Evening Standard: Profile - Andrew Gilligan after the Hutton Report

By David Rowan

THE Hutton Report's apparently damning indictment of Andrew Gilligan's journalism will come as a blow to a man who had hoped to stay on at the Today programme.

Even as Panorama was criticising his "shaky" reporting and loose language last Wednesday, Gilligan was relaxing with friends over dinner, telling them he had been "as accurate as any journalist in London" and that he still saw his future at Today.

"He was very self-assured and upbeat," recalled a fellow diner last week, who was impressed by Gilligan's forensic attack on the government claims that Saddam Hussein could strike within 45 minutes. "He knows that he'll be criticised by Hutton, but he's confident that the main thrust of his story was right, and he's still hoping to stay on at the BBC," said the friend.

If so, it is unlikely to be at Radio 4's Today programme, where at 6.07am on 29 May last year he provoked the BBC's biggest battle with Tony Blair's government. As his editor, Kevin Marsh, admitted in an internal BBC memo, Gilligan had marred his scoop through "flawed reporting" and "lack of judgment".

The question now being asked at the corporation's highest levels is how a defence correspondent already accused of overselling his stories - and of editorialising in his reports - gained such free rein on a flagship news programme.

Gilligan, 35, has long enjoyed making mischief at the Government's expense. Before his story about the Iraq dossier, he had brought a number of scoops to Today that embarrassed Downing Street - from problems with jammed Army rifles to kit shortages at the front line.

Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, had previously called in Marsh to complain that Gilligan was "in with the wrong crowd [and] not of the mainstream". Today's previous editor, Rod Liddle, had also received a Ministry of Defence delegation whose aim, he said, was to "denigrate" Gilligan for the problems his stories caused them.

But it was his assertion that the "45 minutes" assessment had been inserted into the dossier at the last minute, even though the Government knew it to be untrue, that gave No 10 its chance to fight back. How did a Labour-supporting state-school boy from Teddington, known among colleagues as something of an "anorak", become such a focus for No 10's anger?

Gilligan, who lives alone in Greenwich, was born into a middle-class family on 22 November 1968. His parents, a teacher and an IT engineer, sent him to Grey Court, a Richmond comprehensive, which he left in 1985 to attend a sixth-form college. He went on to read history at Cambridge, where he remained active in Labour politics.

After reporting for the Cambridge Evening News in 1994 and 1995, he left university without completing his degree when offered a job on the Sunday Telegraph's foreign desk. There he quickly earned the nickname "Gilligoon" for his awkward if obsessive manner. He gained a reputation for keeping unconventional hours, often going missing for a day or two.

"He was popular if a little nerdy," said Mark Palmer, the newspaper's former news editor. Colleagues there cannot recall him mentioning a love life. Some colleagues were concerned about Gilligan's lack of formal training, but he won respect for bringing in stories that made waves. His persistence, even obstinacy, marked him out. His work attracted complaints from organisations ranging from the General Defence Manufacturers' Association to the British Beekeepers' Association.

"You slightly raised your eyebrows at times, wondering if things were really true," Palmer said. "He liked to sail close to the wind and it didn't surprise me later that he had ratcheted his dossier story up a bit."

In 1999, Liddle saw Gilligan's potential as a journalistic troublemaker and invited him to Today as defence and diplomatic correspondent. On a tighter leash than at the Sunday Telegraph, he brought in scoops that infuriated Downing Street. The Government marked his card early on. In November 2000, after he revealed what was in the draft EU constitution, No10 briefed against "gullible Gilligan" - even though his story was proved accurate.

He accepts that the BBC may find it politically inexpedient to keep him on at Today, in which case he will consider book and newspaper offers. Yet he had been claiming to friends this week that he brought in a genuinely important story that was missed by his Newsnight colleague Susan Watts, and that he got it "90 per cent right".

The trouble for this maverick, sometimes wayward, reporter and for his employer, is that the remaining 10 per cent gave the Government the chance to fight back against the biggest and most disruptive story of the Blair premiership.

He will be feeling personal disappointment that his radio career may now be over.

(Evening Standard, January 28 2004)

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Interview: Sarah Bailey, Elle/Harper's Bazaar (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

MAKE way, New York - yet another upstart Brit is jetting over to shake up your glossy magazines.

After Tina Brown, Anna Wintour and Mandi Norwood, Sarah Bailey is the latest London editor to be poached in the hope she will deliver that indefinable English magic. But what Manhattan's media elite may not realise about the softly spoken 37-year-old - who leaves Elle next month to join Harper's Bazaar as deputy to the equally British Glenda Bailey - is just how far fashion has taken her. After all, before she discovered Prada and Marc Jacobs, Bailey was just another Leftwing revolutionary selling Socialist Worker.

Such details are not, of course, mentioned in the "mwah-mwah" world of fashion magazines, where Bailey's promotion has been greeted with all the gushing praise familiar to Ab Fab viewers. To Bailey herself, the news is "beyond thrilling"; to Harper's publisher, Valerie Salembier, in a breathless staff email, the appointment "is very big and terrific news for all of us - I told you we'd have a great 2004!" But it is Salembier's brief description of the new deputy's career that suggests a reason for hiring her: "She did some wonderful celebrity stories that became quite famous and endlessly talked about." In a publishing sector increasingly dependent on celebrity cover stars, Sarah Bailey has a contacts book to die for.

In her office, just off Park Lane, she is delighted to chat about her favourite encounters - the Gwyneth Paltrow profile that began inside the actress's wardrobe, or Jennifer Aniston as seen by her best friends. Under Elle's previous editor, Fiona McIntosh, Bailey was made celebrity fixer, with the goal of hooking an A-list star for every cover story. By being immensely flexible and interminably persistent - Cameron Diaz took three years - she gained the publicists' respect, even though she says she never compromised by offering copy or picture approval.

"She's really good at pulling in the celebrities, and sadly that's the most important job nowadays for a magazine editor," says former Elle editor Nicola Jeal.

Her favourite has proved to be Aniston ("catnip for sales"), who has graced the cover three times recently. "She is the pearl of cover stars," she says. "It's a cliché, but I think she really has kept it real.

Her niceness didn't feel like a performance." THERE have, of course, been the "diva histrionics". The worst, she thinks, was Rupert Everett. "I had to stand outside the studio in the rain in Amsterdam for the crime of writing in my notebook while he was being photographed," she recalls. "He couldn't concentrate on giving the camera his best, lying on the floor looking luscious in a leather shirt." Did he apologise? "We had a sort of, 'Oh dear, poor sweetie, kiss-kiss' moment on the sofa, but I'd definitely lost my cool at that point.

The piece I wrote was arched." Then there are the stars who try to keep the borrowed designer clothes. "A fashion sample is the most precious commodity in this industry, and if an actress wants a sample that's a problem, as another magazine is expecting it after you," she says. "On one occasion a young American actress - a brunette - wanted a Dolce & Gabbana item so badly that after it was zipped back in my suitcase, she opened it and put it inside hers. When I confronted her, she said: 'They'll want to give it to me.' It was a horrific moment." Despite some prodding, Bailey's rigorous diplomacy prevents her from naming names. A subsequent examination of her cuttings narrows down the field, but Bailey remains discreet.

She does talk about "quite a moment" with Victoria Beckham.

"She was being photographed with dogs on the set, the light was fading, and Brooklyn was getting worried about the dogs. But Victoria was constantly on the phone to David, who was having issues with the amount of flesh that was to be displayed. It was an all-day shoot, and I don't quite understand why David had to be phoned quite so much. But you use your diplomatic skills." In the end, she did get the requisite flesh on the cover.

Bailey, from Marple, Cheshire, lives in north London with stationery designer Tim Solnick, her partner of nine years, as well as a cat. She became involved with student journalism while at Cambridge University - where she also developed her political credentials, selling copies of Socialist Worker to further the march towards revolution-"Yes, it's true," she admits.

"But I was a bit of a hopeless comrade. I used to sell the paper dressed in vintage 1950s party dresses." Her fashion obsession grew after IPC took her on as a trainee. She wrote for 19, Chat and Just 17, joining Elle in 1996 and taking the editor's chair in March 2002. She counts Marc Jacobs, Dries van Noten and Miuccia Prada as her gurus, and is today wearing a Prada skirt, a John Smedley V-neck sweater, Miu Miu shoes, and a Chanel watch with a green strap.

"This year is going to be all about green," she says. "It's quite wonderful and strange, the crazy synergy of fashion - I love the process." Did she pay for what she is wearing? She stretches her eyes in faux surprise. "What could you be suggesting?" she repl ies mischievously. "People think you spend your day unwrapping boxes and nobody can hear themselves think in the office because of the crinkle of tissue paper. I do buy a lot of clothes."

Does she spend more than, say, £1,000 a month? "It has certainly happened," she replies. "I had a horrific moment when I was in Prada in Milan and my bank phoned me and said my spending was consistent with fraud. Which is a shameful thing for a girl to admit."

ALTHOUGH circulation has fallen a couple of thousand during her tenure to around 200,000, Bailey sees Elle's improved fashion coverage as her main achievement. Fashion and shopping, she says, are "where it's at", and she believes Britain is ripe for a catalogue-style magazine that can emulate the success of Lucky in the States.

As for her own move in the other direction, what advice can her peers offer her? "Unlike British magazines, you're seen as very much on show here," says Mandi Norwood, the former editor of UK Cosmo and US Mademoiselle, now back there launching a new "women's shopping" title for Hearst. "Sarah would be wise to make sure she gets a great hairdresser and manicurist, as you're judged very much on your appearance here. I go to the nail bar every week, but never thought about it in the UK."

But she needn't worry too much about anti-Brit resentment, says Michele Lavery, who was previously Glenda Bailey's deputy at Harper's before returning to edit the Telegraph Magazine (which she says she has no intention of leaving, despite rumours linking her to the Elle vacancy). "There are always some people who say, 'Oh no, not another Brit!' but if you're good, you get the respect," she says.

"Sarah will find Glenda a very inspiring editor, very direct, very funny, who knows what she wants." Celebrity exclusives, presumably, being high on that list.

(Evening Standard, January 28 2004)

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The Times: Where all your spam is coming from

A new law against unwanted junk e-mails has led to a boom in British-based spam, according to a leading authority on unsolicited e-mails. David Rowan reports

Criminal gangs, as well as established marketing firms, are taking advantage of the Electronic Communications Directive, which became law last month, to make Britain one of the world's fastest-growing sources of spam.

For the first time, Britain is among the top ten originators of spam, which now accounts for about 15 billion daily e-mails around the world. AOL handles almost three billion junk e-mails a day, typically promising an enhanced male anatomy or drugs such as Viagra at blackmarket rates.

With spam now accounting for about 70 per cent of all e-mail traffic, a proportion that is rising rapidly, experts say that it could render e-mail virtually unusable within a year. Most recent spam has originated in the United States, China and South Korea, with Britain barely attracting the attention of regulators. But last month, for the first time, Britain overtook India to become one of the ten main offenders.

There are now about 25 Britain-based internet service providers, and some of them account for thousands of internet addresses from which spam is being sent, according to the Spamhaus Project, a non-profit body run by volunteers that tracks known spammers and publishes their internet addresses so that internet service providers can block anything sent from them.

"The British problem has only just come to our attention in the past few weeks," said Steve Linford, who runs Spamhaus from a houseboat on the Thames near Hampton Court. His website enjoys publishing death threats received and warnings that it will be sued for "deformation".

This growth in spam in Britain appears to be directly related to the new law, which makes it a criminal offence, punishable by a fine, to send spam to private e-mail addresses after the Information Commissioner has issued an enforcement order. After intense lobbying by the marketing industry, the Department of Trade and Industry agreed that business e-mail addresses should be exempted from the law. According to Mr Linford, this has given spammers a justification for claiming that their unregulated sales pitches are solely intended for business in-boxes.

"We warned the Government that if it tried to regulate spam, rather than ban it, it would only legitimise it," Mr Linford said. The main operators send an average of 80 million spam e-mails a day, Mr Linford said, with a target of one sale per million.
"If they sell 80 packets of Viagra a day, that's a lot of money from one PC on the kitchen table," he said. Last August, a security flaw at a website selling a herbal supplement claiming to bring about penis enlargement revealed the scale of the business. In one month, 6,000 people replied to e-mails and ordered the supplement, at $50 (£28) a bottle. As a result, criminal gangs from Italy, where spammers can be jailed for three years, are now setting up business here, Mr Linford said.

"It's mostly small-time spammers, but we're starting to see it rising as they know the law allows it," Mr Linford said. "The Government needs to understand that there is no legitimate reason for anyone to send unsolicited bulk e-mail."

Most spam arriving in British in-boxes still originates overseas. Many of the most prolific US-based spammers, such as Alan Ralsky, of Michigan, commonly use computer servers based in China, where regulation is weaker. British law does not address foreign-based spam operations.

Spamhaus protects the in-boxes of 200 million people by scanning the addresses of incoming e-mail, and bouncing back any that match its database of known offenders. One difficulty lies in tracing the perpetrators. When The Times sought last night to contact Phone Direct, a British company that Spamhaus claims is responsible for large numbers of junk e-mails, we traced its web servers to a company called Scarlet Charger Internet, based in Reading. The website for Scarlet Charger Internet was inactive, and the contact number provided for its website registration was for a mobile phone which, when called, did not answer.

Some spam operators go to greater lengths to escape detection. They use computer viruses to install miniature mail and web servers on infected home PCs. According to Spamhaus, about 70 per cent of spam comes from virus-infected machines belonging to innocent third parties. There are now 400,000 such active machines.

The spammers have a number of tricks to bypass internet firms' attempts to filter their bulk e-mails. Typically they will misspell words such as "Viagra" or insert spaces and invisible HTML (computer language) tags in the middle of words so that the filters are not activated.

The Department of Trade and Industry said last night it was committed to reviewing the process for dealing with spam and with monitoring the law's enforcement. But a spokesman said that much of what appeared to be British traffic originated overseas. "Spam statistics are notoriously unreliable and difficult to substantiate internationally," the spokesman said. "Any rise would be a concern, but Britain is still a minor player."

[PANEL]
PROTECT YOUR IN-BOX

Never post your private e-mail address in a public part of the internet.
Use a disposable web-based account if you post to news groups or chat rooms
If you have a website, replace the "@" sign in your given contact address with the word "at", or similarly disguise the address.
Spammers use programs to search the web for what look like e-mail addresses
Never respond to spam, even to request no further solicitations. You will only confirm that your address is active. And an abusive reply could be breaking the law
Do not forward chain letters, they will contain your e-mail address
Use an internet service provider that blocks spam according to databases of known offenders
Consider using spam-filtering software that blocks spams according to key words
Never buy from a spammer, it will help to make the business case for it
Always consider why a website wants your e-mail address. Supply it only when absolutely necessary, and ensure that you have opted out of receiving unrelated mailings

(The Times, January 24 2004)

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Interview: Peter Wilby, New Statesman (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

AS Tony Blair prepares for a make-or-break 24 hours next week, the editor of Labour's traditional house journal is keen to offer some advice. "The time has come for Blair to go," Peter Wilby suggests bluntly from his cluttered New Statesman office. "It's pretty clear he was behind the decision to name David Kelly, and he hasn't told the whole truth about it, though I don't suppose you can blame him for someone's suicide. But when a Prime Minister has made such a catastrophic misjudgment on such an important thing as war, telling what proved to be lies and getting it so wrong, he really should leave the stage."

Wilby's increasingly strident anti-Blair polemics will be familiar to the 25,000 people who buy the New Statesman each week. But now, with the PM facing a crucial vote on top-up fees just hours before receiving the Hutton Report, its editor thinks his "Blair must go" campaign is ready for a wider audience.

"After a decent interval, I hope Blair will say, 'I think it's best to hand over to another,' acknowledging perhaps that he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction," he says with evident relish. " Alternatively, he can just say that his stomach ache has got worse."

The New Statesman and Number 10 have not seen eye to eye for a while. Since it was acquired eight years ago by Geoffrey Robinson, the former Paymaster-General, for £375,000, the Staggers has widely been seen as the voice of Gordon Brown's camp in its struggle against the Blairites. Periodic rumours surface that Blair's friends - typically the writer Robert Harris and Nick Butler, an executive at BP, Labour's favourite oil company - are close to buying the magazine, or that Wilby, editor for six years, is about to be sacked. While he survives, the former editor of The Independent on Sunday remains one of Blair's more outspoken critics.

Today, he is accusing Blair of " polluting the whole New Labour project" over Iraq, finding it quite extraordinary that Blair "has got away as easily as he has".

Although he actually supports top-up fees, he believes resentment over the war will lead plenty of Labour backbenchers to vote against Blair next week simply "to show their opposition to and disapproval of him. He just has to go." Gordon Brown, not surprisingly, is the man Wilby credits with the vision to take Labour forward.

Wilby, 59, grins when he shares information "from people quite close to Blair" that the PM has had enough. Still, he is apparently not influential enough to have met Blair in person since around 2001. Their last discussion, he says, was perfectly friendly - "he tried to convince me there's no spin in his government, I tried to convince him that public sector workers required better funding". Brown, on the other hand, often invites Wilby to social events; his wife, Sarah Macaulay, used to publicise the magazine. "But the idea that I take instructions from Gordon Brown is complete nonsense," he insists. "So is the idea that I take instructions from Geoffrey," who "only occasionally" passes comment on its contents.

Rumours that the magazine is up for sale, and that Wilby's days are numbered, have been circulating for as long as he has been editor. "If I took them seriously I'd have taken myself out and shot myself long ago," he says. "I just ignore them." He feels certain where the rumours start - most recently, press reports suggesting that Polly Toynbee and John Kampfner were among those in line for his job.

"From time to time, Number 10 tries to get me out and they start briefing against me," he says. "They're generally attempting to destabilise me, but I'm too old and have been around for too long for it to work." HOW does he know it comes from Number 10? "You learn to recognise it. Various things are said to my staff or my chairman that get back to me. One assumes Peter Mandelson's hand is behind it." On one occasion, he says, Tony Blair was personally involved in a plot to force Robinson to sell.

Robert Harris, who says he has no current interest in acquiring the magazine, laughs off any suggestion that Downing Street might care about what the New Statesman says. "The Daily Mail maybe, but this sounds like folie de grandeur," he says. "I should think Tony Blair is more concerned who the next Downing Street cat is than who the next editor of the New Statesman will be. I don't think the Statesman has recovered its authority since Anthony Howard was editor in the Seventies."

Howard, for his part, believes that Wilby "has made a very good editor" after his predecessor, Ian Hargreaves, "absolutely muffed it" by appealing to "policy wonks", but concedes, "I don't think as editor of the New Statesman you bring down governments."

Is there really still a need for the New Statesman? "Clearly 25,000 people think there is a need for a publication uncompromisingly to the left of New Labour, without being loony left," Wilby says. Besides, it continues to discover "new and fresh talent" such as Bee Wilson and Johann Hari, and runs reflective longer articles that otherwise would not be seen. The New Statesman, he says, is now making a small profit, which may be boosted if it succeeds in reclaiming money it paid out over John Major's 1993 libel action. The budget squeeze may explain Wilby's avowed appetite for "mischief " which he knows will draw free publicity (a category that may well include giving provocative interviews).

Does he really believe that Blair will quit? Wilby sits back. "Prime Ministers in office are very difficult to oust, but I'd hope that Blair at some stage during the year recognises the strength of the argument I've outlined. I'd have thought July." And what of Wilby's own future, the subject, too, of much speculation? "I shall step aside when the chairman wants me to," he says with a smile. "I won't have to be dragged away kicking and screaming."

(Evening Standard, January 21 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - Government snoops/Edge laws/Price rip-offs

By David Rowan

You can log on to buy a passport or file a tax return, so perhaps it is not surprising that spooks are now arranging secret surveillance online. Still, it is mighty disconcerting to see how simple the process is. Technobabble has downloaded a number of Microsoft Word forms, tucked away on an unprotected Home Office web server, that government snoopers can complete to monitor British citizens under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Covert surveillance is now a mere click away for public bodies ranging from your local council to the Egg Marketing Inspectorate.

The IT community lobbied hard against the law, arguing that it would make it far too easy for thousands of minor officials to intercept e-mails and phone calls, and to use informants and undercover agents to spy on us. These application forms, plus the accompanying detailed Home Office guidance notes, consider everything from acquiring "confidential journalistic material" to the use of "juveniles" and "vulnerable individuals" as sources.

The public-sector news site Public Technology, which discovered the documents, says they show "the extent of possible Big Brother investigations by a wide range of publicsector organisations".

Reading them in black and white, it is easy to foresee an imminent boom in petty state surveillance.

+++

ISAAC NEWTON had one, as did Michael Faraday and some chap called Murphy. What if you could distil your own sharpest observation into a scientific law that would bear your name? The literary agent John Brockman recently posed the question to the scientists, thinkers and technology innovators who visit his online salon at Edge.org. Now 164 of them have replied - and their insights make for wonderful reading.

Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, offers an immutable law of the peer-review process: "Reviewers who are best placed to understand an author's work are the least likely to draw attention to its achievements, but are prolific sources of minor criticism, especially the identification of typos."

Then there is Devlin's First Law, from the acclaimed mathematician Keith Devlin: "In the hands of a charlatan, mathematics can be used to make a vacuous argument look impressive." (His second law: "So can PowerPoint.") But the most precise formula comes from Kai Krause, the legendary developer of graphics software.

According to Kai's Exactness Dilemma, "93.8127 per cent of all statistics are useless". And who can argue?

+++

AFTER last week's item about Apple's impertinent overpricing of its latest iPod - £199 in the UK, but £137 in the US - we have a campaign on our hands.

A number of readers have asked why, when the dollar exchange rate is so favourable, British consumers tolerate these absurd price differentials. Even when products can be delivered digitally, such as software, we tend to lose out.

The music industry is particularly adept at exploiting UK consumers. And if you think you can cheat by ordering CDs from overseas web retailers, the British Phonographic Industry has news for you. The record labels' lobby group is taking legal action against stores such as Play.com and CD Wow, and is investigating Amazon, for what it claims are unlawful deliveries to UK addresses. Let me know of any further examples of unfair pricing and we can put the culprits on the spot.

(The Times, January 20 2004)

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Interview: Rosie Millard, BBC TV/Sunday Times (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

She became known for her flirtatious interviews, for dancing on camera during a news report, and for wearing the "best supporting dress" at the Oscars. But after nine years as the BBC's flamboyant arts correspondent, Rosie Millard has shocked colleagues by quitting over the corporation's new clampdown on freelance writing. How, they are asking, could Millard of all people have become the first BBC casualty of the Hutton Inquiry?

It is not as if her property column in The Sunday Times, or her cultural musings in the New Statesman, threaten to bring the corporation into Gilligan-style conflict with the Government. Had BBC management decided to make an example of Millard, embarrassed by reports of the vast compensat ion offered to John Humphrys and others to drop their columns? Or, as the newsroom gossip has it, had Millard simply overestimated her value, wrongly believing that threats to leave could also boost her salary?

Millard, sitting with her oneyearold daughter, Honey, in Soho's Bar Italia, insists that news executives forced her to make a stark choice - prompted, she suggests, by her editors' petty jealousies of high-profile reporters. "The guns were out for people writing columns, and they said you've got to give up all your freelance writing," she says. "And since I was earning more doing freelance writing than from the BBC, that wasn't attractive."

Besides, Millard will be glad next month to leave behind the "pretty dismal culture" of the newsroom - the rows over who covers which stories, the endless power struggles and bullying.

"The editors have always been cheesed off with certain correspondents having outside influence, and they do resent your profile," she says. After writing a recent piece in The Times about Hollywood facelifts, for instance, she was "hauled over the coals" by an editor who pointed out that she had travelled to LA as a BBC employee. "It sounds ridiculous, and it reflects a slightly uncomfortable culture within the newsroom," Millard says. "It's about power. The editors have power over the correspondents, and they exercise it - forcing you to do stories you don't want to do, and making you work intense hours." One producer, she says, recently had a suspected miscarby David Rowan riage, yet felt she had to remain at her desk.

The corporation will be even less happy with Millard's comments about its news priorities. Although a BBC employee until 13 February, she is outspoken in her criticism of what she sees as an obsession with showbusiness stories.

"The 10 O'Clock News is the honourable exception now, but on other bulletins, I'd find myself standing on the red carpet reporting on some film that everyone knew was rubbish, just because it has a celebrity in it," she says. "You weren't allowed to give your honest opinion, just told to talk about the stars. The film companies have finally got hold of the fact that if they organise a decent junket in London, they're going to get on the news. Celebrities came over for five red-carpets in November, and the newsroom would get overexcited about that, they would get dizzy. And I think a certain amount of news values have gone out of the window."

Millard, 38, has something of a reputation for speaking her mind. Three years ago, she was reportedly reprimanded by senior management after telling newspapers that she was "sad and disappointed" that Robert Nisbet had been made entertainment correspondent, covering part of her beat, without her knowledge. She says now that she has no quarrel with Nisbet, but that she was "bewildered and cheesed off" by the way managers handled his appointment.

YET she has had a mixed press herself. The Sunday Mirror called her "a blatant attention-seeker who has never been the same since Liz Hurley told her she had magnificent breasts", the Daily Mail labelled her "a gold-medallist self-promoter", and The Guardian has twice made fun of her in Pass Notes.

A fellow reporter sees her "larger than life" TV persona as evidence of Millard's fiery ambition: she stamps her personality on most of her stories and, unlike many reporters, employs a top showbiz agent. "There is a line you can't cross as a reporter, and she comes close," the colleague says. "But she gets away with it because it's only arts, not the NHS, that she's talking about."

She received her greatest publicity, of course, after Michael Buerk's onscreen remark about the outrageous-dress she wore to cover the 2001 Oscars. Was she hurt by his gentle mockery? "God no, it was hilarious," she says. "I was strapped into a Vivienne Westwood corset, for goodness' sake. It was a laugh." But wasn't it unusual for a BBC reporter to ask a fashion designer if she could borrow an outfit? "You can't take yourself too seriously - if you're covering the biggest showbiz event of the year, wearing an evening dress, you've got to wear Westwood," she says.

DID that mean she saw herself as a celebrity in her own right? "Not really, no," she answers, wearing an elegant check twopiece suit and pointed pale-blue suede shoes when we met. "That's modern- day reporting. The reporter is looked at, certainly at the BBC, as part of a family of familiar faces who viewers can trust. Hopefully, people will trust what I say about the arts. If you have a massive ego, there are many more ways of being a bigger fish than being a reporter, when you're spending so much of your time just chasing the story. It's about telling the story, not being on screen."

Millard's love of the arts was nurtured at Wimbledon High School and, after studying English and drama at Hull University, she took an arts-journalism course at the London College of Printing. She failed to win a BBC traineeship after telling interviewers that she wasn't awake for the Today programme ("Well, I was a drama student"). Instead, she worked her way through the regional ITV companies' arts programmes.

She became a researcher for Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan on This Morning, where she met her husband, Pip Clothier, a BBC documentary-maker who produced Donal MacIntyre. As well as Honey, they have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, and Millard says she would like a fourth child.

Her relationship with The Sunday Times began two years ago after she wrote about her buy-to-let "nightmare". She accepts that her BBC persona helped clinch the column, but points out that she was a newspaper freelance long before becoming a TV reporter. Besides, she is also something of a property impresario, with two houses in Islington (they are moving from one to the other), a couple of East End buy-to-lets and a flat in Paris.

"We are sad property people, addicted to property porn," she admits. "We're so in debt, and it's all a huge gamble. But the day job is also a gamble."

Yet she has no regrets about giving up her BBC security. "I'm grateful to leave," she says. "I have had a really hilarious nine years, travelled round the world and interviewed lots of people at a time when arts news mattered. But I didn't want to do the job without being able to write, nor having to pass my columns by these higher bodies."

Besides, Millard adds, "newspapers are nicer to me. There's no kind of weird stuff. Broadcasting has too many issues."

(Evening Standard, January 14 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - Google alternatives

By David Rowan

THOSE BRAINY people at Google are edging closer to world domination. Not content with extending web-search into news, pictures, chat forums and shopping catalogues, they have quietly been adding dozens of other useful services - letting you track your parcel in real time (type "FedEx" and the parcel's number), monitor US flight delays (type "airport" plus the airport's three-letter code), or even narrow a search down to a particular town (at labs.google.com/location - again, still limited to the States). But Google's latest innovation most starkly explains why established businesses, both online and offline, are watching with trepidation as a simple search site evolves into the world's primary information provider.

The printed book is Google's latest target. It has archived thousands of titles, with sample texts available at the click of a mouse. Google does not yet want you to test it (which is why "print.google.com" currently returns a blank page), but you might try Googling your favourite author alongside the phrase "site:print.google.com". Alongside an extract, you are invited to buy the book at a partner site. You can easily imagine how, after books, the company will be striking deals to archive (and sell) everything from movies to pop songs. As it audaciously tells those inquiring further: "Google's mission is to provide access to all the world's information and make it universally useful and accessible."

If you are starting to find the firm a little too powerful, the good news is that you have a choice. Google may be the most useful all-purpose search tool, but plenty of others want to be No 2. Here are three that have been attracting a fair amount of praise lately. Try them, compare the results with Google's and see if they suit you more.

Vivisimo (at vivisimo.com) is one of the better "metasearch" engines -offering simultaneous results from several search engines. It is fast, cleanly designed and usefully presents information in "clusters" that narrow your search. Type in "Hutton report", for instance, and it offers sub-folders titled "Kelly", "inquiry" and "admits errors" (the latter about Andrew Gilligan). You can also restrict searches to publications such as The New York Times, business sources and even auction sites.

All The Web (at alltheweb.com) claims to search 3.2 billion pages as opposed to Google's 3.3 billion, but also offers easy searches of audio and video files. It proved less effective for our "Hutton report" search (could we really "Find Hutton on eBay?"), and placed amateur weblogs and local papers far ahead of more relevant sources. Still, it may help you to locate a Madonna track.

You might also try Teoma, owned by Ask Jeeves, helpful in refining complicated searches and promising to lead you to "expert resources". Alas, it thought the Hutton report was primarily something to do with General Custer's last stand, but you might fare better. If you want excellent guidance to other search sites, Search Engine Watch is the place to start. You can, of course, find it via Google.

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Two hopes for 2004: first, that the mainstream media stops reporting computer games purely in the context of violence or angst-ridden teenagers. The UK gaming industry brought in £2 billion in 2003 and deserves to be taken at least as seriously as our domestic film industry. Secondly, that IT companies stop penalising UK consumers on price when the dollar is plunging.

Apple, you were out of order last week suggesting that the new mini iPod would cost Americans $249 (around £137) but around £199 here. After protests, that now seems to be under review -but in a global market, why do we Brits always pay more?

(The Times, January 13 2004)

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The Times: Tech column - 2004 predictions

By David Rowan

IT IS FAR too dangerous to make predictions for the year ahead, what with every glaring misjudgment being archived online as a permanent humiliation. Instead, we have consulted industry bigwigs and plugged-in analysts to identify ten technology trends that will touch our lives in 2004. Just remember where you read them first - provided, of course, that we are proved right.

1 Dot-com hype will become fashionable again. Britons are becoming more relaxed about shopping online, spending £1.2 billion in November alone, up by almost half, year on year, so that the phrase "e-commerce profits" will cease to be an oxymoron. A vastly oversubscribed Google share offering will encourage that sense of boom - even though it remains unclear how Google's valuation is justified by its projected revenues.

2 Big Brother will be watching you. A vast expansion of location-tracking technologies will make it increasingly difficult to maintain personal privacy. Your boss will track you via your mobile-phone signal, road-pricing schemes will use satellites to monitor your car's movements and tiny radio-transmitting "smart tags" on consumer items will identify you long after you have left the shop.

3 Weblogs will offer renewed competition to traditional media channels. Howard Dean has used his weblog to build a grassroots campaign for the US presidential election; British political activists used theirs to co-ordinate anti-Bush demonstrations.

4 The music industry's troubles will worsen. As corporations such as Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart join Apple in selling digital music via the web, the brutal competition will send prices down and educate consumers to demand better deals.

5 The personalised news service will come of age. The growing popularity of a content-syndication format known as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) will convince mainstream web publishers to provide free feeds of their headlines. Forget surfing: now you can read automated news feeds from all your favourite sources in one place.

6 Free web content will become more scarce. Get used to paying for online information -publishers have decided that you will pay not only for archived news or e-mail services, but increasingly for their mainstream offerings. The trend will marginalise some popular sites, but their owners are more interested in cash than "eyeballs".

7 Computer viruses will get worse despite anti-virus products. Attacks by worms, trojans and hackers will continue to cause mayhem, especially for home PC users. Still, the IT security industry does not seem too upset: its revenues are forecast to double to £30 billion within three years, and will grow with every new scare.

8 Mobile gaming will boom. Millions will download the latest games to their mobile phones. Forecasters estimate that Britons will spend £100 million using handsets to kill aliens or be Lara Croft.

9 Biometric security will be overhyped. The Passport Service's six-month trial of biometric passports will be used to justify ID cards as a solution to terrorism or identity theft. But concerns will grow about the high number of false positives given by facial-mapping software, and those seeking to disguise their identity will find ways of falsely recording their details on the underlying database.

10 Government IT projects will generally go way over budget yet still not deliver.

But you probably knew that anyway.

(The Times, January 6 2004)

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