. ‘They gave me a hard time, but I earned their respect. I scrubbed the floors better than any, did the toilets out, never grumbled.’ And she is fascistic in her penal views. ‘When violent prisoners go to Holloway, they shouldn’t be kept in the new wing where they have toilets at their disposal. They’re there for punishment, not pleasure.’

Jones maintains she had a ‘very happy’ childhood. Her mother was in her late forties when she was born. ‘She went to the doctor with a pain in her stomach and he said, ‘I’ll be delivering that pain in a couple of hours’.’ Jones was the seventh child of a seventh child. Her father was a Durham miner, and they lived in a house with an outside lavatory. ‘He slogged himself to death to bring in money. He ruled with a rod of iron. His word was law.’ She says it was a God-fearing background.

Her parents were prudish and never even saw one another naked. ‘I had to wear knee-length knickers as a child. My mother was horrified when I started working, dancing in a G-string. My father always said men are after one thing and have no respect for women. I believe that too. I don’t trust men, full stop.’

She started working, aged 16, as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital. She then moved to the Windmill Theatre where she did five shows a day. ‘But I would never appear naked.’ She says she was celibate for a long time. ‘I’ve never had any of this earth-moving stuff. I think sex is all a big pain and aggravation. At the parties I never joined in anything.’

She had one marriage. In 1968, she wed self-confessed former drug addict and songwriter John Christian-Dee (‘The Crank,’ she calls him). Within months things went wrong. ‘I didn’t want to marry him. It’s just he said if I didn’t, he wouldn’t get off the heroin.’ She then decided he was schizophrenic and aborted their twins.

In court, she boasted of the marriage proposals she’d turned down and the thousands she was offered by Arab princes and British aristocrats. ‘I’d go out for dinner and say, ‘No hididdlediddle, no rummagin’ merrily with me’. I had a power over men. The more I insulted them, the more they’d come back.’ So is Eric the lodger her slave? ‘No, never ever. He’d be the worst,’ she laughs. ‘But I’ve had some good slaves in my time.’

And how does she support herself now? ‘That,’ she screams, ‘is none of your bloody business.’

Her 14-year-old son boasts that he has done some 500 break-ins in the past year. Today he was back in court and released once more because the authorities say there is nowhere with room to detain him. His mother, affectionate and frank, is in despair.

THIS WOMAN’S 14-year-old has been responsible for 200 high street burglaries in the past year. He boasts to his mother that he has actually done about 500 break-ins with his gang. The thefts have cost traders in one street £200,000. But social workers have told the boy’s mother that over the two years the gang has operated, they have stolen £2 million worth of goods. He has walked free from court appearances on 33 occasions.

His mother Tracey (not her real name), 32, is sitting in her £100,000 Sutton house. She is a surprisingly kindly woman, pretty, with a gentle face and wearing a gold cross. Her sitting room is neat and feminine. This is her cry for help.

‘I’m frightened this is going to end with my son going into banks with shotguns,’ she says. ‘I’ve told him ‘In a panic you could stab someone, couldn’t you?’

‘Kevin (not his real name) told me yesterday: ‘I don’t regret being a thief. These have been the best two years of my life. I’ll steal while I can because I enjoy it. I’m addicted to it. It feels fantastic going into a shop, taking what you want and knowing nothing can be done to you.” Because of his age, Kevin cannot be remanded in custody and is out on conditional bail. He hasn’t been placed in secure accommodation because every establishment in the country is full. At the moment he is said to be ‘still fifth from the top of the list’.

‘He’s not like a 14-year-old. I’m petrified of him driving drunk to London and going with a woman on the streets and getting Aids. I asked if he went to brothels. He said no. I just said: ‘If you’re going to do something, use something.’ I don’t think boys of that age should go to bed with anyone. He lost his virginity two years ago. He has girlfriends of 18 and older. He also comes in absolutely legless, having driven a stolen car.’ KEVIN burgles Marks and Spencer to Boots. This week he admitted to one major raid on Dorothy Perkins where he stole £28,000 of clothing. His latest string of burglaries totalled £57,000. He sometimes leaves a calling card bearing his initials and the legend ‘Call 999′. He also has his gang insignia tattooed on his wrist. (When he goes to court, Tracey tells him: ‘Don’t bite your nails, keep your hands out of your pockets and be polite.’) Kevin won’t tell his mother where he hides the goods or to whom he sells them. ‘He’s come in with wads of money. I won’t take any – that would condone his behaviour…He says he’s spent it all at top restaurants like the Savoy and Ritz. That can’t eat up £10,000. I said they wouldn’t let him in. But he said he dressed very smartly and stole a good car for the evening.’

Tracey and her boyfriend John are unemployed (and he lives elsewhere). She lives on income support of £91 a week, has a £67,000 mortgage and was recently threatened with repossession. She is £8,000 in arrears and her gas and electricity were recently disconnected. (‘I never had anything as a child,’ she says later. ‘So my dream was always to be able to give my children everything.’ Kevin has never stolen from her. ‘He never steals from houses. It’s his code of honour.’) Events have taken their toll on her. ‘I’ve got so much pent-up anger. I smash anything that’s glass. I’ll throw a vase against the wall or rip my clothes to pieces. I tear up anything that I love. I know I need to see a psychiatrist. And obviously me being like this rubs off on Kevin.’ She finds it hard to cope. For seven years she’s taken tranquillisers and anti-depressants which she gets from a friend. ‘I feel so rough, so down, really awful,’ she says, calmly. ‘I also binge constantly. I cry most of the time. The night before last, I just buried my head in Kevin’s lap, crying and sobbing. He got so upset and said: ‘Don’t cry Mum.”

She leaves her phone off the hook at night. ‘We’ve had threats. One midnight caller said I was a no-good, police-loving, grassing **** and that he was going to slice up my daughter.’

Tracey came from a violent home. Her father, a hotel chef, was a drinker. ‘I was knocked around constantly and beaten badly for years by my dad. He dragged me through the flat by my hair.’ Tracey rarely hit Kevin. ‘Sometimes I felt like strangling him. I just couldn’t get through to him. Now this has blown up, he talks to me.’ She attempted to discipline him by making him stay in, but he would run out.

She doesn’t know whether society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. ‘I just want Kevin to be put into care and taken off the streets so that he’s safe. He’ll hate me for saying that.’ Kevin’s background was unstable. Tracey’s first marriage broke up because she ‘married too young’ at 16. ‘I had a nervous breakdown when we split. I couldn’t get up, wash or touch the house. I sent the children to their grandparents. I lost three stone.’ She married ‘foolishly’ the second time, three years ago, and it lasted only a year. She has been with John intermittently for seven years, but they have never lived together. ‘I THINK Kevin missed his dad who left when he was nine. I definitely shouldn’t have parted with him. Kevin adored him. He wasn’t a bad father. He didn’t hit the children.’ (Kevin’s siblings by the same father all behave impeccably. One sister is doing A-levels and wanted to be a policewoman but now hopes to do law.) ‘We don’t really speak. He sees Kevin about once every three months. I’ve rung him to ask him to help me with Kevin and he just says: ‘What can I do?”

She feels very guilty. ‘I wonder what I did wrong with Kevin. I feel completely responsible.’ She hates the possibility that he might be abusing drugs. So how much should he take responsibility for his own behaviour? Big pause. ‘I don’t know. I always blame myself.’

Kevin was trouble from the start. ‘He was a very destructive three-year-old and has always been a rogue. He was sent to school for behaviour problems when he was 11, because he was violent. If anyone upset him, he would go for them. And he would hurt himself. Aged 12, he didn’t want to hit his head teacher, so he punched a fire door and broke his wrist. He used to call the fire brigade to school.’ Though literate, he hasn’t been to school for 17 months.

The first time Kevin committed an offence, two years ago, he defaced a shop in Sutton. ‘A few weeks later he was up for assault. He beat a boy up. He said the boy started it.’ Shortly after, Kevin’s bike was stolen. ‘We’d been saving for it for months. He went frantic.’

So in 1991, they ‘escaped’ to live in France with John. ‘I was also going through a really bad time, finishing my second marriage.’ Kevin was sent to private school there, but lasted only three weeks. ‘He doesn’t like to be the centre of attention,’ she says, without irony.

THEY returned to England to visit the grandparents – and Kevin refused to leave again. ‘After two weeks they called and said they couldn’t cope. He’d started breaking into shops. He made his poor grandad ill, made his heart worse.’ (Kevin is currently living with his grandparents.) Tracey was forced to return permanently. ‘I had to sit in a house with no furniture in it, trying to keep my eye on Kevin. But he was constantly running away. Sometimes for weeks at a time.’

She has no answer to the problem of soaring juvenile crime. Kevin was in care for six weeks, six months ago. ‘He did whatever he wanted, came and went as he pleased.’ She’s upset that the courts haven’t detained him, fearful that he will re-offend. And she’s worried at the prospect of his going into a secure unit. ‘I’m frightened he’ll learn worse things. One boy there breaks a bottle over his victim’s head then smashes it in his face.’ They went to counselling together – once. ‘He just wouldn’t talk outside the family. I didn’t like it either. It made me feel ‘They think I don’t know how to cope with my family.” She disapproves of Kenneth Clarke’s plans to lock away for up to two years 12- to 15-year-olds already convicted of imprisonable offences. ‘It’s too young. These children need help. They need something to do.’

Tracey is frank, cooperative and tries to be as honest as she can when she talks about Kevin, but she is self-deluded. ‘Kevin is so lovable,’ she says, seriously. ‘In court we were cuddling, kissing and holding hands. He’s terribly affectionate. He’s a lovely kid. Very quiet and loving. I love him to death.’

But she doesn’t know if he has a future. ‘He may end up killing himself. I have nightmares about him. I don’t think he’s ever going to grow up. In my dreams, I see him in a coffin, looking the way he is today, but dead.’

Bruce Oldfield, the handsome man once connected with Princess Diana, doesn’t sleep with men or women. He is celibate. He has always lived alone. He says he’s never had a close personal relationship. And he has always been a loner. ‘Frankly,’ he says, smoking frantically, ‘I’ve been on my own since I was 13.’

Bruce Oldfield, frock maker to the Princess of Wales, has had a career that rose like Marilyn Monroe’s dress over a hot-air grate, then plummeted to the ankles and is now rising, once again, thigh-high. After a decade of almost unrivalled success and empire building, he was on the edge of bankruptcy in 1990. But now Bruce is back, waving his pinking scissors triumphantly, designing only couture for around £1,400 a dress, and selling to the Sangsters, Charlotte Rampling and Jerry Hall.

He’s wearing an Armani jacket, washed-out Levis and buoyant expression. He’s 42 years old, six foot two and has a perfect physique.

‘My personal life just doesn’t exist. I have lots of friends, but I don’t sleep with anybody,’ he says, forcefully. ‘I simply don’t have mad urges to go to bed with people. I’m not a very sexual person, never have been. I don’t have any great desire to be involved with anybody, and though sex is quite good fun, sleeping around is counter-productive, unhealthy and unwise. ‘The longest time I ever went out with anyone was with Irene at Sheffield City College in 1969. That lasted maybe six months, four or three. I don’t remember. It was quite fiery and her parents didn’t like her going out with a black boy.’ He says he was in his teens and rebelled against that. He won’t reveal when he last slept with someone. Is he abstinent for fear of Aids? ‘Not really.’ (‘Lots of my close friends have died of Aids,’ he says later.) Is he more inclined to men or women? ‘It’s none of your business.’ Often expansive in his body language, he crosses his arms protectively.

Princess Diana was his most famous client, but hasn’t bought from him for three years. He still gets birthday and Christmas cards signed ‘Love, Diana’.

‘We had a very good relationship,’ he says. ‘I used to see her every couple of weeks at Kensington Palace or the shop, and we often met at lunches or dinners. She’s a strong personality. She’s tough, not a ninny. But I don’t think she’s conniving. I see her as somebody who would fight back, but not manipulate madly, and she’s compassionate.’

His business struggles were a ‘horror story, incredibly depressing’. The recession started, he was overstaffed, licensees (who manufactured goods under his name) were going bust, he had been expanding so his couture had suffered, and he was losing customers who were tightening their belts. (‘All those crisis meetings of ‘ooh we haven’t got enough money to pay the rent, let’s sell that chair’.’) He had to close his Fulham design studio, move to the small basement of his Beauchamp Place shop and shed his ready-to-wear. ‘I didn’t want to do any of it, but it was expedient. Otherwise my business would have gone to the wall. In 1990 I was advised to put the company into liquidation. I said ‘absolutely not’. That’s the easy way out. And, let’s face it, I’ve got nothing else. The company is my life.’ He had to move out of his grand Chelsea flat with its 25ft dining room to rented accommodation in Battersea.

‘I could have moved to a bedsit. I wouldn’t have liked it, but I’m resilient. You have to adapt. I don’t have encumbrances like wife or children, so it’s easier.’ Did he feel a failure? ‘I would have if I’d let the company go. I got a nagging feeling of self-doubt, but I wasn’t at the stage where I’d slash my wrists. I’m not the type.’

He’s jolly, charming and spunky, but his eyes often look angry. His father was a Jamaican boxer, and Bruce was a Barnardos boy, handed over by his white mother at birth and fostered by a dressmaker called Violet with four other multiracial foster children in a two-up two-down in Durham. He was returned, aged 13, to Barnardos after he shoplifted some sweets and comics.

Bruce dislikes the way he’s seen. ‘All this fat Barnardos boy makes good, rags to riches, poor, black, illegitimate child, syrupy shit.’ He’s actually expressive and eloquent, often changing his voice humorously in self-mockery, sharp-minded and sometimes arrogant. The word about town is what a down-to-earth, nice chap he is.

He has always been painted as unscarred by his childhood. ‘In fact, I had a very tenuous relationship with my foster parents,’ he says now. ‘They often said, ‘If you don’t behave yourself you’ll go back into the home’. And in Barnardos they said, ‘If you don’t behave yourself you’ll be made a ward of court or go to borstal’.’ He was bundled around like a parcel.

‘Maybe that made me insular and strong.’ Nobody is going to hurt him? Nobody is going to get that close? ‘Yeah.’

So what are his props? What does he rely on? He smokes for England, can work compulsively and always watches his weight, although he lost two stone during his troubles in 1990. ‘I need space,’ he replies. ‘And I have to go to The Peak gym, look out on London, completely empty my head, gaze into space and run. I come back relaxed. I live off my nerves. I have ulcers.’ He’s surprisingly affected by the moon. ‘I’m always more active on a full moon, or more lethargic. I always have a big swing in mood.’ (His recent show fell, luckily, at an auspicious stage in the lunar cycle. ‘It was a full moon. I knew things were boding well.’) And he’s keen on that modern religion, astrology. ‘I’m Cancer, which makes me creative, home-loving and moody. I also want a well-ordered life and like cooking.’

He doesn’t, however, believe in God. ‘I don’t even know if there’s anything out there. As I get older, I seek that kind of solace. But Barnardos pushed all ideas of believing out of my head with their compulsory prayers at every opportunity and church three times a day on Sunday.’ He lacks parental support and wouldn’t look for it. His foster mother died in 1974 and he has no desire to meet his natural parents, if they are still alive.

‘I’d probably feel some kind of rapport. It would be natural. I’d feel honour bound to be responsible towards her. I don’t want that kind of responsibility. I’d like to see them through a one-way mirror, like a line up!’

He brushes off anything that might hurt him, usually denying the darker side of his life.

‘I’ve turned rejection into a positive thing,’ he says. ‘You might think I’ve lost out with my apparent inability to make relationships. But I don’t feel lonely. I’m self-sufficient and happy not having to be selfless and think about what somebody close requires.’

Bruce has always been determined. ‘Determined not to accept what was doled out for me. When I was 16 in Barnardos, they used to say to me, ‘Who do you think you are? You think you’re so clever’. I was brought up not to expect much. But I couldn’t see why I shouldn’t achieve whatever I wanted. I don’t think I’ve ever been totally aware that I could fail.’

It has been a good decade for Mary Wesley. The best-selling author of The Camomile Lawn, who wrote her first book aged 70, has sold 1.5million books in paperback. ‘I’m always terrified when I’ve finished a book that it’ll be a disaster,’ she says. ‘I used to think, ‘What am I trying to do? I can’t write.’ Now I still think each book will be my last.’

Her books have been described as like Jane Austen with sex: witty and racy, they are well-mannered English novels about upper middle-class people with a workaday knowledge of adultery and illegitimacy. They line one shelf (including Japanese and Danish translations) in her cosy cottage in Totnes, Devon.

This week sees the publication in paperback of A Dubious Legacy (for which film discussions are under way), and Harnessing Peacocks will be on television this spring. ‘I’m really pleased with Harnessing Peacocks,’ she says emphatically. She advised the director and went on set for a couple of days – ‘terribly boring and repetitive’ – but once they were filming ‘wouldn’t have dreamed of interfering’.

Wesley, a spritely 80-year-old, is elegant in her favourite black cashmere jumper and trousers. She is weeny, with silver hair and a face that expresses strength and timidity. Seemingly brisk, tough and upper-class on the phone (it transpires she doesn’t like talking during ‘office’ hours), she now seems mischievous and her acerbic intelligence shines through. She is remarkable for her age.

‘People talk about me writing sexy books. They only say it because I’m old. Absolute tripe!’ she chuckles, sardonically. ‘People think sex is something you give up, but the instinct goes on.’ Inside, she says, she still feels about 30. ‘I had the menopause, which wasn’t particularly bad. I’d love to have sex now. But it isn’t there, so I exist without it. I think it’s very important. It makes you feel good, doesn’t it?’

She says she was educated by her lovers – having received no formal schooling, just 10 governesses in eight years. ‘I had clever, intellectual lovers who encouraged me to read,’ she says, belying her reputation for being secretive. ‘They were amazed at how ignorant I was. It was rather upsetting really.’ How many lovers has she had? ‘That’s rather a close question. I don’t think I should count them.’ She hoots with laughter. ‘I’m sure the few who are still alive would hate to be listed!’

She was faithful to Eric Siepmann, her second husband and ‘true love’ who died of Parkinson’s disease in 1970. ‘I still feel sad. I miss him the whole time.’ Would she ever like to have another man in her life? ‘When Eric died, I thought about it. But I realised I couldn’t go through that all again. We had 25 years together, and there was really nothing left to give. You put so much into a relationship. It was wonderful and anything else would seem a sham.’ She felt cleaved in half when he died. ‘It took a long time to adjust to living alone.’

The characters she writes about are now her company. ‘Rather a good sort of company,’ she laughs. ‘You can kill them off if they bore you.’ But she’s not lonely. ‘I’m solitary by nature.’ She protects her privacy savagely, sometimes going for five days without talking to anybody. ‘As a child, I would hide behind a tree to avoid speaking to somebody.’

Wesley has had a life that she could excavate endlessly for her fiction. Born Mary Wellesley, the daughter of a colonel, she is descended from the Duke of Wellington’s eldest brother and had a peripatetic, unhappy and solitary childhood, though she says she didn’t feel noticeably alone at the time. Did she feel loved? ‘No,’ she says, pensively. ‘I never felt loved by my mother and I hardly saw anything of my father. We were always moving house, so I never had any friends of my own generation, and I didn’t go to school. I was frightened of other girls – I always thought they were very sophisticated and confident.

‘I was probably a great disappointment to my parents. I didn’t grow up to be conventional in the way they wanted. They were much happier once I left the nest because my mother wanted my father to herself.’

Her first marriage was largely spurred by the desire to escape her family. It was short-lived. During the war she worked in intelligence, and for seven years during the Forties she lived ‘in sin’ with Eric, a journalist. Finally they married and when he died they were living impecuniously on social security. She started writing in her thirties, for herself, famously binning her efforts. She has three sons (two from the failed first marriage) and is a committed socialist.

Her childhood has left its legacy of self-doubt. She perceives herself as shy and hesitant. ‘I think I’m getting better. I’m not so frightened of people now. We all appear to have confidence, but inside we’re scared. I’m frightened of an invasion of privacy and perhaps afraid of being found out for not being what I appear to be. I’m pretending I’m Mary Wesley who writes these delightful books. But inside…’ She giggles. She adds that she’s afraid of being intimate.

Motherhood then. Did she, in turn, make a good mother? Or did she repeat her mother’s mistakes? She exhales deeply. ‘I fear I did make the same mistakes. I think life is repetitious. I don’t think I made a good mother. I should have been a much better one. My youngest son was 16 when his father died. I had no money at all, but perhaps I should have helped him more.’ She ‘adores’ her children, and once said she would die for them. Roger works for charities, Toby is a literary agent and Bill (begat by Eric) is trying to write film scripts. Would she have liked them to have achieved more? ‘I’m not ambitious for my children in that way,’ she says, a touch snappily. ‘I just want them to be happy.’

There is nothing, she says, to fear in old age. ‘It is stupid to put it off. It’s like death.’

She claims she can’t wait to find out about death, hoping it will be an interesting experience. ‘I believe there’s some form of existence after death for the spirit. I think we make our own hells when we die, we’ve created obstacles for ourselves.’

Does she think she’s led a good life? ‘Oh no,’ she says, hilariously. ‘I know I haven’t.’

SHE was snatched off the street, sexually assaulted and mutilated by a convicted killer who left her for dead in a blazing squat.

But only 48 hours after the attacker was jailed for 20 years, she is able to say: ‘I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

The courage that helped the 28-year-old career girl relive her ordeal at the Old Bailey is more evident than ever as she gives her first interview. Her face is expressive and lovely. She is beautifully turned out and talks in a calm, self-assured way.

Of her assailant, Anthony Ferrira, she says: ‘He could have cancelled my life. I don’t believe he deserves to live. I won’t ever forgive him.’ But what she really wants to stress is how lucky she is. The world is mostly full of good, kind and thoughtful people, she says, smiling. She loves her friends and family. She is intensely grateful to those who have helped her overcome the trauma. Every day feels like a bonus. ‘I love my life,’ she says. ‘That’s why I fought so hard for it.’ It was 7.15 on a February morning and the buyer with a top London store was walking through Brixton, South London, to a business meeting when Ferrira lured her into the squat by pretending his pregnant girlfriend needed help. When she resisted, he produced a knife.

‘I can’t describe the fear when I realised there was nobody else in the room and I thought he was going to kill me,’ she says.

He tried to strangle her then attacked her with a knife, cheesewire and a broken bottle. ‘The sexual acts were repulsive, humiliating and degrading, but I thought I’d do anything to stay alive,’ she recalls. `Then this crazed violence started. I fought to stop him killing me.’

The wounds Ferrira inflicted needed 100 stitches and she lost half her blood. `I wanted to lose consciousness,’ she says. `I wanted it to stop, just to stop the pain, even if it meant dying.

`I felt this deep whirling as if I was being spun round faster and faster. Then there was this profound agony, which I presume was unconsciousness. I didn’t even know whether I was dead. I tried not to breathe so he’d think I was dead, but the fire he’d started began burning my leg so I had to move. He began pounding my neck again.’

Eventually he left. `I hoped I’d die before the flames got to me,’ she says. But she was rescued by a neighbour.

In hospital, fear overwhelmed her. `Ferrira had the contents of my bag and my name,’ she says. `I was scared to go to the lavatory alone. My sister and best friend slept with me every night.’

She needed plastic surgery and still has scars, but doesn’t hide them. She has only just regained the use of one hand.

After hospital, she went to stay with relatives in Spain. `I couldn’t live in this country until he was behind bars.’

At present she is staying with her sister. `I loved living alone before,’ she says. `Now I have to live out of a suitcase.’

She had no partner at the time of the attack, but there have been boyfriends since. `I didn’t know if I could have a normal relationship,’ she admits, `but I’m lucky, I don’t think of Ferrira as a man. A partner in a loving relationship is very different.’

Her greatest difficulty is in being alone. `I won’t go anywhere without a mobile phone. If nobody’s at home, I ring someone from the car before I get out and they talk me through going indoors.’

After three months off work, she went back part-time. Her mother died when she was seven and her father three years ago. `To be honest, his death was far worse than any of this,’ she says. `There’s no way I can fill that gap. But I can rebuild my life and do things he’d be proud of.’

The former convent girl still believes in God. `Things happen for a reason,’ she says, `though I’m not quite sure why this happened. Maybe it was to make me stronger.

`I don’t have nightmares. I don’t feel any guilt or shame about what happened. I didn’t ask for this. Now I just have to get on and deal with it.

`The firemen who rescued me are receiving counselling. I went to see them. I don’t want anyone else to be scarred.’

She admits she found the trial terrifying, particularly the discussion before it was decided she could be screened from Ferrira. `In the end I saw him briefly and was surprised I felt nothing. He looked a pathetic character – not big, as I’d built him up to be in my mind.’

Although he is behind bars at last, she knows her troubles are not over. But she is strong enough to say: `I’m so lucky, I should have died. Now I feel today is the first day of the rest of my life.’