Have children really forgotten how to play? (Part 4)

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

In the meantime, pop-song parodies help pass the time. Popular during our visit was Nelly Furtado's I'm Like a Bird, rewritten with suitable mischief ("I'm like a turd, I only flush away ..."), and an equally toilet-centred version of Peter Andre's hit, "Pooh, pooh, pooh, Mysterious girl ...".

Curtis later suggests that the Ingrow pupils have been self-consciously restraining their output. When Punjabi-speaking eight-year-olds in West Yorkshire "dip" to see who will lead a game, she notes, they often dispense with the standard counting-out rhyme, "Ip dip doo, The cat's got the flu, The dog's got the chicken pox, Out go you!" The local version is notably less innocent: "Ip dip dog shit, F---ing bastard, Dirty git!" The eight-year-olds also favour another highly topical dip: "1, 2, 3, Michael Jackson is free ..."

"You still get Elvis Presley in some of the rhymes," Curtis says. "It's surprising how little they change. Some of them you can trace back 150 years. But what they are doing nowadays is taking more directly from TV - acting out shows like Blind Date or the James Bond and Spider-Man films. Their PlayStations merely reinforce the message: they see the films, play the computer games, and then act it all out in the playground."

Still, Curtis is pleased with this morning's material, which includes a few song versions absent from her own extensive archive. "What I like most about this stuff," she says gathering her notes, "is that it's something the children have complete control over. And there's not much these days that they're allowed to control."

++++

A striking feature of this oral tradition is the continuity of many of the rhymes and games, typically passed on by older children or cousins. The current chasing game Duck, Duck, Goose - in which one child goes round a circle specifying who will be the "goose" to race against - was recorded in second-century Greece; a singing game recorded by Mavis Curtis, known in Yorkshire as Kayli Bubble Gum, turned out to be an updated version of There Came a Duke a-Calling, popular 150 years earlier. One popular ballad, traced by the Opies to 1725, began: "Now he acts the grenadier/ Calling for a pot of beer./ Where's his money?/ He's forgot./ Get him gone,/ a drunken sot." By 1950, they had collected this variation in Hampshire, used for counting out: 'Mickey Mouse/ In a public house/ Drinking pints of beer./ Where's your money?/ in my pocket./ Where's your pocket?/ I forgot it./ Please walk out."

This is also an international phenomenon. The clapping rhyme When Susie Was a Baby has its local equivalents as far apart as Australia and South Africa. An American variation calls her Lucy; in France she is Delphine or Fanny, and grows into a microbe, rather than the stripper who, in the English version, "lost my bra, I left my knickers in my boyfriend's car".

Students of this lore see its apparent consistency as evidence of universal childhood needs, irrespective of class or income level. Educationalists point to its role in socialising children and helping them explore an emerging sexuality. Perhaps that is why two ten-year-old Ingrow girls precede this popular dance with a whispered warning that "it's very rude ...":

"We are the Keighley girls [they dance with a wiggle];
We wear our hair in curls [curling hand movements].
We wear our dungarees
To show our sexy knees [touch knees].
You know the boy next door,
He got me on the floor.
I gave him 50p [hand slap]
To give it all to me.
My mummy was surprised
To see my belly rise [touch tummy]
My daddy jumped for joy
It was a baby boy ..."

Yet for all the sociological analysis, this is also about the fun of playing with words - whether the nonsense clapping verse at Ingrow ("Alli alli, chickerlye chickerlye, om pom poodle, walla walla whiskers ..."), or the pop-song parodies proudly performed by ten-year-old Ugurcan in Hackney. Ugurcan's version of R Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly says less about discovering true love than his own urban expectations:

"I believe I can fly.
I got shot by the FBI.
All I wanted was a chicken wing -
And I got shot in the ding-a-ling ..."

Some questions remained, however. Would rural playgrounds offer an equally rich palette of games? How would a wealthy suburb compare with a deprived inner city? And was this a national as well as a local phenomenon?

In 1959, the Opies concluded in Lore and Language that "Scottish children seem to be in a happy position" through their particularly wide repertoires, taking in the popular English rhymes as well as their own "hamely clinky" folk songs. So I decide to continue the investigation in Scotland, taking in a diverse group of schools stretching from the East End of Glasgow to the isolated north-eastern village of Auchenblae. With the folklorist, songwriter and story-teller Ewan McVicar as my guide, I travel to Golfhill Primary in Dennistoun, a busy 180-pupil school a mile from the heart of Glasgow.

The headteacher's welcoming words are familiar enough. "They have forgotten how to play," Janet Dunlop says resignedly. "They just copy whatever the last thing it is they've seen on TV, Ninja Turtles or whatever. And they seem unable to resolve any issues themselves. Last year we got money to spend on playground games, but the bats were soon turned into weapons and the skipping ropes used for abseiling. They lost interest after a day or two."

The playground, as in English schools, tells a different story. The chasing games alone include Disney tig (you shout "Mickey Mouse" if caught), toilet tig (requiring a flushing arm movement) and ghost tig (played with eyes closed). Children sing traditional skipping rhymes about "Cinderella dressed in yella, went to a ball to find a fella", as well as modern pop parodies that set Aqua's Barbie Girl in a bowling arcade: " I'm a cheatin' girl, in a bowlin' world ..." They still clap to rhythms that the Opies knew - "Under the apple tree/ My boyfriend asked to marry me./ Kissed me, hugged me,/ Said that he loves me..." - even if one girl adds a more contemporary last line: "Punched me, slapped me,/ Said he doesn't love me..."

There is also firm evidence of continuity. Glasgow, like Hackney and Ingrow, knows "I Went to a Chinese Restaurant", but here it is a skipping rhyme. There is also no sign of Andy Pandy wrapping the loaf of bread. Instead, Golfhill children sing:

"...They wrapped it up in a five pound note,
And this is what they said:
My name is Elvis Presley, I'm a movie star,
I do the hippy hippy shake and I play the guitar.
The boys are hunky and the girls are sexy,
Sitting in the back seat, drinking Pepsi.
Where's your father? Round the corner,
In the harbour, drinking lager,
He feels a bit dizzy and he drops down dead!"

And when, to giggles, the singers are asked where they learned the rhyme, they confidently source it to an older brother.

Nor is there any less variety at the more affluent Mosshead Primary, in the Glasgow suburb of Bearsden. Here the self-generated games include Pop Idol, TV advert parodies, Chinese ropes, thumb wars, kerbie, skipping, hopscotch, and a pulling game called Monster that evolved from the particular design of the playground. The children are more self-censorious than in the city-centre school, with teachers hovering to punish any "rudeness", but they still find plenty of ways to subvert the adults' norms, whether through lyrical explorations of bodily functions, or the aggression of physical contact.

"There's definitely been more violence in children's play over the last few years," says McVicar, a cheerfully avuncular 64-year-old who travels the country as a professional school story-teller. "Rude songs also seem to have got cruder since the Eighties, and songs about violence have got more bloody. But then, so have TV and the movies."

McVicar, something of an expert in Scottish playground lore, is impressed with the variety of new material in evidence at the Glasgow schools: "I've caught new variants today, learned new types of tig, heard so many kids asserting with confidence that they'd made up songs," he says. His only disappointment is that the following day, at the remote 74-pupil primary in Auchenblae, overlooking the Mearn hills near Laurencekirk, he identifies a "startling lack of rhymes and songs". He attributes this to the school's size, which limits the flow of material from outside, and perhaps to growing parental anxiety about leaving children unattended.

That is not, however, to suggest that the children need adults to stimulate their play. During morning break at Auchenblae, a group of older girls is playing Big Brother by the timber-framed obstacle course, the girl elected to be Davina keeping a secret tally of her playmates' votes. Others skip, rehearse dance routines, and exhaust themselves in a running game called White Horses. While most boys are engrossed in a football match, one small group is playing Lord of the Rings, turning the school gate into a castle turret and evading make-believe arrows. Elsewhere, final-year girls are teaching younger ones to play Pop Idol so that the rules are preserved intact.

"Just look at the way they're working off current TV programmes," McVicar says, fascinated. "The creativity is already there, it's just that the format is being replenished by TV. Most of the beautiful traditional songs might be museum pieces now, but the impulse to stamp your own identity on play is still there. It's a human instinct, and tradition just keeps on being reinvented."

Back at Gainsborough School in Hackney, modern media pressures are exerting a similar dominance on playground activities. Ten-year-old Danny is performing his rewritten version of a Mario Winans song: "I don't want to know/ If you're beating me./ Keep it on the low/ Cos my buddy can't take it any more ..." Muhima is practising a clapping sequence chanting the words: "That's the way, aha aha, I like it, aha aha,/ Scoobie Doobie Doobie Doobie Do,/ Ice cream!" And ten-year-old Colin is delighting his audience with his rewritten raps to songs by Michelle and Nelly.

Yet even here, in one of the capital's most ethnically diverse primary schools, some traditions are preserved almost untouched. In one corner of the playground, ten-year-old Siseway is skipping while chanting: "Rosy apple, lemonade tart/ Tell me the name of your sweetheart/ With an A, a B, a C, a D ..."

As Iona Opie could have told her, girls have been singing that one on London's streets for more than a century.

[end]

[ADDITIONAL PANEL WITH OTHER EXAMPLES COLLECTED]


"My boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear.
My boyfriend gave me a kiss on the lips and threw me down the stair.
I gave him back his apple, I gave him back his pear.
I gave him back his kiss on the lips and I threw him down the stair.
I threw him over Scotland, I threw him over France.
I threw him over the universe and he lost his underpants.
His underpants were yellow, his underpants were green.
His underpants were multicoloured and that's not all I've seen.
I took him to the sweetie shop to buy some bubble gum.
And when he wasn't looking, I shoved it up his bum.
He took me to the cinema to watch a dirty film.
And when I wasn't looking he kissed another girl. .."

[Current clapping rhyme, Fettercairn, near Laurencekirk, Scotland]

++++

"Jenny was a baker
Living in Jamaica.
Had tree daughter,
One named Baker
Drop out tha window
Broke her little finger -
Ooh! Ribena!"

[Girls' clapping rhyme, Gainsborough School, Hackney, East London]

++++

"I was walking down the lane, sniffing cocaine.
Police went by and shouted my name.
I threw the tin out of the window,
Shouting: 'The mother f--er.'
I legged it!"

[Eight-year-old boys' playground rhyme, Bradford, West Yorkshire]

++++

"Jingle bells, jingle bells, Santa's lying dead.
Teletubbies Teletubbies stabbed him in his head.
Barbie girl, Barbie girl tried to save his life.
Action Man, Action Man stabbed him wi' a knife ..."

[Eleven-year-olds, Glasgow]

++++

"Jingle bells, Batman smells,
Robin flew away.
Uncle Billy sold his willy for a Milky Way."

[Ten-year-olds, Keighley, West Yorkshire]

++++

"My friend Billy's got a ten-foot Willy.
He showed it to the girl next door.
She thought it was a snake,
Hit it with a rake.
Now it's only three-foot four."

[Nine-year-old boy, Islington, North London]

++++

"Tweet tweet tweet, on the way we go,
Walking in the city all way long.
Mama's in the kitchen, cooking rice chicken.
Daddy's in the loo, doing number two.
All the girls in Bombay Stores say the same thing.
Tweet tweet tweet ..."

[Nine-year-old girls, Bradford]

++++

"Mrs McGuire peed on the fire.
The fire was too hot;
She sat on a pot.
The pot was too wide;
She sat in the Clyde.
And all the wee fishies ran up her backside."

[Nine-year-olds, Glasgow]

++++

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary.
How does your garden grow?
I live in a flat, you stupid prat,
So how the f--- should I know?"

[Ten-year-olds, Bradford]

++++

"My father was a baker,
Yummy yummy. Yummy yummy.
My mother was a dentist,
Gummy gummy. Gummy gummy.
My sister is a showoff. Oh girlie. Oh girlie.
My brother is a cowboy.
Ban bang, you're dead, fifty bullets in your head,
Turn around and freeze."

[Skipping rhyme, nine-year-old girls, Glasgow]

++++

(The Times Magazine, May 21 2005)

Read more!

Have children really forgotten how to play? (Part 3)

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

These are not, Curtis warns, ideal conditions for gathering material - the children will be self-conscious, and will self-censor to avoid adult judgment. Yet over the next three hours, they eagerly share song parodies, reworked clapping rhymes, movie re-enactments, creative wordplay, even centuries-old traditional games that their teachers appear never to have noticed. Iona Opie is right: the real challenge is to take in this mass of information as quickly as it is paraded.

Current games range from "Damsels in distress", with boys rescuing girls using firemen's lifts, to Pop Idol and Harry Potter. "You pretend to be on a broom and fly around throwing wands at everybody casting spells," explains 11-year-old Connor. "The wand's a rolled-up piece of paper. For Quidditch, someone makes paper balls and throws them on the floor, while everyone on your team races to get them."

Popular culture, particularly film and TV, constitutes a major spur to role-play games. Depending on current fashions, influences might be The Incredibles or Scooby Doo, Power Rangers or Robot Wars. To play Tweenies Tig, we are told, the person caught must perform the role of a respective character. For Lord of the Rings, you need a ring made from a cut-up toilet-roll and an imaginary bow and arrow. "You have two people on a team, and if one gets killed, you go and help them," William explains. "But we've had to stop playing it, as nobody ever agrees to die."

"We make up our own games like Gladiator," explains Lucy, aged 11. "You have to push the gladiators off the wall, and the person who's left wins. We also invented one where we all have to get in a circle, hold hands, spin round really fast, and let go after three, with whoever falls over being out. It's called Spinning." She adds that Weakest Link is also popular, with the questioner allowed to be "as mean as Anne Robinson".

There are Pokemon Battles as well as Ninja games, whose players stretch their sweatshirts to cover their faces "like a Ninja" before punching or kicking their rivals ("You shouldn't write that one down, it's very dangerous," advises Lucy). There are also endless clapping games, their intricate movements familiar to boys as well as girls. Many involve brand names: "Coca Cola, Coca Cola, Egyptian prayer, Egyptian prayer ..."; "A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut", an established American rhyme that became a UK chart hit for the Fast Food Rockers. Other clapping rhymes are more surreal, if rhythmically serene:

"Donnie Macca, Ronnie Macca, biscuit.
I shoo shiwawa, biscuit.
Ice cream soda with a cherry on top.
Ice cream soda with a cherry on top.
Mama mama, I feel sick.
Call for the doctor, quick quick quick."

Two younger girls, a little coyly, offer an alternative:
"There once was a young English girl called
I shoo shiwawa [they touch their eyes and shoes].
All the boys on the football team
Loved I shoo shiwawa.
How was your boyfriend, all right?
Down in the fish shop, last night.
What did he die of? Raw fish.
How did he die, then? Like this ..."

But where do such verses originate? "Someone just brings them in in the morning and everybody just learns them," explains one of the "I shoo shiwawa" girls. They are passed on orally, which accounts for the "Chinese whispers" nature of the local variations: 21 years ago in Hampshire, Iona Opie heard a rather different version that began, "I know a little Dutch girl called Hie Susie Anna...". Lyrics also differ according to region. The Hackney rhyme, "I went to a Chinese restaurant", is equally familiar among Ingrow's children, but with no mention of Andy Pandy. In the Yorkshire version, after wrapping the loaf in a five pound note, the restaurateur says only: "My name is Hi Lo Chicolo, Chicolo Hi Lo, Hi Lo Chicolo, Chicolo Yo!"

"Schools often only see playground rhymes as an encroachment into literacy," Mavis Curtis says afterwards. "They're only interested in seeing the playground as a problem, not as a stimulus to literacy." And when a school does invest in playground "improvements" intended to encourage play, the effect can be to inhibit imaginative expression, she says. "What children like, and use, are inconspicuous features that pass adults by. Here they're using the drain covers and steps to build into dance routines or tig. A defunct old bell push becomes an imaginary lift button. Children's imaginations make use of the natural world around them, yet schools are chopping down trees for safety. It makes me furious!"

Ingrow's playground underwent its own expensive "improvement" programme two years ago, incorporating giant chessboards, draught pieces and large painted grids for snakes and ladders. Safely out of teachers' hearing, some 10-year-olds suggest that the result may not have been entirely constructive. "We'd rather play our own games like Tangle Up, when you all hold hands and have to untangle yourselves without letting go," says one. Others point out that boys keep kicking over the draught pieces. "And we're not even allowed to use skipping ropes any more," complains one girl shyly, "because the teachers think the boys will fight with them."


. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .

Read more!

Have children really forgotten how to play? (Part 2)

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

Yet by the time the Opies began their survey in the 1950s - by writing to The Sunday Times seeking suggestions - there was little sign that such traditions had been lost. Indeed, the Opies collected so much material directly from children that they organised it into almost 200 rigid categories - from "Finding Sweetheart's Name" in skipping jumps ("'Black currant, red currant, gooseberry jam,/ Tell me the name of your young man ...") to mildly erotic rhymes about contemporary film stars ("Betty Grable/ Sitting on a table/ Showing off her legs/ To Clark Gable ...").

Now 81, Iona Opie still has a thick folder labelled "Games Disappearing", chronicling hand-wringing warnings of the tradition's imminent demise that go back as far as 1664. As today, it is technology that has generally shouldered the blame - from the arrival of railways and the gramophone to threats from the wireless and the cinema. "Of course, technology won't kill that insuppressible drive to play," a delightfully opinionated Opie says impatiently in the book-lined dining-room of her rambling Victorian house in Liss, Hampshire. "The latest arguments about television are just another bogie, yet more media scaremongering. The truth is, it's instinctive to exert your own personality."

Iona Opie remains remarkably alert if rather deaf, her large headmistressly hands tending to an unwell bantam, one of 50 she keeps for company (Peter died in 1982), which, as she speaks, is defecating freely on the dining-room table. The Opies' obsessive inquiries brought them in contact with more than 20,000 children for a series of books that have sold more than a million copies over four decades. And although Iona has long wanted to "move on" - "To be honest, I'm very bored with it," she admits - she remains Britain's foremost expert on children's lore, interrupting this very conversation to take a telephone call from an American researcher.

"You'll find some things have nearly disappeared," she says afterwards, happy to offer advice for the journey ahead. "The group singing games, for instance, which used to be sung for courtship by young adults all over Europe. The old games that people are mourning were needed at the time. But this is a living lore that's changing all the time. So if some of the words of the old singing games have lost their function, they'll be changed to produce much more active, combative games."

She reflects that children will always need such ritualised means of confronting social anxieties, affirming their growing independence, or simply channelling their aggression or sexual curiosity. "The fun is making your own mark on a song, by putting in slightly different words," she continues, suddenly animated. "I just adore hearing the words of the old games being modified, corrupted and turned into a sort of surrealist poetry.

"We underestimate children all the time," she sighs. "When I've talked to teachers doing playground duty, they tell me firmly that children don't play games any more. I'd ignore that if I were you. They're playing them all around them, and just as able to think up their own entertainments today as they ever were. You'll get masses of material."

++++

"I'm afraid play here has been quite a passive activity for a while," John Corn, the deputy head of Ingrow School, in West Yorkshire, explains jovially in his office. "When I was a kid, we'd go fishing, explore the countryside, play conkers." He smiles good-humouredly, and makes an apologetic shrug. "There were no PCs or GameBoys around then. It's not that our children don't play," he adds cautiously, "but they do so in, well, quite a robust way." He arches his eyebrows. "Pushing each other around, say, rather than the structured, creative, inventive sort of play."

It is a rainy Friday morning, and Ingrow, a large primary in the suburb of Keighley, has been kind enough to spare small groups of Year 5s and 6s who would otherwise be learning maths. They arrive excitedly four at a time, nine- to 11-year-olds, to sit in the absent headteacher's office and explain to the newspaper man (and his MiniDisc recorder) what they have lately been playing. Also present is Mavis Curtis, a researcher and writer specialising in children's oral traditions, who has been collecting material at Ingrow since 1992. Even over the past dozen years, she explains, she has noticed how rhymes have vividly reflected cultural changes - with "Will You Marry Me" skipping songs, for instance, nowadays counting out the number of expected divorces as well as kisses and weddings.

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .

Read more!

Kabbalah Centre investigtion, continued (page 4)...

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

Depressed and exhausted, Karen told the rabbis she was leaving. "They got really angry," she recalls. "I was told that if I left, my father could get worse. I had a lot of fear. Then they simply stopped talking to me." Today, life is good again: Karen has an office job in Miami Springs and is engaged to be married. But she hopes that describing her "terrible experience" may deter others from becoming involved. "They change your behaviour, control your emotions and thoughts, cut you off from friends and family," she warns.

Other families tell similar stories. A woman in Israel told The Times that her estranged son, in his twenties, abandoned his studies to move into the local Kabbalah Centre and now helps run the London office. "He lost his interest in his friends, studies, family and everything apart from the Kabbalah Centre, where he sold books door-to-door for 15 hours a day and was paid only pocket money," the woman says. "It's like he's been brainwashed." An American mother, whose son is also now in London, says she became concerned when he refused medical treatment after a road accident, and instead had Kabbalah water poured on to his wounds. When she expressed her concerns forcefully to a Kabbalah Centre rabbi, the woman claims, she was told that a mysterious illness might befall her younger child if she stood in her son's way. The centre denies that such threats have been made.

Steven Hassan, a Massachusetts-based cult counsellor who treated Karen, lists "the classic symptoms" that he recognises in almost all of the Kabbalah Centre members he has counselled: "Radical personality changes, sleep problems, depression, fear of trusting anyone... People think they've developed mystical powers. They typically make bad decisions - drop out of college, or turn over their bank accounts to the organisation." On his "Freedom of Mind" website, Hassan offers prominent warnings of the group's "destructive" impact.

Fear appears to be a constant factor. Many of those who spoke to The Times were afraid of being openly critical: Susie, the London businesswoman, insisted on anonymity "in case they attack my premises". There is no evidence, however, that the group has been involved in any such violence. Rabbis, too, can be cautious: they cite the case of Rabbi Avrohom Union, of the Rabbinical Council of California, who 12 years ago urged colleagues to warn congregants about the group. Rabbi Union claimed he then found a sheep's head left at his door, which he took as a warning. No evidence was found of the centre's involvement, and Berg's son Michael insisted it had no connection with the incident: "That's totally against who we are and what we teach, which is compassion and caring," he told a reporter. Still, Rabbi Union tempered his criticisms.

The centre has certainly sought to silence an eminent Kabbalah scholar in Toronto through what he calls a "libel chill". Rabbi Immanuel Schochet, an authority on Jewish mysticism, condemned the centre in a 1992 lecture over its interpretation of Jewish teachings, its "expensive" merchandise, and its practice of "scaring naive people with all kinds of evil and curses... if they refuse to offer money". A year later, Berg and the centre launched CAN$4.5 million libel and slander lawsuits against Schochet. The rabbi believes that the substantial evidence he has gathered will cause the centre "enormous damage" if presented in court. But that seems increasingly unlikely: the centre has allowed the case to lie dormant for six years.

A frequent criticism concerns aggressive fundraising. When Jerry Hall ended her involvement last autumn, she stated: "They always talked about giving in order to receive, but I didn't really realise that in order to go through a door of miracles you had to give 10 per cent of your income." Its extensive merchandise range, too, appears designed to maximise revenue, from its £360 Zohar sets to its £17 symbolic red strings and "dynamic" mineral water, which, once blessed by Rabbi Berg, becomes "infused with kabbalistic meditation... for healing, well-being and rejuvenation". (Apparently, it also worked for Guy Ritchie's verrucas.)

It is impossible to know exactly how much the organisation is worth in total: in the past, insiders have challenged its tax statements, and there have been claims of unconventional accounting methods. The Times has been shown no evidence of financial impropriety. What we do know, from official records, is that one of the Bergs' network of companies and charities, Research Centre of Kabbalah, declared assets of $23,362,976 in the year to June 30, 2002. In that year, it received "contributions" worth $1,515,399 - yet paid just $94,999 in wages and salaries.

Others bodies are registered locally. The Los Angeles centre, for instance, made $8,302,984 in 2000, when it stated its assets as $11,895,396. A separate Los Angeles-based company, Kabbalah Centre International, took in $5,568,964 that year, boosting its own assets to $14,581,729. And, according to Companies House, the UK branch more than doubled its declared income between 2001 and 2002. Most of its £633,524 income came as "donations and gifts" - yet it paid just £31,496 in wages and £656 in tax.

Rabbis in London believe that the UK branch is about to mount a concerted recruitment campaign. A new call centre is at an advanced planning stage. Berg's son Yehuda recently told an interviewer: "Our new British centre [near] Oxford Street will serve 5,000 people, but we expect that to grow to 10,000 very soon.'' This worries those such as Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, minister of Mill Hill Synagogue and son of the Canadian rabbi, Immanuel Schochet. "It is high time this community - whether Jewish or otherwise - gets its act together to formally denounce and condemn them," he says. "If they are genuinely concerned with people's souls, why do they prey on their wallets? It doesn't add up."

The Times sought the Kabbalah Centre's response to these allegations through a detailed list of ten questions. It chose not to answer them directly, but four days later provided this statement in the name of Yehuda Berg: "As you can appreciate, success attracts the jealous and the sceptical. The Kabbalah Centre is a good example. The centre's success in attracting a large and fast-growing congregation has challenged the position of older, less dynamic, religious and spiritual leaders. Happily, we are aware of only a few such individuals. For the most part, the centre enjoys excellent relations with the organised Jewish religion and other Jewish rabbis.

"Any organisation attracts a very small number of would-be participants who misconstrue the organisation's ideals and purpose. Such malcontents are an unfortunate but inevitable part of life. Again, we are aware of only a very few individuals who are unhappy with their experience at the Kabbalah Centre.

"The Kabbalah is a spiritual and mystical experience. Spiritual discovery can elicit powerful devotion. This speaks to the strength of the teachings of the Kabbalah - no more. In no way does the centre espouse or encourage exclusive devotion. In fact, the centre owes its dynamic growth to the fact that congregants introduce family and friends to the centre.

"Finally, all religious and spiritual organisations depend upon donations to defray the temporal cost of worship. The centre is no different. We encourage contributions just as do other spiritual organisations. If there have been indiscretions (we are aware of none), they are no different than those experienced by other religious and spiritual groups."

At the Central London Synagogue, Barry Marcus insists that he is not on a "crusade" against the Kabbalah Centre. "It's not a personal issue," he says. "I'm just not alone. Complaints are being raised in three, four continents, and there's a track record that cannot be ignored. There's a suspicion that they're just really a business, as one of my members put it bluntly, exploiting people's desire for spirituality for their own financial gain." He then quotes Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 14: "You should not... place a stumbling block before the blind."

"We have a duty to warn fellow human beings of a possible pitfall," he says. "It's in that spirit that the Chief Rabbi has issued this statement. We have a responsibility to people."

Some names have been changed

(The Times Magazine, cover story, April 3 2004)

* * *
NEWS ARTICLE, PAGE 3, THE TIMES April 03, 2004

Chief Rabbi sounds alarm on mystical Kabbalah group
By David Rowan

THE Chief Rabbi has issued an unprecedented public warning about the Kabbalah Centre, the mystical religious organisation favoured by celebrities including Madonna and Elizabeth Taylor, amid growing concern over its allegedly "cult-like" practices.

The intervention of Dr Jonathan Sacks comes as the centre prepares an intensive recruitment campaign from its new £3.65 million base in London, and follows serious complaints received by other Jewish bodies in Britain.

Former recruits have alleged that they were put under pressure to donate large sums of money to the centre, and to sever ties with unsupportive partners or families, with warnings that "bad things would happen" if they left.

One London businesswoman, in her early 30s, described how ten weeks ago a Kabbalah Centre rabbi urged her to donate £65,000 on the spot to cleanse her late parents' souls.

Such a gift, the woman claims she was told, would free her from the negative energy that prevented her from having children or a successful relationship. When she explained that she could not immediately raise the cash, she says that she was urged instead to sign over to the centre a property that she owns.

Dr Sacks is so concerned about the claims being made about the centre that his office has issued a statement to be sent to synagogues in Britain.

It reads: "In the light of issues which have been brought to our attention relating to the Kabbalah Centre in the UK, we wish it to be known this organisation does not fall within the remit of the Chief Rabbinate or any other authority in the UK recognised by us. It is jointly signed by the London Beth Din, the main rabbinical court, and the United Synagogue movement, and is intended to echo similar warnings from rabbinic authorities in other countries where the group operates.

The centre - whose classes are open to non-Jews and Jews - claims to have reached 3.5 million people around the world with its teachings, based on a mystical interpretation of Jewish law. Its founder, Rabbi Philip Berg, a former New York insurance salesman, reinvented himself in the 1960s as "the world's foremost authority on the Kabbalah".

The Kabbalah Centre declined to answer questions detailing allegations made in a series of interviews conducted by The Times. Instead, Yehuda Berg, Philip Berg's son, said they had, in the most part "excellent relations" with the organised Jewish religion. He blamed the complaints on "the jealous and the sceptical".

(The Times Magazine, cover story, April 3 2004)

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Boris Johnson interview, continued ...

"When I came back, I knew that I should have jacked in the shadow spokesman's job," he says. "I told [the whips] this is almost impossible, but they decided that it would be a bad scene if i went because of the Liverpool thing." So his personal life was used as an excuse for Howard to save face? "Yeah. God, it's bollocks. But that's showbiz. Please don't say I'm all aggrieved and seething, because I'm not. It is just politics." He makes clear that he will not answer any questions about his current domestic arrangements.

His editorship will be remembered as a particularly frisky time for the "Sextator". With the publisher Kimberly Fortier (now back from maternity leave) caught in an ill-starred affair with David Blunkett, and columnist Rod Liddle leaving his wife for the receptionist, did he regret that his era had provided plenty of amusement for the wider media? "They can't guffaw at the figures," he replies referring to circulation, which he has taken to 70,000, an all-time high. "I think it's in the nature of rival publications that they will try to knock you. But not a single reader got in touch to complain."

What of The Spectator's future? There are rumours that Neil seeks more control by moving the staff out of this fine Georgian townhouse. Here Johnson does proffer an opinion. "It would be a tragedy if the magazine moved away," he says. The irreparable damage to the distinct Doughty Street culture would be "criminally insane". But then, he adds, "I have no reason to think that's his intention. He certainly hasn't told me."

Nor has Neil given Johnson any indication of who will succeed him. One name rumoured to be favoured is Iain Martin, editor of Scotland on Sunday and formerly of The Scotsman, although Neil claims that the search for a replacement is only now beginning. Johnson refuses to name his preferred choice ("It would be the kiss of death"). And the suggestion, said to be on Neil's agenda, of turning The Spectator's website into a feistier, more influential British version of the Drudge Report?

"Andrew is right to want to expand the site," he says. "Newspapers have serious problems - if I want a hit of news, I'll just turn on my computer. Sometimes I don't even look at the newspapers." That does not say much about the Barclays' £665 million investment in the Telegraph Group... "Brilliant, brilliant decision," Johnson fires back. "Worth every penny."

No regrets, then? "None I can think of. I'll miss this place, best job in London, and I have had more fun than is strictly proper. Just the joy of cooking something up and getting a piece that's better than you could have thought. How could I possibly complain? It's been incredibly kind of Conrad Black and the Barclays to allow a Conservative MP to edit a national magazine for a very long time. The fact is, I've had a wonderful six-and-a-half years. That's longer than Charles [Moore], Frank [Johnson], Dominic [Lawson]. You shouldn't stay forever."

Why, then, so subdued today? That, he says, is simply to avoid offending his hardworking colleagues in the next room. "I don't want to boom away, that's all it is." Then he yawns. "Sorry, I wrote 12,000 words this weekend for my new book on Europe, it's just killing me. I did another 2,000 words this morning. I would be more chipper, honestly.

"So please don't go saying I'm all downbeat. Actually, I'm shattered," he says. "Shattered."

(Evening Standard, December 14 2005)

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Roger Alton interview, continued ...

Does he have particular targets for the relaunch above today's paid-for circulation of 408,000? He laughs evasively. "The Sunday market is ferocious. If I can increase circulation by one or one thousand, I'll be absolutely thrilled ... I hope it's a nice package. There are terrific people here."

Self-deprecation is classic Alton - he apologises for being a "boring" interviewee. Yet based on various reports over the past year, one might conclude that his vulnerability may be more than rhetorical. A year ago, The Mail on Sunday suggested that The Observer might be put up for sale by its owners, Guardian Media Group, impatient that it remained "a drain on resources". The Scott Trust, which appoints and fires editors, was separately reported to have summoned Alton to berate him on his editorial line on Iraq and the BBC. Furthermore, he and Rusbridger were said not to be speaking after Alton felt unfairly forced to bear the brunt of the newspaper division's cutbacks and redundancies.

"I don't know where this stuff comes from, it's nonsense, nonsense," he says dismissively. "I've never not been on talking terms with Alan. I could ring him up now. We email each other. Why, we're going out this evening to a dinner for a friend."

What of reports that last year the Scott Trust summoned him to ... "To give me a bollocking? It's not true. I could show you various emails from Liz [Forgan, chair of the trust], saying: ' Congratulations ... excellent ... really enjoyed it, etc.' You can suggest that she's pulled the wool over my eyes, but I don't think that's the case."

So the trust has never pressed him to soften his editorial line on Iraq? "There has been no attempt ever to impose a party line," he says, clearly impatient with this line of questioning. "Nobody's pulled rank on me, though as an employee of the Scott Trust, people are entitled to. I have had robust conversations with various individuals, often after several drinks, but no member of the Scott Trust has ever interfered with [my line]."

And the reports that the paper may be up for sale? "I've no idea where that came from, and I have no sense of that, the opposite in fact," he says. "I hope not. Jesus. What do you want me to say? I think the Obs is a good paper. I can't speak for other people. But if I didn't feel confident [of management support] ... why do you think they're spending this amount of money on marketing the paper, on buying these fabulous new presses?"

Reports have suggested that the paper still loses £10 million a year. "Less," Alton says. "And I hope we'll take the figure that's stated down more, now we've taken out a lot of costs, from production, staff, a bit of marketing." Does he believe that the paper can break even in the current market? "Yeah, yeah, absolutely."

His even temperament gives way to some irritation about "snitty" media columnists - though of course he has his own, often lacerating, media columnist in Peter Preston, and runs a media diary. "Last week, Peter Wilby said in the Standard that I was a tramp." More accurately, Wilby said Alton resembled one, looking "miserable and distracted". "And as for Richard Ingrams, calling me a cabbie in the Press Gazette ... [Ingrams suggested that a conversation with Alton was "perfectly pleasant at the time, but it doesn't really go anywhere".] Tell me, does it seem like I've lost interest? I'm very fond of Richard, but it's balls."

There have been suggestions that Alton may be a candidate to edit The Daily Telegraph: "It's not possible. It's inconceivable. Jesus. I think it's a very good paper, but I'm far too old to edit the Telegraph. And far too Rightwing. That's a joke."

Besides, his own paper is absorbing all his attention - though he doubts he will get much credit from the critics. "When we come out on 8 January, Wilby will be saying in your paper that the new Obs looks very disappointing. And Stephen Glover will say: 'Dire first appearance from Alton's Observer, time he retired.'

"They're such c***s, media columnists. The media world is quite a bitchy, uncharitable place."

(Evening Standard, December 21 2005)

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Kabbalah Centre investigtion, continued (page 2)...

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

At the Chief Rabbi's Office, Susie's story only confirmed a growing number of complaints from synagogues about the Kabbalah Centre's activities. In a highly unusual step, the Chief Rabbi has now issued a carefully worded joint statement with the London Beth Din (the main rabbinical court) and the United Synagogue, intended as a public warning. "In the light of issues which have been brought to our attention relating to the Kabbalah Centre in the UK, we wish it to be known that this organisation does not fall within the remit of the Chief Rabbinate or any other authority in the UK recognised by us." There is also concern within the Chief Rabbi's office that rabbinical organisations overseas where the group operates have expressed their own reservations. The statement is being sent to synagogues across Britain to be read out during Sabbath services.

"The warning comes in view of the grave concerns being expressed about this organisation by rabbis and members of their communities," explains Rabbi Barry Marcus, a member of the Chief Rabbi's cabinet and, as minister at the Central London Synagogue in Great Portland Street, one of those receiving complaints. "People are volunteering information about feeling pressured to part with money, or with concerns regarding the alienation from families of children involved with the centre. There's a great deal of unease about their methods and the pressure brought to bear on those they view as being vulnerable and as possible sources of income."

Rabbi Marcus, 54, who came to London from South Africa, hopes the statement will have a similar effect in Britain to the one issued in 1993 by the South African Chief Rabbi, Cyril K. Harris. "There have been cases of spiritual and psychological damage caused by the centre," Rabbi Harris told his community. "We advise congregants to have nothing to do with the Kabbalah Centre." The organisation subsequently closed its local operation. Similar warnings have been issued by Jewish organisations in Toronto, Philadelphia, New York and Los Angeles.

"The pattern is well established, from Israel to the US," Rabbi Marcus says. "I have come across four cases myself in the past year alone. They isolate people from their families, getting them to stop their careers and dedicate themselves to selling books or living as virtual serfs within the centres. They're using methods that I saw the Moonies using in South Africa, not making it immediately obvious what their real aim is. As a Jew, I'm particularly ashamed that Kabbalah, something held so valuable by us, is being traded to ensnare people."

Britain's rabbinical establishment hopes that its warning will help counter the uncritical publicity generated by the Kabbalah Centre's extensive celebrity network. Madonna, its most prominent supporter, credited the centre with "creative guidance" on her Ray of Light album, and told MTV: "Studying Kabbalah has changed my whole outlook on life." Guy Ritchie, too, has been developing various Kabbalah-related film projects. Although the couple did give a donation, they did not, as was widely reported, pay for the centre's new London building (it required a £2.8 million mortgage). Other celebrities drawn to the London centre have included Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, who in 2000 organised a fundraising dinner in Rabbi Berg's honour at the Harrington Club in South Kensington "so that others can benefit from this wisdom and find fulfilment".

But the Kabbalah Centre's impact has been greatest in Hollywood. Elizabeth Taylor has commended Berg's teachings as "a light to lead me through the darkness"; Roseanne Barr sees them as the basis of "everything I believe". Winona Ryder wore a red Kabbalah string bracelet during her shoplifting trial, and Demi Moore recently told Vogue that the Kabbalah had helped her learn "the value of her worth". How can an ancient mystical commentary on the Torah - once available only to elderly male Talmudic scholars - have attracted interest from celebrities such as Britney Spears and Barbra Streisand? Kabbalah, Hebrew for "received tradition", purports to bring its students closer to God through its interpretation of his sacred works. Its central text is the Zohar ("Book of Splendour"), attributed to a 2nd-century scholar, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, and circulated in the 13th century by a Spanish rabbi, Moses de León. Yet it was Philip Berg, who runs the Kabbalah Centre with his wife, Karen, and sons, Michael and Yehuda, who found a wider audience for its complex teachings. These combine numerology and astrology - knowledge, as he put it, that had remained "a forbidden fruit since the dawn of civilisation".

In traditional Judaism, Kabbalah offers a way of connecting with God by uncovering the inner truths of his universe. If you can become close to God through intense study, your soul might attain the "light" that can lead to immortality. Berg's interpretation of Kabbalah takes a far more practical approach. Because the spiritual and physical worlds are interconnected, he teaches, Kabbalah can be used as a "tool" to improve your life in the world today. Whether or not you are Jewish, simply understanding these "unseen spiritual laws" can bring you happiness and material fulfilment.

Since opening the centre's first branch in Jerusalem in 1969, Berg and his wife Karen claim to have brought Kabbalah to 3.5 million people around the world. To believers, the centre - "motivated by no other desire than the spiritual growth of humankind" - promises "fulfilment in every aspect of your life: relationships, business, health, and more". Its success is such that its website now lists contact details for 56 local centres, with branches from Buenos Aires to Bogota, Toronto to Tel Aviv. The local offices are normally registered as charities (as was the London branch, in May 2000). Yet Berg's many critics have been far from charitable about some of his own claims. They point out that Rabbi Berg was not always, as his official biography states, "the world's foremost authority on the Kabbalah". Born Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929, he was, in fact, an insurance salesman, before leaving his first wife and children to reinvent himself as a modern spiritual guru. He was ordained as a rabbi at a rabbinical seminary, Torah VaDaat, in Williamsburg, New York, before moving on to study in Jerusalem. As part of the process, he began signing his books as "Dr" Philip Berg, although the source of the doctorate remains unclear.

A deeper mystery surrounds the origins of the Kabbalah Centre itself. Its own literature claims that it was founded in Jerusalem in 1922, and that Berg "assumed the directorship" in 1969 on the death of his teacher, the eminent Kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Brandwein. Berg certainly studied under Brandwein at the Kol Yehuda seminary, founded in Jerusalem in 1922. But Brandwein's son Avraham, who took over as Kol Yehuda's dean, has angrily disputed Berg's claim to succession. Indeed, the seminary has insisted that it "has no connection, in any way, shape or form" with Berg's organisation.

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .

Read more!

Jon Plowman interview, continued ...

He is keener to offer his views on other broadcasters' output. "It seems to me ITV has essentially given up on comedy," he says. "Name their last sitcom. As for Channel 4, it's interesting to hear Kevin [Lygo] say the American comedy industry has let him down." I suggest that 4 still has a strong commitment to UK comedy. "Yes, but you'd think, after however many years nurturing it late at night, that they might have found a few things that could regularly play in prime time. They seem
to think their remit means playing Friends, Will & Grace and Scrubs in peak, and putting Peep Show at 10 or 10.30 and occasionally making a big thing like Green Wing. I'm just surprised. We are the only place left in Britain doing pre-watershed comedy now. That's bad for the industry, bad for writing, bad for the audience."

He admits he would like to have Green Wing and Peep Show. "But [its stars David] Mitchell and [Robert] Webb are coming back here to do a sketch show. Hooray! I know that they talked to Channel 4 briefly but 4 didn't want it."

What of the criticism that BBC television leaves radio to take the creative risks - launching series such as Little Britain and Dead Ringers - and picks off only the successes likely to win ratings? "That's silly," he responds. "No, we're immensely lucky in having the fantastic opportunity to try a show out on Radio 4, or 3, or 2, and then look to stick some on BBC1. You'd rather comedy on BBC1 was much more hit and miss, would you? Besides, it's two-way - with The League of Gentlemen and Goodness Gracious Me, we paid a bit more to make the radio show as an article of faith that it would then be made for TV."

His current projects include a new sitcom written by Jennifer Saunders: Jam and Jerusalem, her first since Ab Fab, due to air late next year. "It's about the WI, really - about a doctor's wife in Devon who helps in the surgery, then suddenly her husband dies, so what does she do? It's rather warm, and has got Dawn French, Joanna Lumley, Maggie Steed, Sue Johnston - every character actress I could lay my hands on." At the press officer's suggestion, he retracts the reference to the Women's Institute. "They're litigious and they slow handclap," he says mischievously. "Actually, we've had to reedit two programmes, including Little Britain, because they objected. It's expensive and tedious."

He is also excited about a new post-Christmas BBC2 series, Hyperdrive, billed as the first scifi comedy since Red Dwarf. The premise, he explains, is that teams of people in space have to persuade aliens to relocate to Peterborough. He's having us on, surely? But no: Plowman takes his comedy seriously.

"Comedy is fantastically important, as it marks milestones in people's lives," he says. "We remember when we watched the first Blackadder or Ab Fab. I don't think this Christmas people will be buying DVDs of the best of Crimewatch. But they might buy Extras or Little Britain."

One final question. With his considerable influence on our popular culture, could he share his ultimate joke? You won't be able to print it, he says. Try us, I reply.

"OK, it's a beautiful sunny day, and a little girl is walking with her dog," he begins. "Coming the other way is a vicar, who smiles and says: 'Hello little girl, what's your name?' She looks up with a beatific smile and says: 'Angelica.' The vicar asks why she is called Angelica.

"'Well, my parents said I looked like I was sent by the angels.'

"'Oh, that's very sweet,' the vicar says. 'So what's your dog called?' 'Porkie,' she answers. 'Why's that?' he asks. 'Because he [expletive] pigs!'"

For all the gag's longevity, Plowman bursts out laughing. Just don't tell the Women's Institute that this is the man in charge of BBC humour.

(Evening Standard, November 30 2005)

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Kabbalah Centre investigtion, continued (page 3)...

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUED FROM HERE . . .

Berg's teachings, too, have angered more traditional Kabbalah scholars, particularly his claim that anyone can "read" these ancient Aramaic or Hebrew texts simply by scanning their eyes or fingers over the pages. Still, the promised benefits are an impressive selling point (with courses starting at £151): Kabbalah can make you rich, cure illness and help you find true love. "You'll learn how to harness the Light of the Creator to get what money can't buy - including more money," its literature claims. "You'll learn how to... find the perfect mate, how to remove illness from your life, and even before illness strikes, prevent it. You'll also learn about a precise technique that can methodically reverse the ageing process and prolong life."

Some Orthodox rabbis object to this "oversimplification" of the Kabbalah for "unwarranted spiritual claims". But what worries them more is the centre's impact on the lives of the ordinary families it has touched. A number of former members, and anxious relatives or partners of those currently involved, have told The Times of serious concerns about the centre's ability to "take over" people's lives. In a series of interviews, The Times heard claims that the centre sold "specially blessed" mineral water as a means of treating cancer, that it warned supporters that unless they donated money their children might fall ill, and that volunteer workers were warned that the "dark forces" would bring them personal tragedy if they ever left. Other former insiders allege that they were told to abandon unsupportive partners or families at the centre's behest.

Rick Ross, who runs a New Jersey-based institute devoted to studying "destructive cults and controversial groups", says that he has personally counselled more than a dozen former Kabbalah Centre members. Ross believes that the centre shares many typical characteristics of cultic organisations. "First, you have a charismatic authoritarian leader who has no meaningful accountability," he says. "Berg is that defining element. Second, people come under undue influence through some kind of 'thought reform', and they let their thinking be reshaped in a group mindset." Ross claims that former members he has talked to have typically alleged that they were exploited and "threatened with distressing consequences" should they leave.

"I've had complaints about [the Kabbalah Centre] from Canada, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York - and two complaints in the last month from London," Ross says. "In the past week alone, I received three serious complaints from people deeply involved - one of whom, an Israeli woman, told me she was broke after giving them everything she had in order to stay 'spiritually blessed'."

One of Ross's toughest assignments involved a London woman in her early thirties from a prominent and wealthy Jewish family. The woman had been recruited by a friend to the London centre, and spent three years involved so closely with the organisation - two as a volunteer worker living in its Los Angeles headquarters - that her parents feared they would lose all contact. Last summer, the family - which has asked for privacy - hired Ross to "get her out".

"She was managing education programmes, in particular children's classes," Ross says. "She became very important to the Bergs - so much so that she even had the keys to their house."

Her family had been unable to arrange an extended visit with the woman, but she was due to visit London for the opening of the Stratford Place office. Ross flew to London in advance, and after meeting her arranged to spend time with her in a Cotswolds village. "The intervention took quite a few days, as she really didn't want to talk," he says. "Finally, she said I had one hour to tell her what I knew about the centre, after which she was leaving. We sat in the garden drinking tea, I surrounded her with documents about Philip Berg, and apparently it all made sense. Gradually, she explained that she could now see what had happened, how carefully layered and advanced the process had been. Then she said to me: 'You have no idea how subtle and clever this process is.' She claimed that she had been influenced to have less and less contact with members of her family and that this was achieved by keeping her isolated and hyper-busy."

According to Ross, the woman had been told that "only by being with the Rav, and having his 'light' shielding her from the world's evils, would she be safe. If she left, terrible things would happen: her health would fail, a terrible accident would occur, her life would be accursed." She now believed that her true value had been in working unreasonable hours for virtually no pay.

After counselling by Ross, the woman spent two weeks at the Wellspring Retreat, a residential centre in Albany, Ohio, specialising in "the rehabilitation of victims of cultic abuse". Wellspring confirms that it has treated a number of former Kabbalah Centre members. "We treat people from a variety of cults and abusive organisations," a spokeswoman says, "and we have found this organisation to meet all our criteria for being a cultic group." Ross's client, meanwhile, is back living in North London, and is no longer involved with the group.

Her experience does not appear to be exceptional. A similar story is told by Karen, 27, who spent three years with the group after abandoning her medical studies on what she says was its advice. She left her family home in Florida to live in the Los Angeles office as a "chevra", one of around 40 full-time volunteer workers. "I'd regularly be working from 9am until 1am, and sometimes I'd work all night, with just an hour for dinner," Karen claims. "I was paid $35 [£19] a month and given space in a filthy, one-bedroom apartment sharing with four other young women. It was as if I was a slave."

Karen's involvement began gradually: after taking courses and buying a £170 astrological chart, she was selected for the "honour" of working for the Bergs. "They were very loving towards me at first," she recalls. "I was having a bad relationship with my parents, and they comforted me. They said these weren't my spiritual parents, and that I needed to correct a lot of things in my life." It was also made clear that a "spiritually compatible" soulmate would be found.

Karen's mother travelled from Florida to Los Angeles with an Orthodox rabbi to urge her to leave. "They told me my mother was a destructive environment and was standing in my way," Karen says. It was only months later, when her father suffered a heart attack, that she questioned the rabbis' wisdom. She was told that he could be cured by drinking Kabbalah water. In fact, he needed a triple heart bypass. The centre says its water is a "spiritual tool", but insists it would never be offered as an alternative to medical treatment.

. . . ARTICLE CONTINUES HERE . . .

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Sunday Times Magazine: Downloading Mr Right, continued ...

Britain is increasingly a singleton society. With our growing affluence and job mobility, and the pressure to work longer hours, we are marrying later, divorcing more readily and feeling less constrained about treating relationships as something to be conveniently arranged online. By 2010, according to government forecasts, 40% of us will live alone, making the single-person home the most common household unit. Nor can the trend be dismissed as a Bridget Jones phenomenon led by newly empowered young women. According to a University of Edinburgh study on "solo living", men between 25 and 44 are currently twice as likely as women to be living alone. For established dating websites — with enough matches to offer most users a satisfactory choice — this signifies a huge commercial opportunity. Globally, according to the internet-tracking firm comScore Networks, online personals are now the single most lucrative category of online content, beating even pornography. The US market, estimated by internet analysts at JupiterResearch to be worth $516m, is now assumed to have peaked. Today the boom is in Europe, where over the next five years it is reckoned that our annual spending will more than double from £115m to £260m.

British singles are leading the way. Around 11% of internet users visit these sites each month, according to Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings. "Which means that 9 out of 10 still aren't using them," Burmaster says, "so there's plenty of opportunity to grow." At the same time, much of the social stigma associated with computer dating appears to have dissipated. "A couple of years ago, people said it was just for geeks and losers," recalls Nate Elliott, an online-dating analyst at JupiterResearch. "Not today. Online dating sites have revolutionised the business of matchmaking, making it more acceptable, offering more detailed options than ever before, and doing so cheaply. In the past, a newspaper ad would give you 30 words and no picture; or you could go to a matchmaker, which was costly and time-intensive. These sites take the best from both and give you control over who you meet."

So easy has it become to "click" discreetly online that relationship counsellors blame internet dating and reunion sites for contributing to last year's rise in divorce to 167,116 in the UK. At 0.2%, the rise might appear hardly worth noting — except that it was the fourth successive annual increase, and took the total number of divorces to the highest since 1996. Relate, the marriage-guidance body, blames the ease of internet-enabled affairs for the breakdown of 1 in 10 of the relationships where it is called in — either because one partner met a new lover online, or because they were able to arrange meetings discreetly through e-mails.

Whatever your proclivities or requirements, somewhere in cyberspace there is a dating site promising to find your soul mate. The UK's most-visited include Match.com, which arrived from the US in 2001 and now claims 1.5m registered members paying up to £26 a month; Udate, which Match bought three years ago for $150m, earning its founder, the entrepreneur Mel Morris, a reported £20m; and Gaydar.co.uk, the gay personals site favoured by Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, who as "Alfa101" was revealed to have posed in his underwear and advertised himself as "very versatile".

Yet there are also specialist sites catering to vegans, bikers, fetishists, herpes carriers and poets. If TallPeople.com stretches your wish list, there is DwarfDate.com; should CelibatePassions.com fail to arouse you, go kvetch with the modern Orthodox Jews at Frumster.com. The Tories may disagree over Europe, but they can find harmony at onservativeMatch.com. There is even now a dating site for those seeking a sexual affair without the hassle of actually meeting a human being. The HighJoy.com online dating community, run from Los Angeles, allows consenting adults to meet online and "control each other's pleasure" by plugging internet-enabled Doc Johnson sex toys into their computers. "It's the logical next evolution of online interaction," insists the company's CEO, Amir Vatan.

++++

Bertram Pridmore had been married for 49 years when his beloved wife died from a hospital MRSA infection following a road accident. "It left me in a bit of a state," the 78-year-old recalls three years on, sipping tea in his Norfolk village bungalow. "With my being blind, I'd lost not just my wife but also my eyes," he says, stroking his wispy white beard and pursing his lips to suppress a tear. "Not being able to get about, it was getting so lonely, especially in the evenings. Either I was going to end up a bloody loner, or I'd have to do something about it."

Pridmore was learning to use a computer specially adapted to read text aloud and magnify files for his remaining peripheral vision. Despite his initial wariness, he registered with an online dating site in March 2004. "It was the only outlet I could think of for meeting people," he recalls. "The net was an Aladdin's cave, hard work to use without my sight, but it kept me occupied."

Almost immediately, his inbox buzzed with possibilities: dinner invitations from enthusiastic Dorset widows, awkward approaches from anxious septuagenarians, time-wasting private messages from women he dismissed as "queries" and "religious freaks". He arranged a few pleasant dates, but there was never the magic that made him want to take things further.

And then he noticed the intriguing profile of Janet, a divorcée 16 years his junior, who lived just a few miles away. When he approached her through the site, Janet quickly warned him that she had been deaf since birth. Don't worry, Bertram replied, I can't see. Janet protested that she had specified a clean-shaven man, as a beard made it hard to lip-read. If we click, said Bernard, I am quite prepared to shave mine off. Plus, she added, you're far older than I wanted. Ah, he replied, but I am young at heart. They arranged to meet for tea in the Norwich Co-op and were still chatting after two hours. Four months later, in November 2004, Janet became the second Mrs Pridmore at North Walsham register office. "People said it was too quick, but I love him and it's my life, so I was going to go ahead regardless," says Janet, 62, sitting beside Bertram on the sofa. Bertram adds: "I said to Janet, she's given me my life back, didn't I, dear?"  "You've given me mine too," she says, beaming back.

The digital Cupid who helped the Pridmores find love is a 39-year-old former Tamagotchi salesman based in Birmingham. Eight years ago, Darren Richards was using the internet to import microscooters, yo-yos and other Asian novelty toys, when he reflected that the web's efficiencies might also source him a girlfriend. Staggered to find no British site to take his money, he went to Dixons to buy the software FrontPage 98, put a one-page website together, and registered the domain DatingDirect.com.

From that initial investment of £250, DatingDirect.com has grown to become the UK's largest dating service, according to Nielsen NetRatings, which monitors internet use. It claims 3.2m UK members, of whom almost 2m have been "active" in the past three months. Turnover — based on fees of up to £99.95 for a year — was forecast to exceed £10m last year, although reinvestment limited the profit to around £1.5m for the last half of 2005. But next year, predicts Richards — who owns the company outright with his business partner Andrew Pike — the business is on course to turn £5m profit on a £15m turnover, and all with just 13 employees. "We've had some very serious approaches in the last six months, and have engaged a company to look into those offers," Richards says proudly. The valuation, he suggests, would be comparable to the e380m (£260m) accorded to the French dating site Meetic, which floated on the Paris Bourse in October.

Not that money is Richards's only goal, he is at pains to point out. DatingDirect.com has also perked up his romantic life, introducing him to Claire, his former girlfriend of five years, and to his current partner of four months. "My 65-year-old father joined too, having divorced when I was 14, and I've seen a big change in him since he met Joanne, his partner for the last three years," Richards says. "Dad's not the most sociable sort of bloke, and he'd never join the local salsa class, but online he could meet people. As for me, I don't consider myself attractive, hardly the silver-tongued charmer in a bar. But gone are the days of eyes meeting across the room — now it's messages meeting across the internet."

Online dating remains primarily a man's pursuit, and an older man's at that. At Match.com, around 60% of UK members are males, predominantly aged over 35. Their behaviour also tends to fit a few gender stereotypes. According to a survey of 3,400 internet users by Nielsen NetRatings last summer, men are four times as likely to look for a no-strings affair as women, who mainly want friendships rather than physical relationships. Men, too, tend to select their dates mainly according to looks. Women, by contrast, value personal characteristics and descriptions, putting more than twice as much emphasis as men on a partner's job and income.

The key to the medium's rapid expansion has been its databases' ability to match us efficiently and relatively cheaply with others like ourselves. We are not just looking for partners of the same faith, age or marital status: according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), we also seek our equals in attitudes, values and perceived attractiveness. Analysing the messages sent among 65,000 heterosexual users of an American online dating site, the MIT researchers found attraction highest between couples of similar physical build, educational attainment and even pet ownership.

"We're providing access to people you'd otherwise not get to meet," says Samantha Bedford, the 35-year-old UK managing director of Match.com. "You're a thirtysomething woman who finds that her circle of friends has shrunk, and some are married with children. Let's say you're a lawyer — do you really want to marry a work colleague? With us, you may meet a teacher, an artist, a doctor . . . We've also got people coming out of serious relationships, many divorced with children, who see us as a gentle way of getting back into dating while the kids are in bed, glass of wine by the computer, no make-up on. And then we've got the fiftysomethings not ready to go to bed at 9 with their Horlicks. Online dating doesn't get rid of the romance: it increases your opportunities. You can put your heart out there."

The problems begin when those using these sites are not all they seem. Many of the bigger sites claim to vet members' profiles, but there is often little to stop those with dishonourable or even criminal intentions from lying about themselves. In the recent Nielsen NetRatings survey of 3,400 internet users, a third admitted to lying in their profile, often on minor details such as age or income. Yet occasionally the deception is far more serious, wrecking the lives of those unlucky enough to open their hearts.

In June 2003, Karen Carlton, a divorceé with three children, met up with a former US Marine with whom she had exchanged e-mails. Within weeks, she had invited the charming former special-forces officer to move into her home after his flat's lease expired. His tales of Gulf-war heroism, including an account of being tortured in Iraq, had Carlton transfixed: "His deep southern drawl used to send shivers down my spine." But Adrien Sears was actually a fantasist from Leicester. "Everything about Adrien was phoney, from his accent to his life story," she claimed. "Naively, I believed that the dating site vetted members."

In another reported case, a 39-year-old London man flew to Delhi to meet a potential bride he had found on the Shaadi.com matrimonial site, only to discover that the woman had begun life as a man. Her photograph had been that of a cousin, according to the man (who wanted to stay anonymous), and her sister had made her phone calls. Then there was Mark Ridgewell from Gloucestershire, whose profile at Udate.com claimed he was "totally faithful" and "loving and sincere". When four women he had been dating simultaneously discovered the truth two years ago, after he accidentally sent an e-mail intended for just one date to all his online contacts, they confronted him jointly.

Last January, a team from the University of Chicago and MIT analysed the behaviour of 23,000 users of one of the big dating sites. Their findings suggest that many were flattering themselves in their self-reported profiles. Whereas almost three-quarters of men and women claimed to have "above-average looks", just 1% admitted to being below average. Women were miraculously slimmer than the researchers would have expected: overall 6lb lighter than the national average among 20- to 29-year-olds, and 20lb lighter among those in their forties. Men tended to be remarkably taller than the norm. Perhaps, the researchers suggested, that was because men in the 6ft 3in to 6ft 4in range tended to receive 60% more first-contact e-mails than those from 5ft 7in to 5ft 8in.

The Sunday Times Magazine decided to test the hypothesis. After registering at Match.com, we conducted searches for men and women aged 18-45 living within five miles of Leeds. There were 546 women available, whose mean given height was around 5ft 5in — almost exactly in line with the national average, as measured by the UK National Sizing Survey. Yet among the 1,052 men, the average stated height was just over 5ft 11in — almost 2in taller than we'd have expected. In itself, this evidence of online dishonesty is fairly inconsequential. Perhaps the beer in Leeds is unusually nutritious. Yet what if a member of one of these sites intended to use it for criminal purposes? What, beyond the "dating tips" generally displayed on inside pages, would there be to stop another Yosuke Naito, who admitted killing a 17-year-old girl he met through an internet dating site; or another Hardy Lloyd, who also murdered a woman he had met online?

One American site, True.com, has been campaigning for criminal- background checks to be mandatory for all new registrations. Not surprisingly, the British sites insist that the risks are overplayed. "We can't change society, and you have to remember your instincts," says Samantha Bedford of Match.com. "But if you go into a bar tonight and meet a guy, you'd know less about him than if you'd met him on Match. Most people are honest. We've had no major issues in the UK." At DatingDirect.com, Darren Richards says he knows of no serious complaints received about his members. "And if we did get any, these people have paid with credit cards. So unlike that bar pick-up, we can track them down."

The other question is whether the sites themselves are overselling their claims. As competition intensifies for the hundreds of millions of pounds at stake, two of the biggest stand accused of faking romantic interest in customers to retain them. Yahoo is not commenting on a lawsuit that accuses its personals service of "fraudulently" posting profiles of fictitious potential partners to encourage renewals. In a separate case, Match.com is accused of sending bogus romantic e-mails to members whose subscriptions were lapsing, and even using employees as "date bait" to meet them in person. The company strenuously denies the charges.

Mark Thompson, a psychologist whose company, weAttract.com, has designed personality tests for both sites, believes that some online matchmakers make unrealistic and inaccurate claims to maximise profits. Match.com claims to be responsible for 200,000 relationships a year, but offers no detailed evidence; eHarmony.com promises "compatibility based on the 29 dimensions crucial for relationship success", relying on assertions that Thompson rejects. "It's amazing what people get away with promising and not delivering," he says.

But as Richards sees it, the ever-climbing numbers speak for themselves. "Sure, not everyone lives happily ever after," he says. "But we're seeing members join, then leave us after 12 to 18 months, and then come back later. Because if a relationship doesn't work out, they know there are plenty more fish in the sea."

ROGUES' GALLERY
The men who used cyberspace to lure unsuspecting women into their web of lies — or even to their death

Karen Carlton, a divorced mother of three from Fife, revealed last November that she had lived for two years with a former US Marine she had met online, only to discover that Adrien Sears, supposedly a Gulf-war hero, was actually from Leicester, and appeared to have modelled his story on the Tom Cruise character in Top Gun.

Mark Ridgewell, a 44-year-old management consultant from Gloucestershire, was surprised in his local pub in October 2003 when four women he was allegedly stringing along turned up to confront him.

Yosuke Naito, a Japanese government worker, admitted murdering a 17-year-old girl he met through an internet dating site.

Hardy Lloyd, a white supremacist from Pittsburgh, shot dead his 41-year-old girlfriend he had met online.

Clive Worth, a former miner from Llanelli, Wales, was banned from DatingDirect.com in November 2004 after claiming to be five years younger than his 55 years and dating 200 women. He had advertised himself as looking for "love, romance and a long-term relationship". "I became very unpopular with a lot of these women because I sent the same e-mails to dozens of them and some were friends with each other and spotted it," he admitted.

(Sunday Times Magazine, January 8 2006)

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Lorraine Heggessey interview, continued ...

"I remember seeing the first episode of 24, where a plane blows up in the middle of the sky," she says. "With American shows like 24 and Lost, it can cost $10 million just to make a pilot, which may not even see the light of day. We just don't have that kind of backing in Britain, so we're competing on the world stage with one hand tied behind our back." British game-show and quiz formats, from Millionaire to Pop Idol, have successfully transferred across the world, she points out, as have factual shows such as Wife Swap. Yet most UK drama is targeted only at the domestic market. "We have the creative talent to make our own Desperate Housewives or Six Feet Under, but we need a new financial model. Maybe Gordon Brown will have to bring back tax breaks."

Other current concerns include a fight with the broadcasters for a greater share of programme multimedia rights - phone downloads will be increasingly valuable for programmes such as The X Factor - and another with regulators to allow Talkback Thames to qualify as an independent supplier to the BBC ("it's bonkers").

Then there are her more personal battles against the petty misogyny of television. Coming from the likes of Michael Buerk, complaints about "almost all the big jobs in broadcasting" being held by women are "out of order", she says. "It's a grumpy old man's perspective, and maybe one day I'll be a grumpy old woman and complain about everything, but I hope not. Stop going on, you did things your way when you were there, now let the next lot of people run things the way they want to."

She was more surprised by comments last month from Esther Rantzen in Broadcast magazine. Women, Rantzen suggested, "don't necessarily make good bosses" because of their aggression, autocratic and bullying natures. Heggessey confronted her at a subsequent awards ceremony.

"I took issue with her for saying that the women running television are a bad lot, because I don't think that is the case," she says. "Women have other fantastic skills that men generally don't have - they are more emotionally intelligent, more collaborative, they can multi-skill. And on the whole they are not afraid to have the tough conversations that men shy from. Look, we have enough men who knock us. I'm not saying have solidarity for the sake of it, but let's not make sweeping generalisations."

What of the new man at BBC1? Peter Fincham, the former boss at Talkback Thames, has already declared his intention to rid the channel of much that is " miserable and depressive", to take more risks, and to cut back on "tired" genres such as docusoaps, according to leaked comments. Could that not be interpreted as further criticism of Heggessey's regime? "I think Peter's absolutely the right person for the job," she replies. But he did say that he would take more risks ... "I've always been a huge risk-taker," Heggessey says sharply. "It's usually when you go against what you feel that things go wrong. The great thing here is that I can follow my instincts."

Now, though, it will be the cold realities of the marketplace that will determine whether she succeeds. "Nobody at the BBC is going to see me just to be nice," she says. "I know I'm going to get my rejections along with everybody else. But I didn't get where I am today by taking no for an answer."

(Evening Standard, January 4 2006)

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Charlie Methven interview, continued ...

And if Trinity Mirror was to prepare a spoiler or pressure retailers not to display the new upstart? "I'd be interested to see how the bookmaking industry would react to something designed to kill competition in the market."

Besides, The Sportsman will bring innovation into newspaper publishing. For a start, it intends to be the first wholly to integrate its print and online arms, writing into each journalist's contract that they will contribute to both. Furthermore, every employee will be given a significant stake in the company, amounting in total to one-tenth of its value.

"I know from working elsewhere that a lot of newspaper staff just work at 60 per cent capacity, just as merchant bankers would if they weren't incentivised and had no sense of career structure or bonus scheme," Methven explains. "With incentives, journalists can work at 100 per cent capacity. I really hope that they prove me right."

Most of the heaviest hitters recruited so far have been executives rather than hacks. Methven cites Mark Maydon, until recently digital director of News Group newspapers, who will run The Sportsman's digital operations; the Telegraph Group's marketing director, Mark Dixon, is similarly transferring to this rather smaller division. The journalist "stars" Methven identifies include Richard Evans, former Telegraph and Times racing correspondent, as well as his racing editor, Simon Rowlands, who came from the handicap-tipping service Timeform. Deputy editor, in day-today charge of the newspaper, will be Charlie Bain, until recently a Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday reporter. "We've tried to avoid poaching journalists from the Racing Post," he says. "We've taken their cricket correspondent, but as I say they are a different kind of newspaper."

A minor gambler himself - "I'm normally slightly down, which will please the advertisers" - Methven claims to have identified a market gap after working as a Sporting Life racing reporter on leaving Oxford (theology and philosophy - "my priest friends knew I'd end up doing no good"). "If it's such a clever idea, people ask me, why haven't the major media groups thought of it before?" he says. "The answer is that 55-year-old newspaper executives don't think about gambling journalism at all."

His opportunity arose, he explains, when he took voluntary redundancy after seven years at The Daily Telegraph, most of them writing for and editing the diary. "I did all right for myself," he says. "I broke the story about Tony Blair trying to interfere with the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements, and the one about Iain Duncan Smith's campaign vice-president being a member of the BNP - both of those led the 10 O'Clock News. But when redundancy was offered, I thought, 'Well, that's going to buy me another floor on my house.' And then two weeks later the Evening Standard approached me to write features."

His wife Charlotte, a freelance journalist - a member of the Pearson publishing family, and last November the mother of their first child - was the one who urged him to take the plunge. "She's a far more confident gambler than me," he says. "I sat down with her and said this very comfortable existence would abruptly end, but she said if I didn't do it I'd whinge for the rest of my days."

Yet ... it seems an awfully big risk for a man with no evident commercial experience. "I have few qualifications," Methven admits cheerily, "but I don't think I'm alone in the media business in that. I got to know a bit about the business when I was the Telegraph father of the [NUJ] chapel, and I've always picked Jeremy's brains as a friend. But no, in terms of running a large company, I've got no experience whatsoever. I've managed a diary desk of six people - but then I have Max, who ran his own internet design company, and Jeremy, probably the most experienced manager on Fleet Street."

Still, gamblers do not always make the most considered decisions. It's a huge bet, isn't it, on the 125 people whose wages he will be liable for?

Methven pauses. "It is, and I'm conscious that it's a big punt for a lot of them, too," he says. " Sometimes I think, 'My God, this is something quite serious - these are people who had well established careers, slogging their guts out for this project, on the premise that the idea I had a year ago is worth it.' Now, I strongly believe it is - but I'd be lying to you if occasionally I didn't look around and think, 'Crikey.'"

(Evening Standard, January 25 2006)

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Sarah Sands interview, continued ...

Like the Conservative Party, she suggests, much-needed modernisation provokes resistance. "I've heard that David Cameron has said of the Sunday Telegraph that he sees it as the expression of 'cool Conservatism'," she says. "Well, it is an absolute core Conservative paper, my beliefs are impeccable, so it's down to how that is expressed. You can either talk about Europe the whole time, or find a type of conservatism that's apolitical. That's why, on the Saturday Telegraph, I set up a gardening section because virtually all gardeners are conservative by nature. You can bring in people that way."

So does Cameron attract her unequivocal support? Her paper's politics do appear more uncertain than under Lawson. "Well, we're not groupies. But it's better to have charisma than not engage with the public. We got very cross with him about grammar schools, but so far I think he's interesting to watch and I like the way he looks fresher when his back's against the wall."

Such remarks may reinforce some critics' concern that, while elegantly designed, the new Sunday Telegraph emphasises appearance at the expense of underlying issues. I ask Sands to explain what her paper stands for. "We're a thinking paper, fairly independent-minded, and we value the family very much, the ladder [of aspirational opportunity]," she says.

As for claims that her paper's news values have been softened, she points to recent scoops - a convicted sex offender teacher to embarrass Ruth Kelly, an exposé of John Prescott's unpaid housing costs - as proof that the main section is neither "classically feminine nor cuddly". Indeed, she suggests, her comment pages "are less feminine than The Observer's, [where] more women are writing about lighter subjects, whereas ours is pretty meaty".

In arts, too, she claims to show a more serious commitment than her rivals. "I don't think the Sunday Times is terrifically interested in the arts," she says. "While The Observer takes a 20-year-old's metropolitan view. We're a slightly more highminded Sunday read."

Sands became a journalist "by accident". Growing up in Tunbridge Wells and briefly in Africa - her father was in the Colonial Service - she had wanted to work in publishing, but joined a local newspaper as a way to learn typing. "Then I got married very young" - briefly, to the actor Julian Sands - "and had to earn a living, as I had a small child." She found shifts on the Evening Standard, eventually editing the Londoner's Diary and the features pages. "It was a lunatic existence at first," she says. "At one stage I had a baby with pneumonia in hospital, where I was sleeping, then I'd have to go and take my diary contacts for lunch on my own money."

She later married Kim Fletcher, who resigned as the Telegraph Group's editorial director once she took over the Sunday paper. She now reports to Murdoch MacLennan, the group chief executive, and claims to have met John Bryant, the new Telegraph Group editor-in-chief, only once. He has had no hand in the relaunch, she points out, and she "cannot speculate" as to his future intentions for the Sunday. "I emailed him just the other day to see if we can have lunch and catch up," she says. "I edit the Sunday paper, so I decide what goes into it,but it's perfectly civil."

Nor have the Barclay brothers shown any day-today interest in how she runs her paper, she says - perhaps because, unlike Conrad Black, they want it to be "a proper commercial operation" rather than a mouthpiece".

"So advertising matters more than circulation, as that's where the money is," Sands says. "And advertising has been a big triumph. Circulation will follow."

(Evening Standard, January 18 2006)

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Mark Austin interview, continued...

So how does a serious, award-winning foreign correspondent justify swapping the front line for a studio - beyond, of course, the £300,000 he is now reported to earn? "I will absolutely admit it is not the most taxing job in the world," he says. "But there does come a time when you earn your money, when it all goes wrong around you and you have to hold it together.

"Are we overpaid? I don't know, you tell me. But they probably wouldn't pay me what I'm paid if they didn't think I was worth it. There are some pretty young things [reading the news] who are also technically very adept newscasters." He pauses. "There are also clearly some who aren't..."

Some have suggested that Austin won the job partly on account of his looks, which played well particularly with women viewers in ITN's research. "I don't think that came into it," he says diffidently, displaying a straightforward, courteous charm rather than any inherently forceful charisma. "Your question's premise is slightly flawed, my wife would say wholly flawed. I can just hear her now, guffawing out loud. No, there have been no facelifts, there's no wardrobe allowance. I haven't even got an office yet."

As a child, Austin can only remember wanting to be a foreign correspondent ("apart from an England cricketer"). Growing up in Bournemouth, the son of a company director and a teacher, he was inspired by watching Martin Bell, Brian Barron and Michael Nicholson. He joined the Bournemouth Evening Echo straight after his A-levels - "in many ways I regret not going to university" - and then took a BBC World Service job before switching to BBC TV. He joined ITN in 1986 as a sports correspondent, moving on to report from Asia, Africa and the Balkans.

He misses being in the field, he says, which is why his newsreading contract allows him to continue reporting from foreign hotspots. "But I do have three young children [aged eight, 11 and 13], and there was increasing risk. It's getting much more difficult to operate in environments where foreign journalists are often becoming targets. The so-called war on terror has led to journalists being perceived as fair game." He was with fellow ITN reporter Terry Lloyd in Iraq the night before Lloyd and two colleagues were killed. "I suppose I can trace back to that incident one reason why, with kids, I questioned whether I really wanted to carry on doing it."

He felt most vulnerable in Burundi and Rwanda in 1994. "There were no front lines, you didn't know who to trust, and you felt permanently at risk because you had a 4x4," he says. "At one stage, I was in Rwanda and my wife [a doctor] was working in a South African hospital treating people coming in with machete wounds. I can remember talking to her on a satellite phone, saying, 'This is ridiculous.' We did discuss then whether these jobs were completely sensible. But one of my great methods of self-protection is my innate cowardice."

At times, particularly in Rwanda and Mozambique, his professional detachment turned to anger. "There are issues about how the UN operates and whether it gets there fast enough, which it clearly didn't in Rwanda or Sudan. In Rwanda, you'd film a mother trying to breastfeed a baby, the mother starving to death, and the kid dies when you're filming. You can't walk away from that without it affecting you. It makes you angry, actually. Then it makes you think, 'What on earth is going on? What are organisations like the UN for, what are aid agencies for?' Then you see the arguments that rage between aid agencies and different officers of the UN, and you get even angrier."

He was in Ramallah five years ago, caught in a gun battle between Israelis and Palestinians, when his mobile rang. It was Claudia Rosencrantz, ITV's entertainment controller, begging him to reconsider an earlier refusal to host Survivor. "I just thought, 'Well, let's give it a go,'" he recalls, a little uncomfortably. "But it was a one-off. It paid the school fees for a while, but I wouldn't do it again."

He earned around £150,000 for two months' work, but critics panned the programme and questioned whether Austin had sold his professional integrity. "It didn't do as badly as everyone seemed to think," he says defensively. "It got seven, eight million viewers. But I'd wake up listening to my short-wave radio hoping some amazing news story hadn't broken. All these entertainment luvvies couldn't work out why I was listening to the World Service, but it taught me that I couldn't imagine doing anything apart from news."

What matters, he insists, is being there to tell the story. "You can have all the technology and feeds in the world, but there will never be a substitute for seeing for yourself and reporting. That's real, pure journalism - filming it yourself, talking to people, coming to your own conclusions and providing a thoughtful wellfilmed package.

"That's what ITN still does, better than anyone else in British television. And if we ever stop doing that, come back and talk to me then."

(Evening Standard, February 1 2006)