Passionate, proselytising, innovative and controversial managing director of the Body Shop who has just written a manifesto of an autobiography called Body and Soul, which is printed on recycled paper and signed ‘Anita X’. Former teacher turned role model with financial acumen and vision. Enter, powered by very fast and lead-free feet, Anita Roddick – also known as Miss Mega-Mouth.

She’s sitting among her caring products wearing an Against Animal Testing T-shirt and Workers for Freedom trousers, plus Brazilian Indian bangle from a people who now gather nuts for her products – the sort of garb she says she wears for an important meeting.

She exudes enormous energy – she’s constantly picking and fiddling; she finds it hard to sit still – and a fan is stirring everything else up so that the entire room seems to be agitated.

‘I’m manic about comfort. So trousers, flat shoes, never comfortable with high heels’ – she abbreviates to get more ideas into a sentence faster. (Curiously when I see her later at her book launch, she’s wearing an A-line skirt and clumpy high heels.) ‘So what do I tend to do?’ She asks her own question, then answers it. She also often interrupts and starts to reply to a question before I’ve finished asking it.

She has appealing looks: wonderful wild hair, a strong face and deep-brown eyes. (Beauty, according to her tome, comes from an inner energy.) ‘I’m short, with untamed hair and quite good bones. I’ve inherited my mother’s skin. I’m Italian-shaped, dumpy’ – she doesn’t appear to be – ‘low-waisted and with an incredibly mobile mouth.’

At 5ft 2in, she’s yearning to be 5ft 6in. ‘God, wouldn’t you? I mean just being in a crowd for a start, I’m talking to people’s belly buttons the whole time,’ says this mini powerhouse, in an enthusiastic voice born of Littlehampton Italian stock with added American intonations. She speaks lucidly, with a wide-ranging vocabulary and histrionic emphasis; an almost forced energy in her voice.

She is a love child who’s said she is the greatest snogger in the world and that in the Sixties she bonked her brains out. ‘It’s ironic that the more successful I become, the less I’m perceived as sexy. But I’m so sensual,’ she has said.

‘You’re not flirted with and any sexual frisson has gone because you’re in a so-called leadership role,’ she says. ‘I’m constantly told I’m a role model. And when you’re a role model you can’t fart in company and you can’t scratch your bloody nose.’ She doesn’t think she’s sexy. ‘Oooh, absolutely not.’

She says she’s into her husband rather than ‘flesh, flesh, flesh . . . And when you’re told constantly that the world loves you, which I am by my staff, you end up wondering who really does’.

She reckons she bonds better with women and this seems to be a key. She says she feels more mellow and at ease with females, and less judged. ‘I’m getting increasingly less comfortable with men. And I have much more admiration for women.’

And what of her image? ‘I think I’m gentler than I’m seen to be. Every time I read an article about myself, I think I sound so strident. My great sense of humour doesn’t come out. You know, it’s like I want to say, ‘Get off the bloody bandwagon’, sometimes.’

She is not warm, though from the caring image one might have expected her to be, and she is very earnest. She has a single-mindedness – here’s a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it – and a driven quality born perhaps of a sense of loss when her father died when she was a child. She also comes over as rehearsed – she doesn’t really connect, she’s just doing her publicity. But she can laugh at herself, and she’s attractively directed and exuberant.

‘I’m incredibly passionate about some issues. I have a nine-year-old’s enthusiasm and curiosity’ – she has two girls, aged 20 and 22. ‘I don’t think I’m brave. I’m not elegant and certainly not mature. I dislike my impatience. I’m kind, caring, empathetic. I’m beyond self-aggrandisement. I sleep well at night. I’m proud of what I’ve done.’

She’s also Italian. What does that mean to her? Does she feel different? ‘Oh yeah.’ She feels very comfortable with loudness, passion, extended families and colour. ‘I also use it as a guise to get my own way. People excuse you because they say, ‘Oh, she’s Italian’. I use it as an excuse for getting incredibly emotional. And in business, to get your own way, you have to use as many guiles and tricks as you can.’

Is she manipulative? ‘I think I’d do anything to get what I want in terms of my vision for the company.’

She climbs on soap boxes to sell soap. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely right. If anyone thought I’d be doing anything else, they’d be living on another planet. The shops are arenas for social change.’ She is perhaps too earnest. ‘No, I don’t think I’m serious enough.’

She experienced her dark side during the Gulf War. ‘I felt a real abject loneliness then. I felt so isolated. This belief that we’re on the edge of great social change seemed just puffery.’

Why does she interpret nearly all her strong feelings in this sort of global manner? ‘Isn’t there a you that you experience separate and unrelated to these world issues?’ I ask.

‘What separates you is what you do,’ she replies, launching into a dissertation on the difficulties of galvanising support for the unexotic North Sea problems.

Yes, yes, but who is Anita Roddick separate from the Great Causes? ‘When I was 10 years old I was marching for CND. That is the character.’ So what’s the psychological reason for this need to be out there marching and so on? This need for Sixties activism.

‘Maybe it is emotional, I think, I mean . . .’ This is the first time she stumbles in the interview, as if something inside her is touched. ‘At 10 years old, it’s such a raw age anyway, my father died. He was such a wondrous person to me. And I know that the catalyst happened then. ‘I also got hold of a book on the Holocaust. So there was a loss and a shock. These two areas actually combined, emotionally triggering off that enormous anger. A kick-start into wanting to right wrongs.’

She fears death, but says that she no longer feels turbulent. ‘There used to be this sort of panic that went on, this frenetic ‘I’ve got to see more, I’ve got to do more’ feeling.’

And is she dictatorial? (One imagines she might be.) She walks off jokingly, as if to consult her staff. ‘I’m incredibly acquiescent on some things. But in the areas that are to do with the image of the company, I’m a screaming harridan.’ She delivers the line with a conspiratorial hiss to her audience.

And does she like herself? ‘Yeah,’ she says with a dismissive tone. ‘I love myself.’

There’s a police car outside the hospital tonight. In front of it, an alcoholic sits on a plastic chair, can of Special Brew in hand. His friend – a man with a savaged face – goes into the hospital, pushing through the transparent plastic swing doors.

This is the scene in casualty at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell one recent weekend night. It is one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in London.

It’s a deprived hospital in a deprived area, but is known for its excellent nursing and medical care. And it was here that they just had the Walworth Bell pub shootings – six shootings – six acute emergencies in one hour, and with new doctors who had been in the job for only three days. It’s 9.30 pm and already there is a queue of walking wounded that will take at least a couple of hours to deal with. A sign on the cream walls says: ‘There is a . . . hour wait to see the doctor. Emergencies seen first.’ The empty space has been covered with blank card.

The recent record time for someone waiting in casualty for a bed was 26 hours – with a fractured leg. But at the moment, things aren’t too bad. And people seem resigned to long waits.

The casualty patients – anyone who is not acute – queue on benches in front of a partition. A blurred and soundless TV is set up high and on the floor are cigarette stubs, drink cans and litter. A baby is crying: staff say they try to see children in half the waiting time. Alongside the infant, a cardiac case, with deathly face, is wheeled down the corridor. Just inches behind the casualty queue, the other side of the screen, are six patients lined up on stretcher trollies. One woman writhes in agony with renal stones. She has an ochre-yellow face.

Next to the trollies, in this smaller than small casualty area, people are examined in one of three curtained cubicles – discussing their problems with the corridor – or one of the three cubicles. Nearby is the emergency room, where they take the unconscious, diabetic, cardiac, asthmatic and ‘trauma’ victims – for example stabbings and shootings – who need to go to theatre.

There’s room for five here, but in the last few months they’ve been accommodating eight – more than 100 beds were closed last year due to financial restraint. If someone dies in casualty, it is here (with perhaps an asthmatic child to the left and a chap with stab wounds to the right) that the relatives come to view the body behind curtains.

The nurses take calls on the emergency red phone – one RTA (road traffic accident) and a young man who has been critically beaten up. Yet tonight they say it’s really quiet.

Behind the reception area, out of the view of patients’ eyes, there is a blacklist on the wall of regular hospital abusers. And on the door there is a memo concerning a bogus female doctor who is operating in the area. An Asian man with a public school voice and what looks to have been a bottle smashed over his head comes to reception. His ear hangs off. ‘Human bite,’ the receptionist writes on his form. His boyfriend bit him. They refused even to be admitted to the same accident and emergency, so his lover has gone to Guy’s.

It’s 10.30 and the tramps have started to arrive for the night. Two dossers are fast asleep on the cushioned bench in the hallway. The nurses sometimes let them sleep off their drink on the trollies behind the screen: rather that than the men go out and injure themselves.

Wiflred is a regular and this is his second home (whether his first home is a fixed address is unclear.) He doesn’t come to be seen by a doctor, and brings his dog and squirrel and bottle of meths. If a fight is going on, he protects the staff.

Now they’re bleeping security. A man with a shaved head and a tracksuit, late forties, is punching fisticuffs in the air. He’s drunk and with a face full of aggro. His friend got beaten up, so he wants to bash up the nurses. Someone calms him down. Then he proceeds to stand in front of every trolley that they try to wheel through. He tells the nurse that he’s come to the hospital because he wants to become a Christian. Then he lies on the floor, head down on the red tiles, in front of reception.

‘Come on, go and sit in the corridor,’ says one of the ambulancemen. The aggressive man paces, threatens to beat up the staff, lolls his tongue out at the nurse, red eyes rolling, and hits his head. (It later turns out he has a psychiatric history – as do many of the patients who make their way across the road from the Maudsley.) At 2.30am, a staff nurse attempts to discharge him, medically fit. Her voice is rising – and he is jerking himself off through his tracksuit while she talks to him.

The nurses rush around and despite the stressed working conditions, there’s an amazing feeling of dedication and supportiveness. Morale may waver according to the bed situation, but the nurses are in reasonable spirits. To alleviate the problems, the hospital opened an emergency admissions ward with 20 beds in August, which cuts down emergency queuing. They are also planning a rehabilitation centre, which will free up even more beds.

At 11.35 three undertakers, grim faced and charcoal suited, come in to pick up a body. A boy pushes up against the reception glass. ‘I’ve got bad sunburn,’ he says. A woman arrives: ‘I think I’ve sprained my wrist.’ In emergency casualty, a policewoman emerges from a cubicle. She’s wearing a plastic apron. The staff are pressurised and she used to work in A and E – an unusual occurence, this – so she’s helping clean up the body of a young boy battered to death. The sister says she sees about one serious assault a week. Back in the reception office, a policeman is on the phone. ‘We’ve managed to identify the body, it’s Mark . . .’

Outside, a teenager keeps getting up from a trolley. He has overdosed on heroin. ‘I want to go ‘ome.’ The security guard keeps bringing him back. They’ve admitted one overdose each night this week. ‘Fackin’ ‘ell,’ he says. ‘You take too long to see me around ‘ere.’ Later on he walks out, on his fifth attempt. ‘Oh let him go,’ says the nurse. ‘We can’t keep on watching him.’

An ambulance has just knocked down a pedestrian. They bemoan the fact that the vehicle is now going to be off the road for three hours. The 999 calls are stacking up. They’re legally allowed only one patient in an ambulance – but a nurse says she saw seven getting out of one vehicle after a fight on New Year’s Eve.

Sid is one of the community of regulars. He has duly medicated himself before arriving. ‘Me and me mate was taking all sorts of pills.’ He has a cross tatooed on his forehead and a look of permanent mourning. He perks up to tell about the time he came to have his spleen taken out. That was when someone ‘who used to be a friend’ beat him up. Sid tells his war story with relish. He appears really to enjoy life – and its attendant attention – only when he’s ill. Tonight he’s in because he rode his pedal bike into a stationary vehicle when cycling around a corner .

His apparent enthusiasm is matched by that of Mr and Mrs Blidi, an Algerian couple, with their 22-month-old daughter Hannia. She wears Moslem head dress. ‘We all been here regularly,’ says Mr Blidi. ‘We go here, Guy’s or Westminster.’ Hannia fell down when she was in an aeroplane. She sleeps through her parents’ concern. One family bought their child in because she was having nightmares. The trouble is, GPs won’t go out in this area at night.

Nearby, a dear old lady – 90-plus with hennaed hair – lies wrapped in a red blanket. She looks spirited and her feet – bare and gnarled – protrude. She’s fallen over. The air smells deeply dank, of feet and the strong and acrid smell of anxiety sweat. There is no air conditioning. ‘Damn fool thing to do,’ her daughter, who lives with her, bellows. ‘What were you doing? Playing football?’ The daughter, wearing brick-coloured shorts and a vindictive expression, paces up and down. ‘People will think you’re loopy. They won’t be far wrong.’

It’s 3.45am. A lady who was mugged and has no money sits waiting for some coins from petty cash before she can go home. Inside, the nurses who work a nine-hour 23 minute shift remain. Outside, the police car has gone and three empty wheelchairs stand discarded.

Hip, controversial and publicity-keen priest who keeps beehives on his roof. Radical, blunt and flamboyant rector with the New Age Disneyland and counselling caravan in his church yard. Passionate man of rousing sermons and woolly sweaters.

Such is the image of the Rev Donald Reeves, the ‘Red Vicar’ and rector of St James’s Church, Piccadilly. He closes the curtains fully against the sun in his rectory study – a room lined with books, most of which he’s read – and asks me to sit in the Bishop’s chair.

He was going to dress specially for this occasion – and then he forgot. So he’s wearing a faded lumberjack-style shirt with missing button, grey trousers and 12-year-old shoes (polished by this former second lieutenant). He also wears a gold chain.

‘I have a problem with clothes because I live in three different places. I often find myself in the wrong place with the wrong clothes.’ He looks massively perplexed and speaks quickly, often emphasising the last word in the sentence. ‘I like to dress casually.’

When the photographer arrives, he changes into priest’s grey shirt and dog collar, ‘otherwise people will think I’m some worn-out headmaster or failed film star’. He reckons people ‘patronise, ignore or disdain’ him in such garb. ‘And I get sick of tourists asking me the way to Stratford-upon-Avon when I’m standing in Piccadilly. (He says: ‘Just turn left at the top.’) They think I’m some sort of unofficial guide.’ Does he like wearing dresses? He looks pensive, raising his eyes to Him Upstairs. ‘I do enjoy wearing a dress, which is what the cassock is. A cassock alb – which is like a white nightdress – covers a multitude of sins. And you don’t have to wear anything under it!’ He laughs. ‘It’s quite an impersonal garment, which is good when you’re taking a service.’ He has a voice that needs no microphone whether in church or cathedral. ‘I’m an actor, really.’ He later admits that preaching sometimes becomes an ego trip; and he loves doing television.

‘My voice is clear, passionate, not parsonical. I hope you wouldn’t think I was a priest by my voice.’ What else would he like people to think he is? ‘Ooh, the editor of the Observer.’ He actually fancies he looks a bit like an exhausted newspaper editor.

He has the face of a haunted ghost, with loads of M shapes engraved on his forehead and dark eyes with circles underneath to match. He appears tired and grey.

‘People always say my face is quite interesting. I eat all the wrong foods all the time, and I don’t exercise enough – but I don’t smoke or drink. (He used to smoke a pipe for effect. ‘That was a dead loss.’) I like my face. My body’s not too bad – I had a good look at it this morning, knowing you were coming to see me.’

He considers his eyes the windows to his soul. ‘Mine look troubled and quite deep.’ And why does he look so anxious? ‘Well, I’ve been through it a bit in my life. Also because of the hidden work I do with people, supporting and encouraging.

‘Of course, the Press always love this thing about my unhappy childhood – so I’ve changed the story now: I had the most marvellous, blissful childhood.’ He had psychotherapy for five years, to help him come to terms with his ‘desultory’ relationship with his family and to develop his vocation as a priest. He’s 57 and proud of it. ‘I feel I’m approaching the prime of my life. That’ll be when I’m about 80 if God allows me to live that long.’ Does he fear dying? ‘I think I’m frightened of a long illness, but I’m not frightened of the actual dying. Not at the moment, anyway.’ He’s a strong character with a delightful sense of humour and seriousness. He comes over initially as rather impatient, with a defensive crustiness that belies his obviously caring nature. (It’s almost as if he overcompensates to protect himself from being ridiculed or patronised.) He has a brusque, angry manner that hides his nervousness. He listens well, being very open to suggestions. And as the interview progresses, he softens – risking his vulnerable, gentle side.

He’s keen to dispel his trendy image. ‘It suggests one’s flippant at a deep level. But I am a passionate, serious man -probably too serious, but not solemn. I care for and bother about the truth the whole time.’ He’s also at pains to change the perception of vicars as those ineffectual, nice-to-everybody people who dodder through television programmes.

‘I’m not a do gooder or a sensitive, caring wimp – but I am thoughtful about people who are in a mess.’ Indeed, he’s doing a dedicated job, lots of good works, and has boosted his ailing congregation and placed his church on the map.

Is he the Red Vicar? ‘That’s absurd. I’m more to the Left than the Right – but there’s not much difference between the two now.’ The image, he says, came about because Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn spoke at St James’s. ‘But so did Norman Tebbit.’

And is he controversial? ‘I don’t seek it, but it is inevitable if you do the sort of things I do. Occasionally, I go over the top.’ And is he the loony vicar? ‘Well, they thought Jesus was pretty loony.’

So how would he describe himself? ‘I like my clarity about issues, my passion for people, my generosity and my imagination. I’m not in the least jealous of other people’s success – that’s a God-given thing. The more they prosper, the more pleased I am. I also regard it as a deep privilege to be of use to people who want to share their lives with me in some way. ‘My weakness is that my judge of character is sometimes questionable. I always see the best in people, even the rascals. And I’m also very impatient about meetings – there’s an ecclesiastical disease where people seem to need to have meetings about everything from collecting harmoniums to dead cats.’ Is he impatient? ‘What!’ he says, yet again. (Is he deaf? Certainly there’s an abruptness there.) ‘No, I’m not deaf. It’s just that I’m having to think on my feet. But I do suffer from tinnitus. I have a sort of impatience. I get very fed up with busybodies who criticise my work here. And I get really angry with rich, mean people.

‘I also get very angry about the lies that go on in religious circles and about the lack of truth in politics.’ Is he a hypocrite? ‘Oh, all the time. I think religious people are. I always say to people ‘do as I say, not as I do’.’ For example, he disapproves of private property. ‘But I have a house.’

Curiously, he comes over as rather hard. ‘I know I can be intimidating. People are frightened of me. I don’t like that. But it’s my armour. I’m strong, articulate and clear, but there is also a very private side of me that hardly anyone sees.

‘Inside, I think I have a longing to be comforted, to be held physically and emotionally.’ His face changes extraordinarily as he says this, becoming vulnerable and boyish. ‘There is a little boy inside me and I want to safeguard that inner child and prevent him from being squashed.’ He never married. How does he regard himself sexually? ‘I don’t’ – he stutters -‘think about this subject much. Because there’s not much to say about it. I’d call myself celibate, but I’m not a grim, ascetic, dismal person. I don’t want to talk about my sexuality . . .

‘Well, yes, there have been times when I’ve been lonely, but they grow less as I get older. I know a lot about friendship. But I think we go on too much about sexuality and personal relations. It’s one of the idolatries of our society.’

How long has he been celibate? His voice goes low. ‘Twenty-something years – I don’t know. No, it’s not for religious reasons. It’s really to do with my personality. Maybe it’s a sort of fear. I’ve often been quite frightened of a close relationship like that. I had them when I was much younger, but I’m fearful of them.’

People used to call him Agony Reeves. ‘I’m always agonising about things, worrying about them. But I’m not unhappy. I think I’m an integrated person.’

She’s the woman with flair and ability who flags down dustcarts when she can’t find a taxi. The lady who founded the Open Space Theatre, ran the Roundhouse and reckons she looks as old as God. And the guile-filled former thesp and erstwhile parachutist who is bringing the Ninagawa-directed play Tango at the End of Winter to London.

Enter top producer Miss Thelma Holt, the only female theatre producer in the West End at the moment.

We’re sitting in Ivor Novello’s bedroom, next door to Thelma’s office – wherein sits her assistant, Sweet Pea. She has her feet upon the bed. She’s wearing what she calls a pale brick sack – a Thirties dress that she didn’t pay for. ‘I prefer to barter. I swapped it for my two black lace ones with a friend who used to be a costume lady in the theatre,’ she says, nicely spoken. It’s the voice of a former actress – confident and convincing sounding.

She wears an artfully arranged flowery and glittery scarf – ‘it’s to cover hair that is filthy and scrunched up’ – perfect make-up and feet that are au naturel. Urban gipsy gear. What do her clothes reveal about her? ‘That I’m a slut’ – she giggles and slits her eyes. ‘But seriously, that I like Thirties stuff.’ In the Sixties she wore men’s suits; in the Seventies she was into junk clothes.

The initiated can tell a lot about her from her bohemian garnet earrings. They’re her birthstone. ‘I’m a goat – which means I’m tenacious and hardworking. They’re also ambitious and bad tempered – which I’m not.’ She moves into position number four – legs curled under her – in as many minutes.

She’s 5ft 4in with a pixie face, feline eyes and thin lips. ‘I’m small and dumpy,’ she says. ‘And I have very nice hands and feet.’ She says – 59 at Christmas – that she’s got used to her looks over a long time. ‘I like my hair, it’s very thick. And I’ve got good bones, don’t you think?’ She played a naked Lady Macbeth in the Sixties. ‘I was two stone lighter – I wouldn’t want to play one now. Yes, I enjoyed it. I didn’t mind being naked on stage. It wasn’t the first time – I was always naked. Everyone was naked in the Sixties.’ She simply imagined she was 12, felt vulnerable, and had no feelings of discomfort.

She moves her body again, leaning back deep and relaxed. ‘I move a lot. I’m only ever still in theatres. Normally it’s an expression of my anxiety that there’s something else I should be doing. You might find in 10 minutes that I lie down!’

She comes over as educated, strong, very clear, decisive and with incredible poise. She’s also rather daunting, very hard and tough, not at all the engaging eccentric I’d imagined. She seems an angry person, certainly today. And she’s very much the one in control – probably very manipulative and with eyes that flash challenges.

How does she see her character? ‘I’d like to be more tolerant – I don’t suffer fools gladly. I’m not resentful and have never experienced envy in my life . . . so I like helping people. I have a deep deep fear of mediocrity. ‘I feel terribly misunderstood – what I am and what I appear to be are very different.’ She reckons she’s not easily read. ‘I think people think I’m a lot tougher than I am. They misjudge my seeming confidence. But the truth of my real personality not being like the one I project is that I have an ulcer.’

And what of the slightly dotty, eccentric image? She says that hitching a dustcart late at night – when there was no other available transport – was nothing but practical. ‘But I suppose I do have my little eccentricities – like I have no doors in the flat, just curtains. The cat prefers it that way.’

And is she like her cat? ‘Ooh yes, I’m very cat-like. I look a bit like a cat. I walk alone the way they do. I don’t know if I’ve become like my cat – or my cat like me . . . but we’re both affectionate and tactile.’ They differ on the excitability stakes. ‘She’s excitable – but I never am in a crisis. I tend to think that where I’m not, chaos is.’

Toughness and confidence show in her face. ‘Nooo . . .’ (little girlie voice) ‘I think I look rather anxious and like a worried mouse – but you’re proving what other people also say to me. My assistants sometimes say, ‘It’s time to bring on the Big Gun’. For me to turn rough with someone. It amuses them ‘cos they think I’ll carve someone up – but it always amazes me that I can do that. I don’t think I do at all. I mean I never shout and I don’t think I’ve got a particularly nasty tongue.’

And is she as strong as she appears? ‘Yes, I am strong. You can rely on me – I won’t let you down.’ She says one shouldn’t be responsible for other people’s well-being if one’s not strong. ‘The weak may inherit the earth, but they won’t run the theatre.’ And mischievous? ‘I suppose so’ (little girlie voice again). And cunning? ‘Yes,’ she says, definitely. And what does she do with her anger? ‘I’m like the Jewish grandad. When people make me really angry, I just make them disappear from my memory.’ And what of her weaknesses? ‘My greatest failing is to expect from other people the same depth of commitment as I give. If I don’t get it, I get hurt – and I’m not nice then. I’m bitchy. But I never look for revenge. I expect God to do it for me – and he usually does.’

She wanted to be a priest as a child, for the frocks and ritual rather than because she was a good Catholic. But she still lights a candle for every new play. ‘I pray every night and morning.’ She also believes in the power of positive thought. ‘I think negative thought is harmful, dangerous.’

She has been thrice married. She loves getting wed, but finds it harder staying thus. After one wedding, she ended up in the bath with her gay brother-in-law. ‘Oh, he was only a brother-in-law – and he was only a baby,’ she says, in mock affronted fashion (he was 26). She has also said she wed her last husband ‘for his legs’. The marriage lasted six weeks. What’s her problem with staying married? ‘Because I keep going away. I have tunnel vision. When I’m working, nothing else matters. And I’m not at all domesticated.’

She also finds it hard when the time comes for the relationship to change. ‘The man has always been the more mature one, even though my last husband was a lot younger than I. They expect the love affair to grow into a mature relationship – and I expect it to go on being in a play-pen. And when it ceases to be playful, I go off.’

How important is sex to her? ‘Well, have you ever met an unsexy goat? They’re terribly sexy, goats – awful, oversexed. I like sex. My generation was enormously promiscuous. Certainly I enjoyed promiscuity. And if I hadn’t, I would have said I did! I like to conform a bit.’

Maverick and inspirational fashion designer who is a byword for the avant-garde and once jumped on a policeman’s back during a punch-up. Fervent and shy woman who is not afraid to shock and put punk, bondage and conical external bras on the catwalk. Humorous and scholarly lass who wore a fig leaf on her body suit on television and wants people to appreciate the intellectual curiosity behind her designs.

Enter, often on platform shoes, the weird and wonderful Vivienne Westwood; the erstwhile Punk Prophetess and Queen of Street Cred who is fed up with being dubbed a rebel.

‘I’m a bit tough looking today because I’m on my bike,’ she says in her soft northern accent. (Her intonation used to embarrass her, but now she’s more interested in what she says than how she says it.) For best, she currently wears her eponymous black velvet dress with Boulle – 18th century French furniture designer – print on it.

Right now she’s wearing polka-dot jeans – ‘how could I say I invented the polka dot? But I never saw a giant one until I started doing them’ – Azedine Alaia cap, rock-climbing boots, masculine ribbed camera and a leather thong around her waist, ‘which looks a bit like a whip’. She looks a mess. She’s wearing none of these in the picture because she didn’t want to be photographed. ‘It’s such a bore – I’d have to do my make-up and hair, which takes about one-and-a-half hours.’

The first impression is of a dizzy, gentle woman who is warm and friendly. She has an ageless face, marvellous cheek bones, pencilled eyebrows and pins in her hair. At the age of 35 she changed her blonde and spiky punk hairstyle and went reddish brown; now she has just gone blonde again. ‘So half of it is the colour of cabbage leaves with this other colour over it.’ Her eyes light with humour and she fiddles with her hairpin. ‘I like myself physically. I probably see all kinds of things in my face that other people don’t see – I think it’s very nice with all kinds of secrets and depth to it.’ She later says: ‘I know I’ve got these horrible saggy things around my chin – but I wouldn’t dream of having a face-lift or anything because I know I wouldn’t look like me.’

She rests her head on her hand, fingers across her brow. ‘I’ve amazing confidence in my looks – I think any man is either mad or stupid who wouldn’t prefer me to every other woman in the room, wherever I go!’ And how does she feel about her body? ‘That’s fine as well. I’ve always taken pleasure in it.’

She’s 50 years old, with a disco soul. ‘I don’t care about my age. If I were advertising in a lonely hearts column I’d say, ‘I have all the intellectual and sexual advantages of being a 50-year-old’.’ She’s a gorgeous woman: slightly dotty, warm, soft and unconventional with an extraordinary imagination. She sits relaxed, with open body language, and talks non stop – darting around in conversation seamlessly while she puffs on a Gauloise.

I ask if she could be a little briefer in her answers. ‘As Aldous Huxley said, ‘Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it can be the very body of untruth’.’ She laughs. ‘I prefer to tell the truth about everything,’ she says later. She thinks she’s very direct and honest.

How would she describe herself? ‘More than anything, I’m prepared to work for the future. I know it’s stupid to talk about horoscopes, but I’m a snake in the Chinese ones and I identify with that very long-term plotting sort of person.’

She says she wouldn’t want people to think she had an interest in matters mystical or religious. ‘The greatest function humans have is to be as critical as possible. That’s my function – but I wouldn’t say purpose because I don’t think we have a purpose apart from the ones we invent for ourselves,’ says the former teacher.

‘What am I meant to talk about? My virtues? My vices?’ She goes off to get a cigarette, claiming that it bores her to think about herself. I kept thinking she might be a prima donna, that she might throw a wobbly – but nothing like that happened and she remained scrupulously polite. ‘I think I’m kind. I’ve got a good sense of humour – I take pleasure in amusing myself and knowing that what amuses me will amuse others.’ She clearly enjoys making fun of herself. ‘More than anything at all really really really I am unorthodox. It’s like completely instinctive – I’m never satisfied to do things the way other people do them, never was.’ She’s also concerned about genius and style and being an artist.

Although pedagogic and serious, she seems light and content with herself. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m complacent.’ I don’t, just content. ‘I suppose that’s because I had a sane mother who loved me and thought me wonderful.’ Her mother was a cotton mill worker, her father a grocer. ‘The other reason is that I really don’t care about myself – and also because I’m doing what I want.’

Is she an anarchist? ‘I’ve been asked that – but it was such a long time ago that I’ve forgotten what I’m meant to say . . . I think I’m a civilised woman. I can’t imagine myself killing anyone – and you have to ask yourself that sort of question if you say you’re an anarchist.’

And is she eccentric? ‘Yes, undoubtedly – and proud to be so in such an age of conformity.’ Shy? ‘Well, funnily enough, I am shy until I get in front of people. I hardly ever use the telephone.’ Vulnerable? She appears to be so – and friends have described her as a marshmallow. ‘I don’t feel at all vulnerable – I never get upset about injustices to myself. I don’t care if I do get knocks, because I have faith in what I’m doing.’ She’s not rich. ‘But I think I’m going to be quite rich, possibly very rich. Oscar Wilde said, I never waste money, I spend it . . . My ambition is to have a salon, a base in the middle of town where you invite intellectuals to talk.’

And what about her relationships? She married dance hall manager Derek Westwood when she was 21; and she has a son by her erstwhile lover, former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. She gives brain stimulation priority over that of the body. ‘I don’t mind if I don’t have a relationship because I love to be on my own so much. But I’m a very loving person.’ She lives alone in Clapham, in the flat she’s had for 20 years. She’s choosy about men and often finds relationships too much of a compromise.

‘I’m quite happy not to have sex again until the day I die. I can manage without it.’ Don’t you like sex? ‘Oooh, I think it’s brilliant.’ She wants an uncomplicated relationship, but doesn’t have the time to look for one. ‘I wish men would proposition women more and that I could proposition men. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, a little recently on somebody – but I’ve given up.’ (Little laugh.) ‘They say art and creativity are a sublimation of sexual drives – and maybe that satisfies me. You know, what do you call this thing where you do it yourself, you’ll have to give me the technical word, ah yes, masturbation – I find that very satisfactory.’

The release of John McCarthy may signal a sea change in the Middle East hostage saga but the kidnappers’ bottom line demand is still as intractable as ever.

The twisted logic for hostage-taking by pro-Iranian militants in Beirut has always been demands for the release of Moslems in Israeli captivity including Sheikh Obeid who was abducted by Israeli commandos from the Lebanon in July 1989.

Although the Israelis are willing to make a deal, they want the seven Israeli servicemen missing in Lebanon, or their bodies if any have died in captivity, returned.

The clear drawback is that the Israelis were seized by different groups, some with no connections with pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God). Iran’s original support for hostage-taking – to prove to the United States and the West that however powerful it could do nothing to save its citizens in the Lebanon, and also to pressurise the US to return billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in American banks since 1979 – has been dropped.

The release of Mr McCarthy indicates that Syria and Iran now recognise that the hostage issue remains a barrier to normal relations with the Western powers and see the United Nations, acting as an honest broker, as the only hope.

But with the crucial Middle Eastern conference expected to start in October new momentum has been given to efforts to remove any obstacle by releasing all the hostages.

Mr McCarthy, with a message for UN general-secretary Perez de Cuellar, will be used as another means to pressurise Israel.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said today that Mr McCarthy’s release was a test to see whether the West would now bring pressure on Israel.

He said the release by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad (Holy War) group was ‘good news’ and claimed Syria had exerted tremendous pressure to try to prevent the kidnappers linking the release of Western hostages with that of Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

However, he said the kidnappers were insisting on ‘the release of their relatives and friends (held) in prisons inside Israel’.

Islamic Jihad first surfaced in 1983 when it launched two suicide attacks on bases of US and French soldiers in Beirut, killing about 300 servicemen. It has claimed responsibility for a string of other bombings and several assassinations in Lebanon and the Middle East as well as the abduction of more than a dozen Westerners in Beirut.

Wife’s anguish after no news of Jackie WHILE John McCarthy had the rest of his life to look forward to today, the wife of one of the other hostages still held captive was dreading the next 24 hours.

Sunny Mann, wife of the eldest hostage Jackie, said she was pleased for Mr McCarthy but heartbroken that his release confirmed her husband’s continued captivity.

She said: ‘I don’t know how I will cope. I don’t know how I got through yesterday. ‘I can’t tell you how I will get through the rest of today.’ Mr Mann, 77, a retired airline pilot ,disappeared in West Beirut on 12 May, 1989.

Mrs Mann added: ‘I’m very, very happy for John and his family and friends, but I’m very upset naturally that it’s not my own husband.

‘Nobody has heard anything about Jackie at all. I’m at the end of my wits. ”I have spent two days with my bags packed waiting by the phone to go to Damascus – everyone thought it would be Jackie and it’s John.’

Direct and honest Streatham-living subject of Personal Services. Money-mad erstwhile madam who will perform an Afternoon of Innocent Cyn at the Edinburgh Festival.

Celebrated former brothel-keeper who used to hate going to bed on her own and now does after-dinner speaking. Sex-fascinated woman who threw the famous luncheon voucher parties and would like to be Minister of Brothels or an agony aunt.

This is the image of Cynthia Payne.

Does she believe in God? ‘I’m a Spiritualist more than anything. I’ve been going to Spiritualist meetings off and on for 25 years. But I’ve never really had any proof of life after death.’ And is money important to her? ‘Yes, because I become very insecure without it.’

She’s wearing a leopard-skin print dress and black high heels. ‘I’ve always dressed a bit like the Queen Mum really. Go on, next question.’ She speaks in a cockney voice with a hard edge; a voice that failed at elocution lessons and which she calls racy and on the common side.

‘I like leopard skin and Loony Party colours because I go around to different elections with screaming Lord Sutch ha ha.’ She says ‘sex’ and ‘money’ – her characteristic trick – to produce a smile for the camera. ‘I’ve also got three nice fur coats. But I can’t wear them because I do a lot of animal campaign work – and you can’t wear a lovely fur coat when you’re doing that.’

She dons a tartan jacket and skirt to buy the groceries. She also comes equipped with elegant earrings, necklace and amethyst and diamond ring. ‘During the day I look very much like an ordinary Streatham woman. You’d never think I was a retired brothel-keeper if you saw me in the shops in my brogues.’

So how would she describe herself physically? She’s short with big boobs and wears a Margaret Thatcher-ish wig. ‘I wear all different types of wig . . . I’ve forgotten the question now . . . Oh yes, I am plump, but I’ve always had a nice pair of legs.’ She lets rip with a dirty laugh. ‘I’m busty, aren’t I?’ There is also a beady toughness in her eyes. ‘What would I change? Well, what woman doesn’t want to improve her body? I’d like to knock a stone off, but I’ve got no willpower. My outlet is eating.’

And what about sex? ‘Oh, everybody wants to know about my sex life!’ She gives another huge dirty laugh. ‘I’ve never found it embarrassing to talk about sex. I’m just fascinated with it. I understand men . . . ‘But English men are so inhibited, aren’t they? I find that I have to do all the running. Even more now that I’m infamous.’ She clearly gets on better with men than women – and both the male photographer and the taxi driver melted visibly in her presence. Does she think she’s sexy? ‘I suppose I could be with the right man.’

So what sort of man would she like? ‘Somebody like Inspector Colin White what raided me. Every time I had a raid, I got a police boyfriend out of it. I find policemen and firemen very attractive. But weak men seem to be attracted to me – which is annoying.’

For 25 years she had a ‘slave’ who idolised her and cleaned for her. ‘But I seem to fall in love with the wrong men – men who don’t give two hoots about me, really. Of course that hurts me.’

And does she feel shame about the things she’s done? Any hang-ups? ‘No, naaah, no. Other people have the hang-ups. I told a vicar recently that if there’s a heaven, I’m going there. I even went to an S and M party the other day – I thought I couldn’t be the Sex Goddess and not go to one – I found my parties were very tame by comparison.’

She’s 58. ‘Oh, I hate getting older – because I want to do it all over again.’ (Another dirty laugh.) ‘When you’re young you’ve got your life in front of you, you can be optimistic – but I’m not so optimistic now.’ I like and feel sorry for her and ask whether she feels sorry for herself. ‘No, but I feel sad that all this happened to me.’ She makes big efforts to be entertaining and fun. But this sense that she is tired, sad and disillusioned recurs frequently during the interview.

Is she? ‘No, naaah, no. I’m tired because I’ve been up since six. I do feel that I’ve had it all, that I’ve done everything. But I wouldn’t say I was disillusioned. I suppose I feel I’ve fulfilled my ambition – I’ve always wanted to be famous because as a child I was always seeking recognition and never getting it. But fame’s not all it’s cracked up to be – I can’t easily go away for a dirty weekend, for instance, because I’m too well-known.’ Later she says that running a brothel fulfilled a need in her. ‘I suppose for once in my life I felt wanted. But now it’s all stopped I don’t feel useful any more.’ She looks doleful.

So how would she describe herself? ‘Now what was it I said to you in the kitchen? Oh yes. My morals have always been low, but my ethics are high.’ She cackles then pauses.

‘I don’t think I’m prim, but people think I am. I’m kind, soft and tough but not hard enough. I’m tough considering what I’ve been through in life – most people would have had a nervous breakdown. But if anything terrible happens, like when I went to prison, I think ‘right, I’m going to learn from this’. I do tend to see the positive side and turn things to my advantage. ‘My warmth of nature is my most important characteristic. And what don’t I like? Well, I talk too much – but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be me. I don’t know why I do, it’s not even nerves. I’ve always been outgoing. In prison I kept quiet for four months – and it was very boring. The only people worth talking to were the murderesses – because most of them are on drugs in Holloway – who were very hard nuts, but at least I could have a conversation with them.’

The character of a madam is generally portrayed as being quite hard. ‘They always play me as being a tough businesswoman. But to be a successful Madame, I don’t think you can be hard. Men and the girls come to tell you their problems. ‘I think as a madam you understand human nature more.’

I’m en route to hear Pavarotti in Pavarotti City, Hyde Park. O Paradiso. Opera buffs cross oceans to listen to him. But will the power of that single human voice send ripples across the Serpentine? And will there be a sing-along?

I brave forth, being stabbed with brollies and thinking of the 10 miles of cable the organisers said they used and the 50,000 ice-creams they anticipated selling. All this for the so-called man of the people – 100,000 of them (and most of them in anoraks) as it turns out.

The ground is strewn with bedraggled people wearing black dustbin bags and media people bearing portable phones. There are also a few City suits. Mrs Cartwright, modelling a noir trash-can liner, had arrived the night before from Shrewsbury. ‘We saw him this afternoon when he practised. He was marvellous. Mind you, we’re not going to see him now’ – she gestures to the crowds. Mr and Mrs Cheeseman, 68 and 72, sit on the damp grass. ‘We’d have come here in the snow.’

The splendid pink, red and columned stage stands beneath a grey sky – 70 feet wide and 200 tonnes of Greek (pop-gone-rococo-style) theatre. It’s 5.30 pm – and the crowds at the front are as thick as at a pop concert. Above a helicopter hovers and speakers hang suspended from cranes. There are also three 30 ft Starvision screens and an Oriental wholefood bar (among others) which seems to have attracted a fair crowd.

John Major arrives on the screen, with a brolly crumpling over him. Then Charles and Diana arrive. She appears to be wearing an umbrella. The atmosphere becomes wet and expectant.

Now it’s 7 pm. The great signor, the wow-ee vocal artist, The Voice with the massive midriff is about to appear. This is the loudest man in London, the maestro, a natural phenomenon and the best tenor in the world . . . and to herald his arrival, the heavens open.

I’m as close to the stage as I can get, about a quarter of a mile away, I fancy. And there I am, waiting in the drenching rain looking at shoulders and umbrellas, corporate and otherwise. It’s like standing under an overflowing drainpipe while people start to look as if they’ve been in a communal carwash.

There are claps and cheers – so apparently He’s arrived. ‘I’m not sure the acoustics are very good,’ says Jackie Rennie, who types for Kenneth Baker and wears a PVC mac, standing in the al fresco crush bar. Something to do with the ceiling, perhaps? ‘He’s lost his voice,’ says somebody else. And it’s true, you can hardly hear him.

Ten people sit under a home-made plastic tent, occasionally coming up for air. Now the rain has let up. ‘Down, down, down,’ howls the crowd – talking about the view-obstructing brollies. Now I push forwards, up closer to the place where they say things like ‘Shhh’ – and don’t talk while he sings. Ahhhh, Puccini.

The big voice fills the big space marvellously. Here, I hear the tenor of the century – unique, strong and honeyed – issuing through speakers at the back that don’t synchronise with those at the front.

Then Pavarotti says: ‘I ‘ave never seen a woman like that. I would like to dedicate this to Lady Diana.’ At least, that’s what it sounded like. The teenagers around me are drinking Pils and saying ‘Go on Placido’ and ‘In’t he fat?’

The park is starting to smell of damp jumpers but there’s excitement in the air. A cry goes up with O Sole Mio, the ice-cream cornetto song – one feels the raspberry ripple of enjoyment in the crowd.

It gets the biggest cheer and a few bravos. Then there’s a whirl of approval and clapping when we move into Nessun Dorma, the World Cup song – and huge applause before he finishes.

At 9.50 pm, people begin pushing under the plastic cordons. Then they start leap-frogging the metal barrier. The orchestra goes off. One assumes Pav has too. And a big boo goes around the park. ‘Not the best thing in the world, but good fun,’ says a soaked lady.

Kindly but firm columnist and author with the caring manner who is leaving LBC after 15 years. Pioneer of broadcast therapy with the unshockable ear. Clear, patient and concise Agony Uncle who has written books both on sex and Wagner.

Counsellor who has lived with another counsellor for 18 years and claims to be happily unmarried despite press reports about his love triangle. Man who won an open scholarship to Oxford and then had a drop-out phase cultivating snowdrops and selling apples in Devon.

On the couch today is Phillip Hodson, the unmarried marriage counsellor turned sex therapist turned psychotherapist. HOD-IN, as the registration number on his grey Mercedes estate declares.

He wasn’t specifically dressed for the part, wearing brick-coloured shirt, jeans, jokey yellow-framed specs and metal girly stuff around his neck and finger (a gold chain and turquoise and silver enamel ring).

‘I like jewellery and body adornment – but I worry it’s a bit wimpish.’ He is soft and markedly feminine in his manner. ‘I make a point of it,’ he says. ‘In my work I have to use a lot of the intuitive side of the mind and get away from straightforwardly male, competitive categories.’ And what do his clothes reveal about him? ‘That I ride a bicycle.’ He reckons it wrong to turn up at counselling sessions in tennis gear – so he dons a three-piece suit – but he likes to dress casually.

‘I have to question which I prefer and which is the real me. And I have to say the jeans.’

As a child, he got his parents to write a note to school saying that he suffered from ‘constriction around the neck’. ‘A load of baloney – but I was 11 before I deigned to wear the school tie.’

He sits back in his chair, in front of a feast he has generously provided. He suffered from obesity and then near-anorexia as a child – and he eats noticeably little for lunch.

He’s tall, brown-eyed and reasonably athletic-looking with a glowing complexion and receding hairline. ‘I carried the hang-ups of being a fat child for a very long time’ – he presses his fingertips against each other, and looks in the air to talk. ‘I went from nearly 15 stone aged 15, to 11 stone at 16: from feeling almost totally unacceptable to the opposite sex to being told I was fairly good looking. I didn’t believe that for years.’ He then goes on about his thighs and waist and the proportions of his body – talking without stopping, and answering questions more extensively than anyone I’ve ever interviewed.

He is an interesting man who fancies himself. He’s also truthful, very intense about his inner world – more than in touch with his feelings – and with a rather awkward sense of humour. He is also noticeably keen and leans forward enthusiastically.

Listeners have a fantasy of him. ‘They think I’m a dreadful corrupting fool who only talks about sex on the radio. Most people seem to think I have limitless sympathy, understanding and the patience of a saint. In my personal life, I’m often the complete opposite of the way I am in public, being impatient and quick to react, sometimes without thinking.’ He say he’s feeling a bit rough from the weekend. And that he’s not performing ‘much’ now. ‘But there’s that bit in me that says ‘you don’t want to screw anything up. What I say may be taken down and used in evidence both for and against.’ ‘

He gets more comfortable, and starts to look me in the eyes, when the male photographer arrives. They’re probably (he jokes) doing a bit of bonding, as they say in those circles.

So how would he describe himself? ‘I think fast and like a lot of stimulation and excitement, but I’m capable of backtracking and apologising. I have an enormous amount of energy which is almost a problem – I’ll work at something obsessionally until it’s done and then notice I haven’t slept for two nights. But I am able to relax.

‘I don’t really like change very much – I’m agreeable when someone says ‘do you want to come to the theatre in a month’, but the night before I’ll want to get out of it.’ (There’s a Sixties bit in him that wants life to go with mood.) ‘And I’ve worked very hard to have a unique job – and I like to have a lot of balls in the air at the same time.’

Is he as self-confident as he appears? ‘I find that difficult to answer, in the same way as I’m both extrovert and introvert. I can actually do anything. I can face almost any social situation. But the kind of work I do costs me. I still have a fear of failure.’ And does he think he’s intense? ‘I’m aware of it. It’s almost impossible in this sort of work not to be.’ So how would he describe his condition if he went to a shrink tomorrow? ‘I’d say that my mid-life crisis is defeating me. It isn’t actually – but it’s a struggle, and that’s why I’d be going.’ He’s 45 and says his crisis is not so much a physical thing as a feeling that he’s achieved certain goals that he was working towards. ‘And now I want time off. I’d like time for me.’

He speaks as if he’s broadcasting – a voice that is pleased with itself, slightly hypnotic and with a steadiness of pace. He talks articulately and quickly – and puts on voices, acts and does little role-plays. ‘My speech is leavened with bits of ‘sarf’ London or Oxford English as an ease-making thing.’ But which one’s him? ‘My mother always told me to speak properly. But it’s unfashionable to speak correctly – so I have to bend a bit.’

The former sex therapist had a reputation as a champion lover in his youth. ‘Malicious untruths were written about me. I never said ‘I can’t remember how many affairs I’ve had. You might as well ask me how many restaurants I’ve been to’.’ And, as he points out, even James Bond found himself impotent at Casino Royale.

Has this man, who was one of the first single marriage guidance counsellors, always had an ‘open relationship’? ‘No.’ He and his common-law wife are going to write a book on it. And what are his sexual signals? ‘At the moment, zero . . . But if I see someone I really like, I make it fundamentally and blatantly clear. I might even say ‘come away with me . . . ‘

‘I’m surprised to find that a lot of women like my very bigness.’ How big is he? ‘Ha ha 6ft 1in and very solid. Some people would say thick, ha ha . . . Sexuality for me is very much to do with moods, boldness, daring and imagination – not just appearance. I’ve never been conventionally attractive and people who’re attracted to me aren’t just looking for Mr Beefcake. ‘They like me because I’m very unpredictable and very funny. Humour’s high on the list of what’s sexually attractive. And some people like my big bottom.’

Why did he never marry? ‘The silly answer is because my father told me never to wed. I’m not someone who is over social. I don’t care too much for endorsement by other people. The marriage I have – though not legal – is the sort of relationship I want.’

He looks relaxed. ‘I like myself emotionally and psychologically. I’m on my side.’

JESSICA is pummel pummel pummelling Lucia’s bare feet, her face creased with concentration. She reaches over for a bottle and, splosh, pours orange and cinnamon oil onto her hands and returns to her massaging.

Jessica is two-and-a-half years old. And Lucia – who was wearing Ninja Turtle slippers before they began – is much, much older. She’s three and a half. Jessica is giving Lucia a reflexology massage in the sunny garden, touching points in her feet to get a balance in the body’s energy, but not quite understanding this yet. Some of them laugh when they’re having their feet done, learning to do it two pairs at a time.

These are little people at Little People, London’s first – and only – holistic nursery school, where they have daily massage from a grown-up and reflexology and organic lunches, along with a combination of Montessori and traditional education. Where touch is allocated as much time as pre-reading, pre-writing and play.

Downstairs, through The Messy Room and past four knee-high loos in a room with no door, is The Quiet Room. Alexander, just two and wearing nappies, is listening to taped dolphin and whale sounds mixed with wind instruments and getting an all-over body massage from a big person called Molly Molloy Madigan. (She’s Irish.) He’s being gently stroked with orange oil to aid his digestion and lies there sucking his thumb and occasionally giving a mini grunt of satisfaction. It lasts 20 minutes and he falls asleep.

If a child is finding it difficult to settle into a project, Molly picks him up for a massage. One didn’t like it initially, but soon got into it. ‘Sometimes another watches. Teaching them to do it is very important, so they can care for each other,’ says Molly.

She had the idea for her school four years ago, and opened it last September. We’re now sitting talking on wooden chairs that stand probably eight inches off the ground, made by a religious community in Surrey who dedicate their lives to making furniture for children.

Little People was formerly the ground floor of Molly’s home – light, spacious and jolly – in her Victorian house in Archway. The nursery smells of essential oils which she burns every morning, rosewood and bergamot today. They are summer smells which help to lift the spirits and keep us happy, she says. Certainly the atmosphere is calm and cheery, no tears even as the children are dropped off. (They don’t have a pick-up service.) Molly’s wearing Japanese massage sandals – you know, those funny things that have rubber spikes that stick up into the soles to do good works on your feet – and tartan-pattern cotton trousers. She is telling me about her brainchild.

‘I needed to go back to work after having my daughter Sarah. I wasn’t happy with what was available in the line of full day care, so I decided to set up what I would have liked to have found.’ Sarah is four now and has another year there.

Instead of running the short hours of nine until four, Little People suits big working people and is open from eight until six, five days a week. It costs £125 a week – which Molly swears is standard – but she negotiated a reduction for the twins and says she has helped parents with financial difficulties.

‘I didn’t go into the project with views on whether it would be a good business deal, but rather just wanting to give other children what I hoped to give my own daughter.’ There are currently 14 children and capacity for 25; half are male and the rest wee girls, aged from two to five. The infants are called names like Sasha, Jacob, Romilly and Zachary. All English and local to the area, they’re the sort of kiddies, she explains, who go to osteopaths and use herbal and homeopathic remedies. (Molly herself uses Bach Flower Rescue Remedy if they have a little bump or bang.) And their mummies and daddies are things like graphic designers, journalists and teachers.

And the staff? Well, there’s Molly herself, 35, from Galway and a state registered nurse; and Kris, a man with long blond hair, batik shirt and Montessori and early-years training; and Ann, a traditional junior and primary school-trained teacher; then Maria, who’s an artist, and then Patsy, the Jamaican cook who is also wearing Japanese massage sandals and does cooking projects and things like tie-dye too. The whole place is Right On, in the nicest possible way.

Molly came to England when she was 17. A non-practising Catholic and the eldest of 10 children – a fact she reveals with evident pride – she’s used to looking after little ones. She worked for 12 years in nursing, ending up at the Royal Free Hospital.

‘I was unhappy with nursing because I felt it was losing a lot of the care and healing, which is what I like to do now.’

She went to work in her husband’s architectural practice, got pregnant, started having massage herself, learned baby massage, thought about starting up a natural health clinic for children . . . and ended up opening Little People. ‘It’s hard work. But with nursing I was used to that.’ An average day at the Little People involves breakfast, then singing, games and noise followed by creative work, toilet visit and handwashing; then lunch, teeth cleaning, free play, rest and massage. Depending on the day, there will also be messy activities or rhythm and dance or something. Which brings us to their food. It contains neither colourings, preservatives nor any other gunk. Take Monday: ‘Vegetarian moussaka with roasted pumpkin seed and wheat salad followed by silk tofu and strawberry whip.’

Or Wednesday: ‘Mixed-bean casserole with wine, mashed potato with ground almond, black olives with avocado salad, stewed apple with soya sauce.’ If it sounds like a baby boom parody of the health boom (the minor Mung Bean Set?) the children apparently adore it. And they cheerfully set the tables, acting as two and three-year-old waitresses and carrying the food from the kitchen. Then they serve each other.

They don’t have a discipline problem. ‘Parents tend to ask how we handle children expressing their positive and negative feelings. Basically I let the child express what he needs to. To deal with a temper tantrum, you need just see where it’s coming from.’

If its origin is a dispute with another child, Molly – who’s done something called Parent Link, which helps in these matters of major litigation – shows them the best way of handling the problem among themselves.

She did a lot of research when formulating her ideas for Little People. She found many nurseries ‘disgusting, with appalling food and a poor quality of care’. But her philosophy is to develop the whole character of the child, so he leaves with his trust and self-esteem not just intact, but enhanced, and an inner confidence.

Are there any disadvantages to her new approach to childcare? ‘The only thing parents worry about is the atmosphere being too cosy and too cuddly and too loving.’ This sounds like a great problem. ‘But they wonder what’s going to happen to their child when he goes to his next school . . .’

Forty-seven years and 19,500 parties after Betty Kenward began writing Jennifer’s Diary in Harpers & Queen, she has handed it over to Sue Crewe, who admits to loving society gossip but, in the column’s tradition, will keep it to herself. She talks to CAROLINE PHILLIPS

SUE Crewe, unattached and the former shopping editor of Harpers & Queen, is taking over from Betty Kenward as ‘Jennifer’ of Jennifer’s Diary in the same magazine. Mrs Kenward, 84 and always ready with a withering semi-colon, has had 47 thrilling years of marvellous chronicling of charming partygoers, dear dear friends, looking radiant and living in a world of silk organza. It is said that the redoubtable Kenward went to 19,500 parties during her tenure and every Royal Wedding since 1944 except that of Princess Margaret. (A palatial oversight.) It was she who covered two consecutive days at the Royal Windsor Horse Show interrupted by a dinner party in Venezuela by Concorde. And there was that incident on the operating table when, minutes before the surgeon drew his knife, she insisted on reading her galley proofs.

As Crewe and I enjoyed a pre-luncheon drink (Nescafe), we looked out at the delightful grounds on the other side of the house which included no ornamental lakes but a few parking meters. Her W11 sitting-room is decorated in shabby Good Taste with a bit of exotic bohemia and brown wrapping paper on the walls. Henrietta, a charming old Kensington High School friend of mine, was staying there, between houses. Crewe also has a ‘tummy-turningly beautiful’ little grey rented cottage in Cumbria.

The relations-in-oil of her first husband, author and foodie Quentin Crewe, glower down from the wall. ‘They’re called the Spoonbills. That’s the Cavendishes’ generic name for other people’s gloomy relations,’ laughs Crewe, 41, nee Cavendish, and granddaughter of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire and second cousin to the present incumbent of Chatsworth. She says things like ‘oh heahverns’, ‘goooodness’ and ‘oh golleh’.

The regal Kenward would have presented the most glorious sight in black pleated dress, court shoes, immaculate coiffure neatly pinned with a large velvet bow and three-strand pearl choker. ‘Do I look all right? I’m very insecure,’ says Crewe, who is resplendent in unstructured gold Nicole Farhi cardigan, flowing burnished almond T-shirt and acorn-kernel trousers plus drop gold earrings.

If one works for H&Q, she reckons, golly, it’s rude not to be brushed and combed. ‘I’m naturally untidy. Some children are born with their nappies round their left ear . . . and I was. The Cavendishes are famously badly dressed. People go into print talking about their awful clothes.’ Her ‘wonderful cleavage’, on which H&Q editor Vicki Woods has gone into print, is not on show. But she is pretty, with lovely eyes, although she thinks she is ordinary. ‘In the first year, I expect I’ll go to absolutely everything I’m invited to. With any luck, I’ll lose a lot of weight. I used to be thin and nervous. Now I’m just nervous.’

She was chosen from 17 applicants for the job. She was approached; it didn’t occur to her to apply. She will take up her post on 5 August, editing her first diary for the December issue.

So how does she feel about taking over from the legendary Kenward? ‘A mixture of excitement, ebullience and trepidation.’ The indomitable Kenward got up at 6am and went to bed at 2am daily. And Crewe? ‘I’m hopeless in the morning. I can’t do anything useful until 11.’ She reckons it a hard act of stamina to follow. ‘She was like Mrs Thatcher.’

But, above all, she feels tickled. ‘I was so proud of myself for getting a career – and now a job!’ She was freelance before. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been employed since I was 19. It’s amazing! I get a pension!’ In addition, and this she finds the astonishing thing, she is going to have a secretary. She won’t have Kenward’s chauffeur-driven Mercedes or maid – she drives a four-year-old Citroen.

It all reminds her rather of that benchmark seven years ago when she got her first mortgage. ‘I thought it was such a grown-up thing to have. I wound down my window by some unknown passerby in Kensington High Street and said, ‘I’ve got a mortgage’.’

Kenward never committed the social faux pas of taking a pencil or notebook to a party – when one was a guest, one behaved like a guest, holding only sherry in one’s perfectly formed hand. ‘I think I’m going to do a lot of muttering into a small tape recorder. I’m very bad at remembering people’s names,’ says Crewe, endearingly.

In front of people? ‘Oh yes. I’m going to say, ‘I’ve got concussion, could you tell me your name?’ ‘ She laughs. ‘The more nervous I get, the more the memory completely evaporates, don’t you find?’

And will Crewe be writing nice things? ‘I see no point in being gratuitously unpleasant. I think it’s much stronger to be enthusiastic. It’s so easy to knock people,’ says Crewe. So she won’t change the style? ‘I’m not saying. I want it to be a lovely surprise when it comes out!’ She giggles.

She grew up at Holker Hall in Cumbria and went to St Marys, Wantage, before having a couple of marriages (the second to now chairman of TV-am news Nigel Ryan) and a couple of children (Nathaniel and Charity), and doing a variety of jobs which included selling sofa covers to the Army and microlights to Turkey.

She also studied dairy (not diary) management at agricultural college. ‘I got a cup for trying hard. But it was awful when I forgot to test the brakes on this bloody great tractor and, of course, we went sailing into the side of a barn.’

She’s a special person, deliciously nice. She’s funny, imaginative and kindly yet assertive. One imagines her easily wounded. She’s straightforward and the remark attributed to her (‘I know I’m getting old because all my friends who were marquesses have become dukes’) was actually said by a friend of hers, tongue firmly in chic.

She’s unsure of herself. ‘I have a very low opinion of myself. Don’t we all? I think English women particularly are not encouraged to look at their talents and gifts. And I was one of the last of a generation of girls not to be educated or trained.’

She is currently romantically uninvolved. And what of her marriages to famous men? ‘It’s a huge privilege to be married to interesting people who achieve a great deal in their lives. It wasn’t only a rare delight, it also made up for my paucity of education. It was 50 times more instructive than going to university.’

And did she prefer one marriage to the other? Quentin Crewe or Nigel Ryan? She snorts with laughter. ‘Both of them told me only to say ‘f*** off’ when you’re asked an impossible question and then nobody prints it. But nowadays they do.’ She hoots again. ‘Of course not is the real answer.’ She says she doesn’t know why either of the relationships broke up. ‘I really don’t know. I think about it a lot. But I don’t think there are any absolutes in love, marriage or divorce. No two-sentence answers to those sort of questions.’

But back to the job. She doesn’t think ‘social connections are the most important thing for the diarist. Connections are like multiple joints that plumbers use. They are no use unless you are a good plumber and you have the pipes’. She considers herself a good plumber, so presumably the parties must be the pipes.

So is she a great party gel? ‘I don’t think the person taking over the diary necessarily has to be a society person or party person. I’m not a mad partygoer.’

She’s interested in the sports or politics, or mating rituals that generates parties. One wonders if she’ll be writing about such Important Sociological Undercurrents. ‘Not necessarily. But I will be aware of them.’ Does she love gossip? ‘Love it.’ And will she write about her friends? ‘Yes.’ She has a huge range of acquaintances and a small group of intimates.

Is Crewe as discreet as her predecessor? ‘I have old-fashioned notions of integrity. And I’m also old enough not to be bullied or coerced.’ So she won’t reveal even the teeniest gaff? ‘Certainly not. I’m a repository for gossip, not a conduit!’

She doesn’t think there’s something a touch anachronistic about writing a compendium of high society’s race meetings and garden parties. ‘High society living it up is an endangered species,’ she smiles. No one works harder than the aristocracy.

Environmentally friendly and forthright presenter of Bellamy Rides Again who would like to be a graceful but tough birch tree. Big cuddly green and adventurous giant who has broken nearly every bone in his body and has a ballet company.

Clever and funny honorary Maori-cum-conservationist who spent 24 days at home last year with a menagerie, his child, four adopted ethnic ones and a wife. Affable and ebullient millionaire naturalist who once went to jail in Tasmania and has written 44 books.

Enter David Bellamy.

He’s foregone his habitual T-shirt and shorts in favour of casual mountaineering gear suitable for the Piccadilly clime. ‘I have 27 pairs of these trousers,’ he says, waving his arms at the garb he’s worn from the North Pole to the tropics. He wears Cornish pastie shoes on his feet. ‘I suppose my clothes show that I’m a pretty sloppy person really,’ he booms, in the voice of a nasal East Ender crossed with an animated cave man. ‘I don’t like wearing suits. I turned up like this at a lunch at the Park Lane Hotel at which I was the guest of honour – and they wouldn’t let me in!’ He laughs. ‘I wanted all girl children so that I could buy them wonderful dresses. So perhaps,’ – hopeful tone – ‘I should’ve been a girl.’ He talks as if he’s imitating himself – and doesn’t, he says, do it as well as Lenny Henry. He speaks to plants in the same way. ‘Just as I talk to people. I say things like, ‘You’re a hairy one for your sort of species’.’ The model for the caricature laughs.

And how would the bewhiskered botanist with the famous broken nose describe himself physically? ‘A moderate wreck,’ says the buffoon who doesn’t have one undamaged vertebrae in his neck.

Does he think he’s intimidating? He’s 6ft 2in with a rugby-toughened frame. ‘Not verbally – but physically, perhaps. Imagine, I have to look at it every morning – that’s why I don’t shave!’ He’s expressive with his body, using it (he later says) as an instrument of music.

And does he think he’s good looking? ‘Sorry!’ (surprised tone). ‘No. But recently I’ve found myself combing my hair before speaking to camera – which is awful. I never used to carry a comb. I’m getting vain in my old age.’ He later alludes to himself as the ‘ugly face other people use to save the world’. Does he think he’s ugly? He looks taken aback. ‘What is ugly? A wart hog is the most beautiful thing to a lady wart hog. And I really don’t think what somebody looks like is important.’

So ask him how he would change his looks. ‘I’d use all my muscles. I went to Pineapple Dance Studio and did a cardiac funk which almost killed me. I wanted to be a ballet dancer until I grew this big.’

I say, jovially, I can’t quite imagine this beefy bloke in a tutu, ho ho. David Bellamy as you’ve never seen him before, ha ha. ‘Males don’t wear tutus – though I have worn them many times at college dances. Do not mock – if there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s mocking. Mock me as much as you like – but don’t mock ballet, it’s far too important.’

He says he’s ‘58 heading for 60′. And what does age mean to him? ‘Desperate. I hate being old. I don’t want my end to be tranquil and wonderful – I want to go out with a bloody great bang. If ever I get to the stage when I cannot do all the things I want to do, I’m going to chuck myself off the Himalayas. I know exactly the place.’

He comes over, however, with an infectious enthusiasm, charm and immense energy. He is excitable, with a dry wit and greatly likeable. He is also clearly a sensitive, shy man who suffers from self doubt.

So how would he describe himself? ‘Oooh, I don’t know. What a terrible question! Bloody minded,’ he says, in a thudding way. He then talks slowly, with lengthy pauses. ‘Abrasive but not misguided. I think I’m 99.99 per cent honest. I try too hard sometimes – because the world’s in a bloody mess. Also I’m a baby sometimes, ‘cos I don’t like being kicked by my own side . . . I’m a big softie. I’m the Andrex toilet paper that isn’t really made from sustainable sources!’

And what does he particularly like about himself? ‘Nothing very much’ (long hesitation) ‘but I’m like a little terrier who stays in with his teeth as long as he can – that’s why I’m not retiring.’ And is he happy? ‘Yes, I enjoy everything I do – and if I didn’t, I’d stop doing it.’ He has one helluva impact. What sort of effect does he think he has on people? ‘I’m overpowering if I’m talking about environmental matters or ballet. If they’re talking about anything else, I simply opt out. I can just go to sleep and wake up in five minutes.’

He’s doing live television in front of me – without the cameras. But what’s the difference between his public and private persona? I don’t imagine he talks to his children in this way. ‘I do. I was told ‘when you’re at home be Dad and not David Bellamy’ – unfortunately it’s one and the same thing. I can’t switch it off.’ He says he first turned it on aged 21. So who were you before that? ‘A dispossessed ballet dancer.’

He’s also a workaholic who puts in an 18-hour day. ‘I really find doing nothing very boring.’ He feels such a sense of urgency because he reckoned he was a drop-out at school and that he let his parents down badly. ‘So when I finally got switched on, I’ve been working ever since.’

Such behaviour might indicate a low self-esteem. Certainly there’s a sense that he doesn’t feel he measures up. ‘Yes, it’s very low. I don’t think I’ve lived the sort of ethical life my parents did . . . I’m a worm. But worms are useful – they make soil.’

He talks loudly and blames it on genes. Is he actually shy? ‘Yuh. I still hate using the telephone and I won’t go into shops. The media has done a lot of good for me because I can step out of my shyness and Be David Bellamy, the telly personality. But sometimes I just want to crawl away and disappear.’

Is he intrepid? ‘Yes. I will go anywhere in the world as long as it’s not with nasty people. I’d rather go swimming with Jaws than come up against people.’

So how does he see himself sexually? How does he rate himself as a man? ‘I was immensely lucky. I met someone who could put up with me – with my workaholism, overt shouting and bigoted self opinionism. I found a really beautiful person who wanted to marry me. So I didn’t have to wave myself about all that much.

‘When I was a youngster, the only time you were going to get it was when you got married. Whatever anybody says, sex within a marriage – and I don’t know anything about it outside married life – gets better and better. Not as often – but by God it gets better.’

So what makes him tick? ‘Mars bars.’