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.’

The world is mostly full of good, kind and thoughtful people. Miss X smiles as she says this, and emphasises how lucky she is. She says she loves her friends and family. She expresses her intense gratitude. And she explains how every day feels like a plus. ‘I love my life,’ she says, ‘that’s why I fought so hard for it.’

Last February Miss X was snatched off the street by a convicted killer, brutally attacked, sexually assaulted, mutilated, nearly burned alive and left for dead, trapped in a burning room. She was inflicted with 10 wounds, some near-fatal, lost half her body’s blood and needed 100 stitches. On Wednesday at the Old Bailey, her assailant, Anthony Ferrira, was jailed for 20 years. ‘He could have cancelled my life, callously hurting my friends and family. I don’t believe he deserves to live. I won’t ever forgive him,’ says this courageous and remarkable woman in her first interview.

Miss X, a 28-year-old buyer with a top London store, has a lovely and expressive face. She is beautifully turned out and well-spoken. She talks in a calm, self-assured way, maintaining eye contact as we speak. She was approached at 7.15am in the street by a stranger. He lured her into his Brixton 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.’

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

‘I wanted to lose consciousness. 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 that 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 and she tried to escape the flames, but couldn’t. ‘I hoped I’d die before the flames got to me.’ She was rescued by a neighbour who heard her screams and managed to break the door down.

In hospital, fear overwhelmed her. ‘Ferrira had the contents of my bag and my name. I was scared even to go to the toilet alone. My sister and best friend slept with me every night. We were pretty rowdy and drank lots of champagne. I would never want to become morose about this. There’s so much worth laughing about.’

She has an independent, sociable, optimistic personality and a wide circle of good friends and close family. She needed plastic surgery and now has scars, but she doesn’t hide them. ‘I was shocked and horrified when I first saw myself.’ She has just regained the use of one of her hands. After hospital, she went to stay with family in Spain. ‘I couldn’t live in this country until he was behind bars.’ Now she lives with her sister. ‘I loved living alone before. I have to live out of a suitcase and have none of my belongings.’

Although she didn’t have a partner at the time of the crime, she has had boyfriends since. Has the attack traumatised her sexually? ‘I didn’t know if I was going to feel all right and if I could have a normal relationship, but I’m lucky, I don’t think of Ferrira as a man. He had nothing to do with my life. A partner in a loving relationship is very different. This hasn’t made me prejudiced against blacks either.’

Her greatest difficulty is being alone. ‘It isn’t as frightening now, but I won’t go anywhere without a mobile phone. The company gave me a car. I always check before I get in, then lock myself in. If nobody’s at home, I ring someone from the car before I get out and they talk me through going into the house.’ She is also frightened to travel on public transport. AFTER three months off work, she went back part-time. She had a happy childhood and a close family, although her mother died when she was seven and her father died three years ago.

‘I believe they were there looking after me when I was being attacked. To be honest, my father’s death was far worse than any of this. He’s gone and there’s no way I can fill that gap. But I can rebuild my life and do things he’d be proud of.’ She attributes her mental resilience to the experience of her parents’ deaths.

She has a faith, partly born of a convent education, and a belief in God. ‘I’m here for a purpose. I don’t know whether for something good. But my time obviously wasn’t up. Things happen for a reason, though I’m not quite sure why this happened. Maybe it was to make me stronger and rethink things. I’ve always thought, ‘I’ll get through this and things will be better because I’ll make them better.’

‘I think I’ve been very lucky that I haven’t been haunted with the memories. Of course I go over what happened. I had never faced physical violence before. But I don’t have nightmares. I don’t think, ‘If only…’ I’ve never taken it personally. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You can’t stop things like this happening.

‘I’ve only had two sessions of counselling, but hadn’t felt I needed it. 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. I’m not trying to put a brave face on it. If something frightens me, I’ll talk about it. I don’t think I’ve buried the experiences. I’m frightened that other people will think I’m cold-hearted and tough, but this is just my way of getting through it. ‘I actually think it’s been harder for other people. I’ve felt for a long time that people were waiting for me to break down, that there was no way I could get through this. That might still happen, but I don’t think so.’ She recites a touching credit roll of those people she feels indebted to. ‘If Ferrira’s girlfriends hadn’t been brave enough to come forward, he might never have been arrested.’ The police, ‘particularly WPc Holding who was with me right from casualty onwards,’ and the firemen were ‘superb’. ‘The firemen who rescued me are receiving counselling. I went to see them for tea and to laugh. I’ve managed to get over this, and I don’t want anyone else to be scarred.’

MISS X found the trial particularly difficult. She had to give evidence, although she just wanted her statement read out. ‘I didn’t want to bring it all back.’ Then there was ‘frightening’ discussion over whether she could be screened from Ferrira’s gaze. Fortunately she was.

‘In the end I saw him briefly and was surprised I felt nothing. He looked a pathetic character and not big, as I’d built him up to be in my mind.’ Now she doesn’t feel elated. ‘He’s behind bars, but I still have to cope.’ She knows her troubles are not over.

But she’s articulate, strong and looks well. ‘I’m so lucky. I should have died. Now I feel today is the first day of the rest of my life. I can’t explain how I’ve got off so lightly without the mental scars. Thank God I In her first interview, the victim of the brutal Brixton sexual attack and kidnapping talks about the ordeal and its effect on her life. This week, her attacker, Anthony Ferrira, was jailed for 20 years.

When Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Peter Imbert had a heart attack two years ago, he realised there was a distinct possibility he might die. Journalists were waiting outside his hospital door firming up his obituary details, which he was determined not to give anyone the opportunity to publish. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ he said, post-intensive care, ‘you show me my obituary, and I’ll talk to you.’ No interviews ensued. Sir Peter, 59, retires on Sunday after a distinguished and extremely hard-working career. He imagines his obituaries might have said that he’d endeavoured to change the face of policing. But now he’s talking in a rare way about everything from his neglect of his family, to his passion for his wife and his son stealing money.

He’s sitting in his massive New Scotland Yard office in suit, white shirt and vest. His manner is charming but he appears tired and has hamster cheeks. He wears his identity card, having recently been refused admission to a police conference by a Lancashire constable.

Sir Peter is known for negotiating with the IRA terrorists cornered for a week in the Balcombe Street siege in 1975. He was also involved with the Guildford Four, who were subsequently freed in 1989. (He took a confession from Hill, in connection with the Woolwich bombing, and interviewed Conlon after his Guildford conviction.) Shortly after their release, he was quoted as saying: ‘You’re probably hoping that I’m going to say that the freeing of the Guildford Four was one of my worst moments, because I was involved. But it wasn’t. I just hope it won’t taint such reputation as I might have.’

Reputation intact, surely it was one of the lowest points of his career, I ask? ‘You could consider that or any number of things,’ he says, quickly changing the subject.

During his five and a half years as Commissioner he’s achieved a lot of his aims (‘in partnership with 44,999 others’), but not as quickly as he’d have liked. He has turned the Met from a force into a courteous ‘service’. Now he’s been offered ‘one or two’ non-executive directorships, involvement with security firms and invitations to lecture and write a book. He will also be playing bad bridge, coarse golf and ‘boring’ people with talk about his grandchildren (as his Who’s Who entry testifies). His heart attack, he says, made a vast difference to his life. ‘The stresses and strains of this job are an enormous burden if you literally take them to heart. I think I did. I care about this job. It consumes my whole being.’

He wrings his hands and comes across as gentle, but there’s a steeliness in his eyes which seems at odds with his open, friendly manner. Known for being calm and approachable, he admits: ‘My toughness is hidden beneath that genial exterior.’

Before the heart attack, he worked 16 hours a day – now it’s 13. ‘The first week off was almost a luxury, if it hadn’t been for the worry of whether I was going to get over it. I didn’t really feel frightened that I was going to die, but I was concerned about the things that I hadn’t done. ‘I haven’t really been fair to my family and owed it to them to spend more time with them. I’ve not wholly succeeded in that. I also knew I needed to learn to delegate and share responsibilities.’ Although his lifestyle might have cost him his life, he believes it has been worth it and his family has been supportive.

He met his wife Iris (they have been married for 36 years) when he was on the beat in central London. ‘I first saw her when I looked through the window of the hospital in Great Ormond Street and saw these rather good-looking nurses. Coincidentally, I then met her at a police dancing class. I thought she was very desirable.’ He used to stop the traffic to allow her to cross the road.

Iris has provided ‘great stability’ in his life. She’s worked in jobs that have allowed her to move and support her husband according to his placements. ‘It’s been,’ he says, ‘a very satisfactory, fulfilling marriage.’

Communication and understanding are the secrets of their successful relationship. ‘One is also tempted to say ‘love’, but what does that mean? At first it’s very passionate and then it becomes part of that stability, of being able to discuss things and enjoy similar interests.

‘I used to think I was passionate, but my wife may disagree. I believe I’m a romantic, but she doesn’t think so. Occasionally I buy her flowers.’ HE WAS brought up with a strong work ethic. Born the fifth of seven children into a poor working-class family, Sir Peter was the son of a bankrupt farmer.

‘From an early age I knew I had to earn my living. To achieve anything in this life, you’ve got to work.’ Aged six, he helped collect pigs’ swill; aged seven, he weeded gardens and delivered newspapers. ‘I had to finish early on Sundays to go to church three times. My parents insisted … I can’t really remember having holidays as a boy.’

He was an energetic, inventive child, and a comic and hooligan – he was once caught by the local bobby three times in one afternoon for different bike offences. (He once visited Associated Newspapers for an executive lunch. Asked whether he’d like to see anything – like the news room – he declined, requesting instead to ride up and down in the glass lifts.) His family’s size taught him to get on with people. ‘I was at constant war with my siblings. I learned that you don’t win arguments by resorting to violence or aggression.’

He left school at the age of 16. ‘My parents couldn’t afford to go on feeding an extra mouth. I remember seeing my mother crying because she hadn’t got enough money to feed the family.’ He worked for £1 a week at the local town clerk’s office ‘hoping to become the youngest town clerk in the country’.

He regrets his lack of university education. ‘I went to evening classes to learn shorthand, Russian, French and German.’ He has an orderly mind, listens attentively, and chooses his words carefully. He’s a slick and cunning communicator.

So what of his own children? He has three and says he is very proud of them – ‘not because of what they’ve achieved, but for their independence of thought’ – and seems reasonably satisfied with his role as a father. His son markets security devices, one daughter is a health visitor, and the other is a fashion graduate who helps disadvantaged youths and does cleaning two days a week.

‘I think I made a loving father. I hope so. I wasn’t there as much as I could have been in their formative years. I was spending too much time sorting out other people’s problems on the anti-terrorist squad. I know my son needed his father at that time, and I wasn’t there enough. ‘At times I was firm. I disciplined by example. I did slap them, but I was only once close to giving my son physical admonishment – pushing him up into his bedroom and giving him a jolly good hiding.

‘He’d stolen some money from us and then refused to admit it. It couldn’t have been anyone else. It wasn’t that he’d done it, but the fact that he was prepared to let someone else take the blame. I became furious with him. He’d wanted to keep up with his peer group and buy cigarettes.’

AS A child Sir Peter thought of becoming an agricultural auctioneer, selling cows and sheep in a market; he also thought of being a stage conjurer and comedian. ‘Some people say I’ve achieved one of those. I’m not going to say which.’

He leaves his job with mixed feelings. ‘I’ll miss the camaraderie and being involved in high-level decisions.’ The motto he’s going to put on his coat of arms is ‘adversity to advantage’. It’s a measure of what he’s achieved.

The plaque outside the Sixties breeze-block house in Sussex commemorates ‘The Blind Architect’. In the sitting room a notice reads: ‘No smoking. Trying to give up lung cancer.’ And the invitations displayed on the shelf are mostly for parties in 1988. This is, after all, the home of Spike Milligan, 74-year-old former Goon and manic-depressive.

Milligan has sad eyes, yellowing hair and looks old and frail as he shuffles to sit down, joking and charming, wearing slippers and jeans. Almost immediately he accuses me of wasting the world’s resources with my research notes. Yet this week sees the publication of a 213-page book, Depression and How to Survive It, a collaboration with psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare.

Milligan first identified himself as a manic-depressive on Clare’s Radio 4 programme, In The Psychiatrist’s Chair. Nearly 10 years later, Clare has taken Milligan as a case study in this book to help fellow sufferers. Milligan, who has suffered from depression for more than 40 years, has written ‘maybe 47 books’. He’s just finished a satirical version of the Bible and is currently writing a comic adaptation of Wuthering Heights, with Heathcliff cast as a Pakistani.

I felt nervous interviewing him. He’s renowned for his passionate outbursts, possibly using his illness as an excuse for intolerance and insensitivity. He’s crazy about punctuality, taking lateness as a personal insult. He went into a tirade about overpopulation when he learned of Clare’s seven children, despite having five of his own – but they were born before he became concerned about the environment. ‘In my view,’ says Milligan of Clare, ‘he’s ill.’

Milligan was once given a conditional discharge after firing an air gun at a 15-year-old who climbed over his wall. Another time, he threatened to kill Peter Sellers with a potato peeler.

Speaking to him feels like walking on egg shells. ‘I don’t like people,’ he says. ‘They’re hateable, stupid and boring.’ His eyes blaze and his voice rises. There’s been a misunderstanding. He hadn’t intended to include his third and current wife, Shelagh, in the view that, ‘even the best people can turn out the worst. Even dearest ones can turn on you’.

The same reaction occurs when we talk about his fifth child, the product of an affair in the Seventies when Milligan was married to Pat Ridgeway. Following revelations last year by his ex-lover Margaret Maugham, Milligan met his illegitimate son, James, 17, for the first time.

He says, without emotion: ‘Meeting him was just like meeting a new person. We sat down and had tea. I asked him about his schooling, which I pay for. I asked him about religion. He’s not much into religion.’

Milligan’s illness has impinged on all aspects of his life. Clare notes a significant association between manic-depression and Milligan’s comic genius; but he’d willingly give up his fame and achievements to be free of the agonies of his illness.

‘If I had my time again, I’d like to come back as a tree.’ Then, typically quirkily, he considers dogs’ urine, and decides he would prefer to be a Greek philosopher.

Milligan, patron of The Manic-Depressive Fellowship, was in the middle of one of the worst depressions of his life while working with Clare. ‘I wanted to kill myself with pills. What stopped me was the thought of my family. I could see that haunting spectre of them standing over my coffin crying their eyes out.’

He has suffered at least a dozen breakdowns. Has he ever feared going mad? ‘I’m too intelligent for that,’ he says, fiercely.

What is his current state of mind? ‘Like an aeroplane. I don’t fly too high and I don’t go too near the ground.’ He’s on drugs to stabilise his condition. ‘Nobody knows the side-effects. I might go purple and one leg drop off.’

Six months ago he had ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). ‘When the nazis did this it was seen as cruelty. I used to wake up and not know who I was and didn’t care.’ His eyes light up when he says he’d like a portable ECT machine to put himself to sleep immediately when people’s conversations bore him.

He has had no ongoing relationship with a psychiatrist, possibly because, in Clare’s words, he’s a great ‘faller out’. ‘I haven’t fallen out with anyone,’ he refutes. ‘I’ve had people fall out with me.’

Milligan believes he inherited his hypersensitivity. ‘My mother was highly strung. I remember seeing my grandfather in a rage, striking a servant.’ Clare considers Milligan’s temperamental parents, absent soldier father and domineering mother, as causal and aggravating factors. He thinks his illness began after being shelled during the Second World War. ‘My life was like an egg in a shell, just waiting for someone to crack me open and fry me. A bomb dropped right near my head. I got battle fatigue. The war fried me.’

For six years during the Fifties he churned out 26 scripts a year for The Goon Show. ‘It was driving me mad. I had a nervous breakdown. It’s like a roaring pain. The loudest pain you’ll ever get.’ The photo-grapher’s camera winds on. ‘What’s that, for God’s sake?’ he snaps, literally driven mad by noise.

His latest depression was brought on by his mother’s death. Among her last words were: ‘‘We’re not like other people.’ I think it’s true,’ he says. ‘I just don’t get on with them. People don’t write the comedy or poems that I write.’

He is now in the winter of his life, an Irish Roman Catholic who ‘no longer’ believes in God. How does he regard death? ‘Hugel’s Gewurztraminer is as far as I go towards heaven!’

Is he frightened of dying? ‘I used to be terrified of it. Now it’s getting closer, I don’t really know. I know it’s going to happen one day – the one day I’m trying to avoid! In 100 years I’ll be forgotten, except for my overdraft at the Midland.’

He shows flashes of kindness and plays at being gentle. I felt sorry for him, although he’s also rude and unforgiving. Clare describes him as sensitive, easily hurt, vulnerable, a perfectionist who is profoundly nostalgic and actively charitable.

‘He’s difficult because he can be persistently demanding,’ says Clare. ‘He’s ‘for’ and ‘against’ things very fiercely, which I’m not. That caused tension. But it was compensated for by his anarchic sense of humour.’ Clare’s analysis of him in the book is, says Milligan, accurate as far as it goes. ‘But it’s difficult to get to the inside of someone. All of us keep a secret we don’t want anyone to know until we die. I have something I won’t tell anybody because I’m ashamed of it. It’s something moral, something physical.’ He may be teasing, of course.

The female bricklayer Tracie Simpson knew she was going to be in trouble from the start. The first day she arrived at the depot to begin work, 150 male workmates downed tools and stood watching her. Immediately someone commented on her bottom. ‘Is it a lesbian, ain’t it a lesbian?’ asked someone else from this territorial and testosterone-pumping group.

Simpson, now 28, joined Greenwich council as a trainee bricklayer in 1986. She was intimidated with violence and all talk was abusive. ‘I felt so threatened. I used to think the men might rape me.’ Male colleagues asked her whether she shaved her pubic hair and whether her spirit level fitted her vagina. Another time, she was in a hut with eight men and one lay on the bench thrusting, fornicating style, and talking explicitly.

‘I used to just sit there and read my book.’ She sounds upset when she talks, sometimes holding back tears.

Simpson endured this cruel sexual and racial harassment for an astonishing four and a half years. She became ill from the stress and in May 1991 was unfairly dismissed while she was off sick, allegedly having been made redundant.

Last week she won £15,000 compensation from Greenwich council, one of the highest recorded payments for sexual and racial harassment at work. This ‘breakthrough’ out-of-court settlement followed an industrial tribunal in which she was represented by the builders’ union Ucatt.

Simpson wears a thick sweater, biker’s boots, Afro dreadlocks, cat scratches all over her hand and she has a muscular body. ‘I could haul mortar or bricks up 60 foot and build a chimney stack on my own. I can pick up what men can pick up,’ she says defiantly in a cockney accent. ‘I was good at my job and I worked harder than the men.’ She doesn’t think she has female physical limitations.

She was paid equally and was only once unable to do something the men could when her back gave out as she worked on a brick wall. She received a credit for her practical work in her City and Guilds exam and believes she should have the right to do a traditionally male job at which she is competent.

Simpson felt humiliated by the catalogue of abuse she endured at work and went often to the women’s unit at Greenwich council for support. She complained frequently to her managers but, she says, they did nothing to help and some contributed to the abuse. Without success, she repeatedly begged the supposedly right-on council with its two female directors to sort out the problem.

She felt isolated and spent most of her weekends crying until she became ill with anxiety in October 1990. Eventually she was off work on full sick pay for seven months.

‘I couldn’t leave the house. I couldn’t socialise. I’d had enough. My insides felt drained.’ Her doctor recommended she quit her job and prescribed tranquillisers, which she took initially. Then she started having counselling. ‘I feel as if someone’s stolen something from me they have no right to.’

During her illness, her rare forays outside proved daunting. ‘A council guy kept coming to my house, harassing me and slagging me off,’ she says, smoking. ‘If I went out and bumped into someone from the council, I started to shake all over. I went to Safeway’s one day and this council bloke came up behind me and pinched my arse.’

Simpson (whose mother works as a DSS supervisor) is illegitimate and of mixed race. She thinks she’s part Afro-Caribbean and has a black grandmother. She was the only one in her family who wasn’t white. ‘I don’t know my real father,’ she says. ‘I thought the father I had was my father until my mother divorced him when I was 13. Then a neighbour told me he wasn’t my proper dad.’

Her surrogate father had a nasty temper. ‘He thumped and beat me with his fists. He used to hit me for being a minute late from school, to stop me chewing my nails or because I walked with my feet turned out a bit.’ She left home at the age of 16.

Simpson was educated at Mottingham girls’ school – where she was ‘a little rebel’ – and left with no qualifications. She wanted to be a nursery nurse, but was unqualified, so went to work in a meat factory for three years. ‘I got sacked because I didn’t bother to go in.’ She was unemployed for a year, then got into community programme gardening, started doing some bricklaying and proved a natural. Next she applied to become a trainee bricklayer with Greenwich council.

‘I got into it by accident, but it was really important for me to do this job. For the first time in my life, I’d found something I was good at and wanted to do.’

What of her relationships? For seven years, until she was 24, Simpson went out with a white, male biker. But does she like men? (‘The builders,’ she had said earlier, ‘were gutless.’) ‘Yeah, I’m fine around them … I actually believe everyone is bisexual.’ She now lives alone in a flat in Deptford with two cats and a dog.

She received £1,000 redundancy pay and is going to live off her £15,000 compensation money. ‘I just see it as an acknowledgement that the council was abusive. Because of it I’m not eligible for unemployment benefit.’ She is unemployed but does voluntary youth work, looking after an 18-year-old. ‘I’m there to support him. If he needs, for example, to go to a job interview and feels nervous, I accompany him.’ She doesn’t plan to look for a more traditionally female job. ‘I think people should be able to mix.’

She hopes her experience will encourage other women to fight harassment. The supposedly politically correct Greenwich council took on six other women in Simpson’s intake as trainee carpenters, bricklayers and plumbers. But they all left within two years because of harassment.

Of its 523 building section employees, only 45 are women. ‘The council said it was going to employ more women, but never did,’ says Simpson. ‘That’s what really finished me off.’

The council says it has introduced a new complaints procedure for harassment, victimisation and discrimination. No one has been disciplined over Simpson’s complaints.

Simpson talks assertively. She doesn’t see herself as a victim and calls herself a feminist. ‘I was bought up on the streets, so I’m quite hard-wearing.’

She admits she was a threat to the men she worked with. Was she in any way responsible for what happened? Surely there was something in her attitude that upset the male brickies?

‘No way, no, no, no!’ she says. She feels ‘entirely blameless’. That’s why she carried on working. ‘I liked my job and wasn’t going to have any idiot take it away from me.’ She has no plans to return to bricklaying. ‘Not unless they gave me a job to sack all those beasts.’

He has highlighted ageing-rock-star hair, discoloured teeth, a jazzy tie, green suit and a dangling silver earring engraved with the initials of a pop song. He looks wrecked and talks in a heavy way, man. This is Dr Mike Fitzgerald, 41, Britain’s youngest vice-chancellor and top dude at Thames Valley University, London.

TVU (as he calls it) is one of the new universities established last June. Formerly the Polytechnic of West London, it is in Ealing and was created from the merger of four establishments, including the London College of Music. It is unique. ‘We’re a very unusual kind of university, and trying to be very different,’ affirms Fitzgerald, in his Liverpudlian accent with Havana smoking chestiness.

Appearances are deceptive. Fitzgerald came to TVU a year ago, having been dean of social sciences at the Open University for 12 years then deputy director of Coventry Polytechnic for four, and is responsible for the university academically and for its annual £45 million budget. He has 20,000 students, employs 1,600 people, and is paid £67,000.

But first let’s talk about appearances. ‘I’ve looked like this for years. I’m actually terribly old-fashioned,’ he laughs. ‘I wear my hair like this because I’ve got a big nose. I highlight it and spend a fortune on it.’ He recently gained weight, so gave his Armani suit to the chauffeur who drives his Volvo. ‘I used to be a mod. Now I wear Boss clothes.’

He looks unhealthy. Does he do drugs? ‘Never’ – emphatically – ‘It would be wrong, with a lot of young people here. But I’m not a moral entrepreneur about it.’ He looks earnest and swigs part of his daily intake of two litres of decaffeinated coffee. ‘I’ve never even had a sip of alcohol in my life. I just look naturally wasted and always look wrecked. I don’t sleep enough.’ Sex then. Does he sleep with students? ‘Never! There are codes of behaviour people in my position should uphold,’ he says, with conviction. ‘It would be inappropriate because in any relationship there’s a power element.’

TVU is an unconventional university. Thirty five per cent of his students don’t take degrees, but do things like City and Guilds in crafts or hospitality and catering. ‘We’re not just a higher education institution, we do further education as well. We’re much more like an American state university.’

Instead of three terms a year, TVU has American-style semesters with modular courses; this enables students to drop out and rejoin and study full or part time, interchangeably. ‘We also have the highest proportion of women of any university, about 54 per cent.’

Fitzgerald also believes strongly that, unlike many universities, TVU can’t exist in isolation. So it has a series of partnerships. ‘A computing firm runs the computing section, providing the infrastructure and running the teaching.’ He’s also working towards a fully electronic campus (his ‘model university’) allowing distance learning on computer terminals. FITZGERALD was the third of eight children, including two adopted black sisters. He grew up in Ainsdale, ‘by the beach in a ramshackle barn of a place’. His parents were uneducated. ‘They both left school at 14. Mum got a scholarship to school, but they couldn’t afford the uniform so she didn’t go.’

His father managed the Liverpool labour exchange. ‘He wasn’t particularly highly paid, but we had a regular income. A lot of locals were unemployed…At Christmas my parents didn’t spend much on us, and gave charitable contributions instead. You’d go back to school and your mates all had lots of new things and you didn’t. That was difficult.’ He started newspaper rounds aged 11.

Fitzgerald went to a direct grant grammar school run by the Christian brothers in Crosby, then Cambridge where he read social sciences, gaining a 2:1. ‘I thought people who had cars were rich, because we didn’t have one. But when I arrived at Cambridge, all these students had cars. I felt intimidated and uncomfortable. I’d never before met people who felt they owned the world and saw it as perfectly natural that they would get good jobs and lead people. Where I’d come from people had always struggled to get jobs and education.’

Educationally, it was an inspiration. It encouraged him to take responsibility for his learning and offered unbelieveable resources and facilities. ‘I learned that what matters about education is not knowledge per se, but that you’re curious about the world and not frightened to ask questions.’

He married in his second year and had a son, now 19, just before finals. ‘My professional success is inversely related to my personal success.’ He never married the mother of his subsequent child, now nine, but lived with her for 12 years.

But back to TVU. Applicants for universities have increased three-fold over the last five years. ‘We have massive overcrowding here, 8,000 people in accommodation for 2,500.’ (Fitzgerald discusses this difficulty and staffing and student problems with his chauffeur. ‘He’s more my minder than my driver.’) MANY come to TVU without formal qualifications. ‘I don’t think A-level grades are an appropriate way of judging people’s future performance. What matters is the value that you add to people while they’re here. ‘People don’t have to get degrees. They might come to us because they lack confidence in themselves, having been through a system that has rejected them. They may become more secure and may get jobs. Others may not finish the programme, which doesn’t fuss me much. What’s important is that we help create people who are confident and curious about the world. I believe in helping people realise their potential.

‘My parents’ generation struggled to let people like me go to university. They had a fire in their belly about it. That’s what I’ve inherited,’ says this Labour Party member. ‘I have a fire in my belly about picking up the torch and running with it. About giving people the opportunity for education as a basic democratic right.’

TVU has just built the most modern recording studio in Western Europe. Fitzgerald’s face suddenly resumes the look of an old rock ‘n’ roller. ‘I go to a lot of rock concerts. I think the Stones are the most wonderful band in the world. One of the great thrills of being here is that there was an art college here before and Ronnie Wood was a student.’ He beams. ‘I often think about Ronnie Wood walking these corridors. That really pleases me.’

If you haven’t heard of him, you should have. The Kinnocks, John Updike, Ben Elton, Eric Clapton, Luke Rittner, Molly Parkin and Anne Robinson are fans. And he performed this week for Prince Charles. ‘Good evening culture vultures,’ he said to HRH and company, in his best Dylan Thomas voice. Meet Bob Kingdom, whose solo tour de force, Dylan Thomas Return Journey, is directed by Anthony Hopkins. ‘Tony said to me ‘Don’t try to please the audience, they don’t want that’.’ For years Hopkins wanted to play Thomas and identified closely with the role. ‘He’s healthily obsessed as well.’ Kingdom, 48, is a reformed alcoholic. ‘I got drunk and fell under a train in Cardiff once,’ he says. That was 25 years ago. ‘I also got sick of waking up and not knowing where I was.’ Kingdom becomes Thomas when he plays the notorious romantic hellraiser during one of his recitals (at the Lyric Studio until 2 January). Thomas died of chronic alcohol poisoning when he was just 39.

‘If I were still drinking, I’d be continuing the romantic myth about Thomas the creative genius dying young and tragically because he knew he was burnt out – rather than saying he died because he drank. Anyone who dies that young has to be a bit of a mug.’

Sensitive, thoughtful and very funny, Kingdom wears a fedora hat over a rumpled cherubic face that bears an uncanny resemblance to Thomas’s. He’s written poetry, done voice-overs, radio comedy and been an advertising copywriter. (‘Mild but not meek,’ for cigarettes in the Seventies.) He’s also a brilliant mimic: one minute you’re with Neil Kinnock, then Alec Guinness, Quentin Crisp or Truman Capote.

He’s just written a new show, on Truman Capote, another compulsive, obsessive and alcoholic. ‘Thomas and Capote were both people for whom life was not enough.’

The prisoner of Zenda, currently in rehearsal at Greenwich, marks a double first for sloe-eyed siren Leonie Mellinger. ‘I’ve never done a stage play at Christmas and I’ve never played a princess before,’ she says during a pause in the technical run. ‘I desperately wanted a fight but the princess doesn’t get to fight. I am very jealous of the boys.’

Anthony Hope’s swashbuckling novel reaches the stage in a new adaptation by Green-wich director Matthew Francis on Monday night (previewing now). The 32-year-old actress was inspired to engage in the mix of romance and high drama by watching Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

‘It had a great heroine. It made me want to do something similar. So it’s nice to play a feisty princess. I don’t want to shy away from the proper romantic princess. But that doesn’t mean she’s got to be wet. I don’t think there is anything wet about love.’

Previously known for her performances that combined a dangerous sexuality with a feminine toughness, popping up on television in The New Statesman and Small World, besides gracing the stages of Chichester Festival Theatre and the RSC, Mellinger will also be seen on television on Boxing Day in a feature-length episode of Lovejoy.

Recent publicity, however, has inclined towards her personal life. With the separation from her husband, Robin Askwith, who continues to live, work and sunbathe in Australia, Mellinger has fallen in love with Anthony Burton, one of the country’s leading criminal lawyers.

Beyond citing the usual reasons for the break-up – like the 9,000-mile distance between them and conflicting career interests – Mellinger discreetly refuses to be drawn deeper on her personal life. ‘Let’s just say it is jolly nice to be with someone who isn’t an actor.’