FLIGHT Lieutenant John Nichol reckons he had a very good war. Yes, his battered face was paraded on Iraqi television at the beginning of the Gulf War after he and John Peters were shot down over the desert and tortured for three days. And he was used as a human shield, imprisoned in an interrogation centre for seven weeks, subjected to mock executions, bombings, burnings, whippings and beatings. And he suffers still from flashbacks and post-traumatic stress disorder. Then in March he is to be made redundant in the wake of defence cuts. But he says he wouldn’t change a thing.

He is, you see, still enjoying the spoils of war. It is because of the Gulf that this week sees him finishing his first novel, Point of Impact, which, he says, is ‘based on real-life events in the RAF, but not about flying’.

Written in his spare time and in the four months that military personnel receive at the end of their careers to learn to be civvies, the novel is one of three he’s been signed up for by Hodder and Stoughton. ‘The other two were sold without a synopsis,” he reveals, “I started to write as a result of the Gulf, after Tornado Down [an account of the Gulf ordeal, co-written with John Peters] became a bestseller.

‘I’m used to deadlines, being under pressure, being told what to do, left for a long time to do it and having the ultimate responsibility of, you know, possibly killing somebody,’ he continues. ‘But this is scary. I’ve never before signed a contract for money and works of fiction.’ The books are not the only spin-off of his war. On Sunday John appears in Eamonn Matthews’s excellent new blockbuster television series on the Gulf War. ‘It’s brilliant. It shows that there’s only one certainty in war – that people will die. There are no winners and losers.’

Since the Gulf, John has also met Baroness Thatcher, General Norman Schwarzkopf and the Princess of Wales. (‘Princess Diana presented me with a bloody awful Crimplene tie.’) He’s been in demand as a lecturer, after-dinner and motivational speaker for companies. (‘In the Air Force you compete with other air forces, nations, people in your own squadron and yourself.’) He’s been flown worldwide to stay in luxurious hotels by post-Gulf contacts. And he’s contributed to television and radio on a variety of subjects. Oh, and the film rights to Tornado Down were recently sold.

SITTING in the Royal York Hotel, John speaks in a Geordie accent at the speed of machine-gun fire. Wearing a green jacket and grey polo shirt, he’s handsome, beefy and 6ft tall. ‘I’ve worn a uniform for 15 years. Now I have to buy clothes,’ he laughs. ‘It’s simple things like that, and getting a doctor and learning how to do job interviews, that you have to come to terms with when you’re crossing into Civvy Street. In the military we’re used to ordering people ‘Do this for me’ and it will be done.’

John is convivial, extrovert and adventurous. He bears the scar from an Iraqi boot kick on his face and has a prominent bump on his forehead. The lastis the result of his first encounter with death. ‘I was fishing, aged 10, and fell down the cliff and landed on my head. I didn’t fall far, just 20 or 30ft.’

He was brought up in North Shields in a house on a council estate in which his parents still live. They didn’t have a telephone until he was 14 years old. But, the youngest of four children, he had a cosseted childhood. ‘I was the baby and consequently got more than the others. I went on two skiing holidays when I was 13 years old. My parents had never even been abroad until they came to meet me coming home from the Gulf. My mother never worked and was always at home.’

It was a Catholic family – his parents have gone to church daily since his father retired – and John was an altar boy for seven years. ‘I’m lapsed now but I still believe in God. In your darkest times in captivity you pray and make all sorts of promises that you’ll go back to church. Of course you don’t.’

He went to St Cuthbert’s grammar school and left, aged 16, with nine O-levels. It had never occurred to him to join the RAF: he’d never even played at pilots. He wanted to be an electronics technician. ‘By chance I read an RAF brochure to stop myself being bored on a bus journey. Three hours later I’d signed on the dotted line.’

He recalls his time in the Gulf. ‘Once when we were attacked by stealth bombers the ceiling came down and I said ‘Right, I’m going to die now’. It’s quite calming knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.’ Another time a guard put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

In his flashbacks he relives his loneliness and vulnerability. ‘Pain hurts but you get over it. But you can’t imagine the fear and isolation. You didn’t sleep much because of the bombing and people screaming all around you. Every night nearly all 30-odd of us had the same dream – that we were back at base drinking and our capture had been a dream.’

Five years on, John still views life from an altered perspective. ‘The Gulf taught me that something good will always come out of smething bad and that there’s always somebody worse off than you. The things I thought were important aren’t. I’ve become less argumentative but more impatient as a result of watching my life ebb before me 24 hours a day and having no control over it. I no longer worry about money and see no point in putting it in a bank. When you come back after an experience like that you live your life today as though you were going to die tomorrow. ‘

Since the Gulf, John has been deployed to Bosnia (‘When your aircraft alarm tells you a surface-to-air missile is locked on to you, it’s totally terrifying’), the Falklands, Cyprus and Canada. But now he’s taken voluntary redundancy. ‘With the cutbacks there were no more opportunities for me.’ He has a pay-off, before tax, of four times his annual £30,000 salary. ‘But I’m a real candidate for ending up on the streets. People a thousand times more capable than I have ended up in the doldrums. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever done.’

FORMER Londoner Adrienne Campbell, 34, eats food foraged from hedgerows, teaches her children at home, has just created a new local currency for her Sussex village, boycotts supermarkets, won’t vaccinate her children, changed her name from Katy when she felt she’d outgrown it, was celibate for two years, has spiritual revelations and gave birth underwater at home in front of her children and the au pair.

Hers is an unusual life, and very unusual for someone educated at Francis Holland, a smart private London school. She was raised by her international businessman father and nicely bred stepmother among their friends like David Niven, Sean Connery and multi-millionaire entrepreneurs. She also gained a scholarship to America’s leading science university, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where, aged 19, she wrote a paper on cancer (with a professor from Harvard and another from MIT). Then she became a journalist on The Economist.

But first the currency. Adrienne, who lives near Wadhurst, has created a currency called Wads with 10 other community-minded souls. “One Wad equals a pound,” she says. “If I want to buy someone’s honey I’ll pay him a cheque in Wads, he banks that cheque at the wholefood shop and uses the credit to buy something locally. It’s a centralised bartering system whereby people exchange goods and services without having to do so directly with one another. If I have masses of herbs I can exchange them for baby-sitting or plumbing.”

The currency is useful for people short of cash and encourages villagers to develop skills and get to know one another. “Such systems are flourishing in England. More than 200 of them have started over the past five years.” She smiles and takes a sip of her peppermint tea.

SHE has also embarked upon another singular project. In January, Adrienne and two other families started a unique school in her sitting-room. It has eight children from the ages of five to eight whom she intends to educate until school-leaving age. The National Curriculum is followed loosely. But the emphasis is on freedom and nature (“The children can tell what animals have been through the hedges by the footprints and stool”) and fees are £600 a term. She hopes for a government grant and to offer an alternative to the state system. The idea came to her after her five-year-old daughter Sophie had spent a year at the village school.

“She didn’t like having to do maths when she wanted to read, or art when she felt like writing.” Adrienne was disillusioned by the state and private systems, the more so after studying the pioneering work of Satish Kumar, a visionary in Dorset. “Children educated privately are pushed academically too early on. Also I believe in respecting children’s choices.” Her school is a non profit-making, parent-run co-operative. “A parent who is a paid teacher teaches in the morning and the other parents teach for free in the afternoons.”

The latter don’t have formal qualifications. “The parent is the best qualified to teach the child. Studies show that home-educated children are two or three years ahead of school ones if they go back into the system.” She says her pupils are happy, uncompetitive, motivated and respectful. We’re sitting in the exquisite setting of her garden, next to wild flowers and her 25-year-old Citron. Here she lives with her three daughters (aged one to five) and composer husband, Dirk, in a 100-year-old oast house with round rooms. She has a beautiful equine face, speaks purposefully and slowly, and wears jeans and scraped-back hair. Her body is relaxed. Her first life-changing experience came on holiday in Turkey in 1982. “I had a spiritual revelation. I can’t explain it more.” On returning, she joined Subud, a cross-denominational religious movement. “Twice a week we do spiritual exercises. It’s like tapping into a divine life force.” She met Dirk through Subud. “We’d both been celibate because we kept making the wrong choices with the opposite sex.

“It was instant recognition. We got engaged after two weeks.” From there her lifestyle took more and more alternative turns. Take childbirth. “My mother had died in childbirth, having twins, so I thought through very carefully how I wanted to do it.”

Her first born, Sophie, was delivered underwater, without painkillers and with Dirk in the birthing pool. She didn’t have a choice with her next, Anna, who was born prematurely. She decided to have her third baby at home. TWO midwives and the children were present at the birth. “They sat cuddled up on the sofa next to Dirk and the au pair. I was screaming and grunting and Sophie was pretty disgusted with the blood.” Wasn’t that damaging and traumatic?

“Possibly. But I think it helped the girls bond with Rose and see that birth is a normal part of everyday life.” Wasn’t it voyeuristic? “Possibly. But I think the pros outweighed the cons.”

The family rarely visits a doctor. “I’ll only go for a diagnosis in order to find out whether the illness is infectious and what the long-term effect will be.’ She relies instead on herbal remedies, homeopathy, eating healthily and fasting once a year during Lent. “We eat a lot of salads made from weeds, wild flowers and hedgerow herbs.”

Adrienne decided not to vaccinate her children against anything. “I read extensively and felt the risks were greater than the benefits. The well-documented hazards of vaccine are brain damage, convulsions, a damaged immune system and death.” She looks at her feet.

Her attitude to personal hygiene is alternative as well. She didn’t wash her children’s hair for two years and now washes it only occasionally. “I have friends who spend six weeks letting the gunk out – you have to wear a hat because it’s so disgusting – and, after that, you have lovely shiny hair.”

PRINCE Edward will turn his mind to marriage once Ardent, his film production company, is established. ‘I want to concentrate on my career now,’ he says crustily. ‘But this is not what this interview is about.’ Can he not develop his career and marry? ‘I’ve got to make sure we have a track record before turning my mind to other things.’ Say, in two years time? Edward Windsor – as he is known at work – laughs. ‘Ask the commissioning editors.’ Last week he said that it would be 1996 before he knew whether his business was a success or failure.

We meet in his airy Charlotte Street offices, all grey and cream corporate good taste. There’s a video entryphone at street level and electronic security for the office. ‘Sorry, Edward’s on the telephone,’ says the receptionist, breezily. Fifteen minutes later HRH appears, in black stripy shirt with no jacket, cords, clubby tie, chunky signet ring with E beneath a crown and militarily cropped but thinning hair. He has slight shoulders, a clean living, kindly face, strong handshake and direct eye contact.

He carries my coffee to his office and apologises profusely. Sorry he’s late. Sorry about the short notice for the interview. Sorry about the mess in his office. He starts his tape recorder and appears surprisingly nervous. He exhales after questions, touches his eyebrow, fiddles with his fingers, holds his earlobe or crosses his arms defensively. I tell him I’m nervous. ‘That’s all right,’ he replies, consolingly. And how should I address him? ‘How would you like to address me?’ He laughs.

We have 30 minutes and the rules are that we must talk about Ardent, which he set up 15 months ago and of which he’s joint managing director, and about real tennis: specifically the 1995 TNT Express International Real Tennis Team Trophy, on Wire TV on 17 May – the first of his productions to be screened, in the latter stages of negotiation with Channel 4, and the project he’s taking to the annual television fair in Cannes on Friday. I am to be allowed one stray question.

OK. How did he feel when he was dropped from the Civil List in 1992? ‘It was like a kick in the teeth. People say ‘Oh, well, it was deserved, what did you ever do?’ he replies. “But you have only to look at the Court Circular records – the publicity was unbalanced. But once in this particular job, born into it, you can’t get rid of it. I still do the same work. But now I have to find other ways to fund my existence.’

Does he pay for any of his charity work privately? ‘Yes. I have to. But it’s not a satisfactory way of proceeding. It opens up the possibilities of straying beyond what people might regard as right and proper and being susceptible to commercial forces. Before I was in nobody’s pocket. But that’s not the subject we’re here to talk about …’

What is his response to the monarchy being pushed to justify itself and pay tax? ‘It’s not a position which the monarchy deserves. But it is far too noble to be drawn into that particular battle.’

EDWARD is in an impossible position – caught between trying to be an ordinary person and being a royal. ‘I’ve been living a schizophrenic existence for a very long time,’ he says, ‘so it’s nothing unusual for me.’ Does he really believe he’s normal? ‘I would never describe myself as quite ordinary or normal.’ He laughs fully. ‘But I don’t see myself as removed from the mass of people. I feel I’m part of it. I walk down the street, I use the roads like everybody else, go into shops and move around town hopefully without causing any interference to anybody else. We’re out there in the community, living and experiencing the lives of – or lives very similar to – a lot of other people.’ And he has a detective with him now? ‘Yes.’

Edward is accommodating – critics might say weak or compliant – in answering questions he doesn’t wish to discuss. He picks his words carefully, abrupt breaks between them, speaking with the same inflection as Prince Charles. Often he stops himself, as if to prevent himself saying something indiscreet.

His problem has been his search for a role in life. ‘I’m in a slightly more unusual position than most. But I believe I’ve managed to work out both roles in a reasonable way without causing any embarrassment to anybody.’ He had a crisis when he left the Royal Marines, against the wishes of Prince Philip. ‘It was obviously a traumatic period for anybody – for everybody – and wasn’t an easy decision to make.’ He resolved his conflict in the glare of front-page publicity. ‘We’ve gone well off the subject …’ He sighs, then coughs. ‘Unfortunately, the media has to be taken into account when making decisions. But you have to be convinced in your own mind that what you’re doing is right. I mean, whose life is it?’ he asks, heatedly. Is he a frustrated actor? ‘It might have been a job that I would have liked to have done. But it would have been totally impractical.’ He laughs, as he does often – sometimes obligingly, to be friendly, and at other times defensively. ‘So it really wasn’t worth continuing. Production is behind the scenes. It’s quite another thing to be out at the front regularly.’ Because of the possibilities of ridicule? The embarrassment if he were resting? ‘A whole lot of reasons, and those are personal.’

He is the first child of a British monarch to have entered business. ‘It was bound to happen before too long,’ he says, mock stoically. What qualifies him for the job? And what are his strengths and weaknesses? ‘Hummmph. My greatest strength and weakness is basically who I am. I can get my foot in the door – but after that I’ve got to be better than everybody else. There are people out there who are very nervous of commissioning me because of how it might reflect on them.’

At television parties he walks up to people and says: ‘Hi, I’m Edward Windsor … Most people are perfectly warm. I’ve been in the market place long enough for it to be no longer a shock seeing a face out of context.” Why doesn’t he make royal programmes? Exhales. ‘That would give the wrong impression to the market place and everybody else.’ He speaks definitely. ‘And because the people are alive, they are here and present. It would be intrusive. And I don’t want to trade on that particular association any more than I intend trading on my title.’

He has a high-calibre team and five projects underway – including a BBC2 motoring show and a series promoting Commonwealth ties. What did he learn from Andrew Lloyd Webber during his time at the Really Useful Company? ‘He taught me how you make money out of the business.’ How? He sighs. ‘In terms of documentaries it is quantity, in terms of drama it is quality. I’ll be shot down for saying that.’

HOW successful is the company? ‘We’re just turning the corner now.’ What will it mean to him if Ardent is a failure? ‘That’s a hypothetical question.’ And one that he won’t consider? ‘Well, I’m certainly not going to make any comment.’

GEORGE Greenfield, the man who discovered Jilly Cooper, acted as a middleman between Margaret Thatcher and Robert Maxwell and was agent to Enid Blyton, Stirling Moss, Ranulph Fiennes, Rex Harrison, David Niven and Sir Francis Chichester, has finally put pen to paper himself. His book, A Smattering of Monsters, A Kind of Memoir, show that, if nothing else, he has learnt one or two things about the value of spicy titles.

Ask him who the monsters are to whom he refers and he’s mischievous. ‘I advised Lady Thatcher briefly and I’m also referring to Jeffrey Archer,’ says George. ‘But I’m using the word in the Latin sense of monstrum, meaning worthy of show.’

George, 77, the former head of one of Britain’s greatest literary agencies, John Farquharson Ltd, has spent 35 years importuning publishers and coaxing and bullying authors. He wears fawn cords and a brown cardigan. He has a moustache, sharp eyes and improbably arched eyebrows which give the appearance of being plucked. A raconteur, he has a theatrical manner, gesticulates with his arms and speaks in stacatto fashion, emphasising words unusually.

He recalls his meetings with Robert Maxwell. The proprietor offered George £10 million for Thatcher’s Memoirs only to withdraw the following day. ‘We all knew he was a a crook, of course.’ George remembers the negotiations. ‘Mark Thatcher, whom I rather like – he’s very punctual, polite and a bit of an oaf, but so what – said before a meeting with the Robert, ‘If we reach any conclusions, Mama wants to run them in front of her man of affairs, Sir Michael Richardson.’

‘When we were getting down to the nitty gritty in the meeting, Robert suddenly said ‘This sounds all right, but I must show my advisor Sir Michael Richardson.’ Afterwards I said to Mark ‘He can’t act for both sides.’ ‘Good God,’ said Mark, ‘I never thought of that.” Later, George was ‘kneeling in front of Thatcher,’ helping her with the contract for her Japanese rights, witnessing her signature for every page. ‘I suddenly felt a draught and realised my zip had slid down. There I was exposing myself to the great woman.’

George remembers David Niven fondly. ‘He was wonderful, very funny. Once he handed me a manuscript and said ‘It’s the most terribly boring, ghastly stuff.’ He was talking about his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon, which went on to sell over 8 million copies worldwide.

‘David once had a lot of champagne and said to Prince Rainier at lunch, ‘Oh Rainier, buddy, I’d love to be you. You’re the last of the despots. If you see someone you can say ‘off with his head.’ And Rainier said ‘oh David, you’re the one I envy, you’ve had all those women in Hollywood. Tell me, who was the best?’ David hummed and ahhed then responded that ‘The best was Grace…’ Rainier went blue. ‘…Gracie Fields,’ continued David.’ George recollects the six times married Rex Harrison wryly. ‘He was an extraordinarily vain creature. Originally he wasn’t picked for the film of My Fair Lady – MGM wanted Cary Grant or Rock Hudson and were going round all the beefcakes first. In revenge, when Rex got his contract, he made them take his old Rolls Royce from where he lived in Portofino to Calais, across to Southampton, on the Queen Elizabeth and all the way to Hollywood – just so he could drive five miles to the studio and back every day.’ George was Jilly Cooper’s first literary agent. ‘It’s always struck me as amusing how Gilly was stuck in the country writing raunchy novels while Leo was humping away in London. At times we had to lend Jilly quite considerable amounts of money as Leo was running his publishing house at a loss.’

It was also George who backed Enid Blyton – for whom he was agent for 15 years – supporting Big Ears, Mr Plod and naughty Golly after librarians banned the books from their shelves because they thought they were prejudiced, muddled and of limited vocabulary. ‘But there are no funny tales about Enid. She was a very naive woman and, very sadly, suffered from Alzheimers at the end.’

George gained a scholarship to Cambridge, was a pupil of Dr Leavis (‘marvellous little balding man, typical wild don’) and got a double first in English. He was then asked to go into intelligence but chose the army instead. ‘I was a complete fake. I had a pee before the meeting then in the interview they asked for a sample. I was straining away when a doctor came along and said ‘If you can’t manage, I’ll do it for you’ – and gave me a sample.’ George joined the Buffs where he was ‘blown up twice in one morning.’ He was unhurt. ‘Ever since I’ve thought that every day is a bonus.’

poss cuts He started his career in a small publishing house called T Werner Laurie but left after a farcial confrontation with the accountants who began insisting George tell them the plots of the books he wanted to buy. ‘They either couldn’t read or didn’t read. One day I told them I wanted to do something controversial about this negro married to a white woman on a Mediterranean island. I told them the plot and they said it was terrible. ‘I’ve just told you the plot of Othello,’ I said ‘and it’s been doing rather well for 300 years.”

We’re in George’s Hampstead house which he bought in 1952 partly with £500 he won as the then Capt George C Greenfield of the Buffs for the best novel in the Macmillan Centenary Literary Award in 1945. He lives here with Ann – ‘a former front theatre sister who operated in the noise of fire’ – his wife of 46 years.

He had two sons, but one died when he was five years old, in 1955. ‘He had that chromosome complaint where the kidney enlarges. Nowadays they can do transplants. The condition gave him a bloated stomach and he had to be plugged in at Great Ormond Street every so often to draw off the fluid. We knew two years before he died that he was going to die in two years, which was very hard. Of course we didn’t tell him.’

George’s other ‘child’ is 47 years old. ‘He’s also called George and works in a small publishing house. ‘It’s silly really, but my father was George and his father was, as was his father – going back 8 generations. The awful thing is that you open each other’s post.’

SINGER Olivia Newton-John is in London to promote her new album which chronicles her triumphant battle with breast cancer.

Gaia: One Woman’s Journey is her first recording since she was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, and it is an album she has written, produced and paid for herself.

In 30 years, she’s sold more than 50 million records worldwide, spent four years in the singles charts in Britain and recorded 22 hits, including duets with John Travolta and Cliff Richard.

Yet people ask whatever happened to the squeaky clean singer once called the Singing Milkshake. Her career has seesawed since she starred in Grease in 1978. She had a short-lived success as a pop star, then her movie career went nowhere fast and her chain of boutiques crashed.

Grease was an amazing phemenon, she admits. “It was the highlight and I feel happy with that.” How does she feel about being dubbed a has-been? “That doesn’t matter to me. There will always be people with negative things to say.”

She lives on an Australian farm which has walls insulated with seaweed instead of asbestos, painted it with non toxic paints, used what she calls fall down wood or that from sustainable sources, has no carpets – just rugs – because of dust mites, keeps compost heaps and units for re-cyling everything and has a water filtering system.

She built the healthy house as an example to people -before she became sick with breast cancer. And it is here that she does transcendental meditation, yoga, takes homeopathic medicine, grows custard apples and avocados.

Last year it was rumoured that Olivia had constructed a very detached house in her 22 acre New South Wales grounds for Matt Lattanzi, her husband of ten years who is 11 years her junior, to live in.

Newspapers said that their marriage was on the rocks. But Olivia was reported as saying that she was building the other house for Matt to entertain in. “I live a quiet life,” she said.

Olivia speaks with a faint Antipodean accent but she was born in England, the daughter of a headmaster. When she was five, the family moved to Australia where her father, then only 40 years old, became master of a university college. Her mother’s father was a Nobel prize winner and a friend of Einstein.

‘My parents were educated and academic,” she says. “Then along came my sister and I who wanted to go into showbiz and caused consternation in the family. I could have been academic if I’d applied myself” -she giggles – “but I didn’t. I left school at 15. It wasn’t a conscious rebellion. It’s just that I wanted to sing.” From then on she won talent competitions, trips abroad and television appearances.[ Olivia was once engaged to Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch. “I can’t remember when or how long for. A year or two.” Then she had a lengthy relationship with Lee Kramer ,her manager. And what of Bee Gee Andy Gibb? “I didn’t think anyone took that rumour seriously.”

And John Travolta? “Never. Just friends.” And Cliff Richard? “A friend” – she laughs – “still a friend. I’m going to do a duet with him soon for his new musical.”

She met Matt, then a dancer, on the set of Xanadu. They took 6 years to marry. but have just reached their tenth wedding anniversary. Why did she choose someone so much younger? “We fell in love.”

The couple had a daughter, Chloe, now 9 years old. Then Olivia had a miscarriage. “Actually I had several. Three, I think. One occured before Chloe was conceived and the first two happened when she was three months pregnant.

” The last one, in 1988, was the hardest because I was five months pregnant. The doctors disagree but I believe it was caused by a CVS test (chorionic villi sampling to detect foetal defect).

“I grieved but there’s always sadness there. But you can’t dwell on it. You’ve got to let it go. It was a terrible thing but there are people who have been through much worse.”

Her troubles continued. In 1992 her fashion empire of 60 worldwide stores, crashed. “They were our baby. It was a difficult time. The hardest part was the lawsuits and litigation. We lost a lot of money.” Then Olivia was diagnosed as having cancer – which led to a modified radical masectomy,chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery.