The Times: Making the web safe for children

Keep your children safe on the superhighway
Your children have a new computer - but do you know how to protect them from the porn merchants and fraudsters who infest the internet? David Rowan has the answers

Your kudos soared as the children excitedly unwrapped the new family computer.

After spending Boxing Day heroically deciphering a pile of manuals, you even worked out how to switch it on. But if you thought that joining "broadband Britain" simply meant maxing out your credit card on gigabytes and megahertz, wake up to your new parental responsibilities. By giving your children home internet access, you are morally bound to protect them as sneak, censor, vigilante and virus-buster.

The internet, headlines constantly warn us, is an unregulated haven of paedophiles and pornographers, hackers and hate-criminals, fraudsters and phishermen. The reality of daily homework research may be rather less sensational, but any responsible parent will want to block their children's exposure to the net's seedier side. But how, with limited technical knowledge, can you be sure that they are surfing safely? What precautions must you take before powering up the family modem?

"Parents need to become computer literate," says Tony Fagelman, the general manager of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which monitors illegal online content. "They can't equip children with technology and not understand how that technology works. Just as we have laws against letting children play truant, it's up to parents to educate their children about the online threats. You can't let them get ahead of you."

The IWF recommends, at the very least, that parents install filtering software that blocks unsavoury content, as well as antivirus and firewall protection that guard PCs from the more pernicious internet perils (see panels). But it also urges parents to discuss the potential risks with children before they are first allowed to log on -not least because commercial filtering software, by all accounts, offers a less perfect defence than the manufacturers' hype would suggest.

"These products may be improving, but they're still not completely reliable," says Sonia Livingstone, a London School of Economics psychologist who recently conducted one of Britain's largest studies of children's internet use. "Every child can regale you with stories about how easily they can get around these filters, and the dodgy material they have seen. But you hear more stories about unproblematic content being blocked inappropriately, which they find frustrating.

Part of the problem is that parents remove the blocks on these filters because they're so crude."

Livingstone's research offers a sobering warning about how little parents know about their children's online activities. Her team interviewed 1,511 young people aged 9 to 19 and sent a questionnaire to 906 of their parents. The study found that 57 per cent of children had come into contact with pornography online, yet only 16 per cent of parents were aware of this. A third of the children had received unwanted sexual comments, and almost half claimed to have given out personal information -risky behaviour that was hardly ever revealed to parents.

Would greater use of filters have helped? The problem, says Livingstone, is that today's products are "quite complicated and confusing" to use. Besides, teenagers resent being patronised and set arbitrary limits, and so they may be spurred to find ways to bypass the filters.

Many of today's child web filters are just too simplistic in their approach to be consistently reliable. Filtering systems generally search for keywords on web pages or e-mails, examine images to identify human skin tones, and monitor domain names and server addresses to screen out those considered unsavoury. Some work by allowing through only content on pre-screened "white lists"; others block web pages known to be prurient. Yet plenty of innocent child-friendly material is lost in the process. Pornographic images, meanwhile, can often slip through.

A survey by the Free Expression Policy Project three years ago identified some pitfalls of what it called these "hopelessly flawed" commercial filters. Popular software such as Net Nanny, SurfWatch and Cybersitter, the report found, blocked the official website of the then US House Majority Leader Richard Armey because it referred to him as "Dick". Another product, SurfWatch, blacklisted the Archie R. Dykes Medical Library at the University of Kansas, having taken against the word "dykes". Health websites were also often blocked, as were many relating to homosexuality or drug education. Even Amnesty International's website was rejected by Cybersitter, which judged the phrase "at least 21" likely to indicate an adult sex site. Amnesty's error was to publish a report of shootings in Irian Jaya, which it stated "bring to at least 21 the number of people in Indonesia and East Timor killed or wounded".

"It's true that this type of software had a bad press a couple of years ago, with 'breast of chicken' recipes being blocked," says John Carr, an internet adviser to the National Children's Homes charity. "But the technology has become much more sophisticated since then, and a lot of these stories are no longer true. People wouldn't put up with these programs if they were that crass and stupid."

Carr recommends that parents always use a child filter. "My kids have used CyberPatrol with no problems, and if you don't yet have an internet service provider, AOL, BT, Yahoo and Wanadoo have a wonderful range of childproof software," he says. He is currently campaigning for manufacturers to pre install these programs on new computers to maximise security, as Comet now does with a two-week free trial of CyberPatrol on its own-brand PCs. "When you buy a brand new car, you're not told that if you want a seatbelt it's in the boot but you'll have to fit it yourself," Carr says. "Surfing should be as safe as it possibly can be, and child safety shouldn't be an optional extra."

So which of the many proprietary products should parents choose? Web User, which claims to be Britain's top-selling internet magazine, reviewed several filtering programs, of which CyberPatrol, ContentProtect and Cybersitter scored well.

CyberPatrol, from SurfControl, filters websites, newsgroups, instant messaging and web-based e-mail. "It occasionally got caught out by naughty words used in a non-sexual context, such as on a message board, but it successfully stopped us viewing anything disturbing or illegal," Web User concluded. Computeractive magazine called it "the most family-friendly product on the market".

ContentProtect, from ContentWatch, was judged by Web User to be "very good at discerning whether a word is being used in an offensive context", and Cybersitter was "extremely efficient" at filtering unsuitable sites, though sometimes "overzealous". The magazine found McAfee Privacy Service, while easy to use, to be sometimes unnecessarily cautious over harmless web pages. Net Nanny failed the reviewer's test, letting through "blatantly unsuitable sex, violence and extremist sites".

Andy Shaw, Web User's technical editor, believes that filtering software should never replace parental supervision: "The most important thing is not to rely completely on these products. Some software is better than others, but there's always stuff that will get through. There's no perfect replacement for monitoring yourself what your children are doing online."

If this inconclusive advice leaves you feeling perplexed, you may be reassured to know that even the experts are still not wholly convinced about web filters. Tony Fagelman, at the IWF, has had to switch off the filter, provided by his broadband supplier, which he uses at home for his children, aged 8, 11 and 14. "It was driving me off the wall, blocking e-mails and not letting me get to ordinary websites," he says. "It's off at the moment, and my wife is a bit concerned. But I've chatted with my kids, and they're fully aware of the dangers, knowing never to go to chatrooms. Besides, they know that I can always check the PC when they're not around, to see exactly what they've been doing."

STAY VIRUS-FREE

You won't have had a very Merry Christmas if you opened an e-mail attachment with that name last week. A "worm", Zafi.D, used the seasonal greeting to propagate itself across the internet, relying on human curiosity to infect Windows computers.

Computer viruses are more than simply annoying: they can detect keystrokes to steal your passwords, credit-card numbers, online banking information -indeed, any sensitive data that can compromise your finances and your security. So great is the risk that, in a recent survey for AOL, around a fifth of home PCs were found to be infected by a virus or worm, and four fifths contained snooping programs that could hijack web pages or serve unwanted advertising.

This "spyware" can be a particular threat to children: it can direct web browsers to hardcore porn sites, or allow strangers to monitor their web-surfing habits without their knowledge. So as well as warning children against opening unsolicited e-mail attachments or using their e-mail addresses in a public forum, parents must ensure that up-to-date antivirus software always protects the home PC.

"If you buy a PC that doesn't have it preloaded, the first thing you must do is install antivirus software," advises Andy Shaw, of Web User magazine. There are plenty of products commercially available. And the good news is that some free antivirus programs also perform well. "We recommend AVG antivirus from Grisoft (free.grisoft.com), which you can download free," says Shaw. "But free programs will be more complicated to install than the one-stop suites."

Or you could buy an Apple PC; though not immune, its tiny market share makes it unattractive to virus writers.

CLICK FOR TIPS

These websites offer safe-surfing advice for parents and children:

GetNetWise (www.getnetwise.org): A detailed resource provided by public service and industry bodies including Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo. Tips on everything from child safety to avoiding spyware and spam.

Kidsmart (www.kidsmart.org.uk): Safety advice for young people, schools and parents from the children's charity Childnet International. Includes educational games and links to recommended child-friendly sites, and for parents some useful tips on communicating the risks of internet use.

Parents Online (www.parentsonline.gov.uk): A website from the Department for Education and Skills, aimed at keeping parents up-to-date with IT as taught in schools. You can put questions to an "agony aunt" and to other parents in the forums.

Chatdanger (www.chatdanger.com): A Childnet International site designed to inform young people about the dangers of communicating with strangers online. It has a child-friendly design and offers advice on using chatrooms, instant messaging, online games, e-mail, and mobile phones.

Internet Watch Foundation (www.iwf.org.uk): A detailed guide to online safety from the body charged with monitoring illegal content. It is part-funded by the industry, so its advice tends to be generic rather than product-specific.

ThinkUKnow (www.thinkuknow.co.uk): A basic cartoon-based website from the Home Office that introduces "the facts" about safe use of chatrooms.

FIVE KEY RULES

Childnet International suggests that children be taught five key safety tips for "SMART" internet use:

S -Safe. Staying safe involves being careful and not giving out your name, address, mobile phone number, school name or password to people online.

M -Meeting someone you meet in cyberspace can be dangerous. Do so only with your parents'/ carers' permission and then when they are present.

A -Accepting e-mails or opening files from people you don't really know or trust can get you into trouble -they may contain viruses or nasty messages.

R -Remember that people online may be lying and may not be who they say they are.

If you feel uncomfortable when chatting or messaging, end the conversation.

T -Tell your parent or carer if someone or something makes you feel uncomfortable or worried.

INSTALL A FIREWALL

Filtering unsavoury content is only half the battle. You also need to keep out the bad guys who would love to fill your PC with malicious spyware, premium-rate diallers, internet worms and spam relays.

The solution is an internet firewall, a software program or physical box that limits access to your computer's internet doorways from other online PCs. These doorways, or "ports", allow hackers or spammers to "capture" your PC without your knowledge. They might locate you simply by searching for unsecured ports, or you might inadvertently install their rogue software when you visit a contaminated web page or open an infected e-mail. It can turn your PC into a "zombie" which can be controlled remotely, used to send millions of spam e-mails or launch hostile attacks against legitimate websites.

A firewall offers substantial protection and should always be fitted to an internet-connected home computer. Plenty of commercial firewalls are available, which allow you to specify various levels of security. If you use Microsoft Windows XP software, you already have a firewall built in, so make sure that it is enabled.

"Also, plenty of free firewall programs available online are pretty good," says Andy Shaw, of Web User. "The best are ZoneAlarm (www.zonelabs.com) and Lavasoft's Ad-Aware (www.lavasoft.de/support/ download)."

(The Times, December 30, 2004)

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Interview: Daisy Goodwin, Talkback Thames/BBC2 (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

You don't often hear a TV boss admit to needing therapy. It is rarer still that a leading programme-maker will confess to "screwing things up" throughout her career. So it is utterly disarming that such a powerful hyper-achiever as Daisy Goodwin is so openly self-doubting. She might be the queen of lifestyle television, a best-selling poetry anthologist and an accomplished presenter in her own right - but all the success, it seems, can't quite resolve the personal uncertainties.

Not that Goodwin, 42, has any doubts about the programmes themselves. As editorial director of Talkback Productions, her hits have included How Clean is Your House?, Too Posh to Wash, House Doctor and Grand Designs - all shows about self-improvement, she insists, which "inform as well as entertain".

"Educative sounds a bit pompous, but you do learn stuff from How Clean is Your House?," she says. "And Grand Designs, I would say, has probably changed people's aspirations about their homes."

Earlier this year, Goodwin applied to be controller of BBC2, suggesting in a newspaper interview that its arts and current affairs output were not "edgy" or "challenging" enough. She now insists that this was no criticism of the former controller, Jane Root, who "thought really big". "I suppose I felt that there was room for more innovation," she says. "You couldn't just rely on big events. Actually, I think it's quite a good time now for serious television." Roly Keating, she adds, will be a more effective controller than she ever could be. "At this time the job is very political, and I'm quite sure Roly's better at that than me."

TOMORROW night, Goodwin will present Essential Poems For Christmas on BBC2. She was, she says, "an absolute nightmare" to work with. "If you've been behind the camera, you know that everybody's lying to you the entire time. I've done it myself so many times."

Her books and broadcasts, she claims, have brought poetry to a new audience - even if some critics accuse her of using her looks and status cynically to market "easy" verse. "I can't be apologetic about trying to market poetry," she replies. "It would be fine to have a go at me if I was stopping other poets being published, but that's so not the case. The number of people buying poetry is declining."

She was particularly offended by a recent Andrew O'Hagan essay in the London Review of Books, which accused her of "patronising" readers by avoiding "difficult" poetry. "Here's a man whose last book was about Lena Zavaroni, which you might say was serving out popular culture for an intellectual elite," she says. "Is that just a tad patronising? I think he was saying that poetry should be left for people who can understand it. But you don't see poets turning people away at readings saying, 'Oh, sorry, I don't think you'll understand'."

As Goodwin tells it, she was a "bog-standard" BBC producer when her therapist showed her the power of poetry. She was running BBC2' s Bookworm, where, after seeking out t he n at i on' s favourite poems, she spent six months worrying whether to leave. "My therapist said I should read this poem by C P Cavafy about making a decision. It was an epiphany. I thought, 'Wow'. If only she'd given me the poem earlier, I'd have saved a fortune."

The "epiphany" that led her to leave sounds a convenient backstory, but Goodwin insists she is not exaggerating the power poems have to move her. Indeed, her jolly, laughter-filled conversation is peppered with lines from Robert Frost and Shakespeare.

The TV economy has been good to a super-indy like Talkback. Although, "it's getting harder to get the margins that you need to grow", the newly raised BBC "indy" quota is good news, she says. "There's always an appetite for good ideas and strong production, and if people can find them in the same place, they'll go for it."

But how did such a rising star - tutored by Norman Stone at Cambridge, before winning a film scholarship to Columbia - find herself in therapy in the first place? "I've had a very chequered career," she replies. "I'm very bad at managing up, the BBC let me go in my twenties, I've got very good at screwing things up ... Why do I need therapy?"

She pauses. "I was very depressed, went through this scary period when I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. All creative people, I think, are probably at bottom creative because they're trying to get away from something."

It is not entirely clear what Goodwin is escaping - she seems to have had a comfortable upbringing, the daughter of Jocasta Innes, the interior designer, and Richard Goodwin, a film producer. Yet only all-embracing TV projects, it seems, can disperse her demons. "You get to this wonderful moment when your brain concentrates on just one thing - and, apart from heroin, it's the only release from that existential pain. But it works for five seconds, you feel great, then you think - okay, now what?"

HER critics seem more pained by Goodwin's populist lifestyle shows. "What is really patronising is a load of people who don't really watch television - the so-called opinion formers - opining about shows they know nothing about," she says. "They think, 'Oh, it's ghastly makeover'. But they're not intended for them. The people who watch love these shows, they help them live their lives."

The critics' most recent target is Channel 4's The Sex Inspectors, which Goodwin has defended as "the most public-service programme I will ever make". Newspapers called it prurient, while sex therapists questioned the qualifications of co-presenter Tracey Cox. "That's unfair," Goodwin answers. "Tracey's got a psychology degree. I didn't pull her off the street." The show does not offer therapy, she says, only advice. "I wouldn't have made it if I'd thought it was exploitative. Nor do I think it's titillating. It's quite disturbing sometimes. It's fascinating."

Some accuse Goodwin of helping push Channel 4 "downmarket". She disagrees. "One of the great things about Channel 4 is that it's prepared to be honest," she says. "Why should we be so scared about sex? There's nothing wrong with trying to disperse some of that embarrassment. I mean, my dad watched that show. He's 70. He said, 'If only I'd seen it when I was younger'."

She does admit to making mistakes - "lots". She turned down Trinny and Susannah, for instance. "God, pretty much everything I wish I'd done differently. I find it quite hard to watch my shows." The insecurity, it seems, never relents. "I worry that I will wake up tomorrow and stop having ideas. Will I just lose it? That's why I need the bloody poetry - because I feel this close to disaster most of the time." She is currently working on The Apprentice, BBC2's Alan Sugarled version of the Donald Trump hit, but she says she can never rest on her laurels for a second. "It's probably why I ended up in therapy. I'm always thinking, what next?"

Not many TV executives are so open, and Goodwin's self-deprecation is refreshing. But she is no naif, and there is, after all, a journalist to charm. A warning bell is sounded by her mother's web diary, which recently proudly compared Daisy with Kimberly Quinn as a "femme fatale" who impresses men using "oomph, laughs, conversational firepower and sex appeal".

So does that explain her uncommon frankness today? "I know I've been too honest," she giggles. "I've always been impressed by people who, as Shakespeare would put it, are the lords and owners of their faces. I really wish I could be like that, but I'm not. And what would be the point of spinning you a pack of lies?"

(Evening Standard, December 22 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Pop-up stores (The Times)

By David Rowan

There aren't many men as obsessed with shopping as Paco Underhill. Whether in Moscow or Mexico City, he will be found lurking in malls and supermarkets, mapping shop layouts and analysing consumers' behaviour. For 25 years, Underhill's "retail anthropology" has informed the Aspreys and the Wal-Marts, insights he shares in bestsellers such as Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. This year, however, a particular trend has preoccupied him in his travels. Underhill calls it "pop-up" retailing.

Without much warning, a store chain or fashion label will open a shop intended to close after a week, a month or a year. They will sell limited-edition sneakers, test-market unreleased gadgets, reinvent a whisky brand as a hairdressing salon - yet however profitably or successfully, the stylised store will disappear just as suddenly as it popped up. "Think of it as theatrical retailing," Underhill explains. "That fascinating line between commerce and fine art has suddenly become really fuzzy. These stores are there to generate buzz. They play the media in a way that most merchants can't."

Fashion brands have been especially keen on pop-up stores in recent months. Camper currently has a temporary shoe-shop in Notting Hill; elsewhere in London, Kangol ran a Brick Lane store throughout August that sold bags and sunglasses while DJs and "graffiti artists" performed live. In Germany, MTV is using a series of short-term stores in edgy neighbourhoods to sell goods by Adidas, Levi's and Sony Ericsson. At the Cologne store for a week in October, you could buy £350 pairs of limited-edition Levi's dipped in gold leaf, and mobile phones unavailable elsewhere. Flyers and stickers brought in the trendsetters, transforming a mere shop into an event.

"Pop-up stores recognise one of the sad realities of fashion retailing - that you're only hot for so long," Underhill says. Consumers get bored quickly. "We're craving something different. If you walk into a store with the expectation that it's got six months or a week to live, you approach it with a completely different set of values. A store becomes a news item."

Non-fashion brands are also catching on. For a week in August, a cat-food company opened the Meow Mix Cafe[ACUTE] on Fifth Avenue in New York serving food and toys "to cats and the humans who think they own them". A little further downtown, Crown Royal, a whisky, launched a barbershop offering free haircuts for a month. As an unconventional marketing tool, this can prove a remarkably cost-effective means of promotion - especially as a short-term lease can often be bought for a song.

"These stores are also a triumph of creativity over money spent on fixtures," Underhill says. Comme des Garcons[C CEDILLA], which is opening a series of year-long "guerrilla stores" from Barcelona to Singapore, fitted out its Berlin store for just £1,300. The former bookshop in the fashionable Mitte district still displays signs left by the previous owner, and the clothes are hung from exposed water pipes. Rent is just £360 a month, but the clothes and perfumes retain their high-end prices.

Underhill does not see the novelty fading quite yet - growing media buzz makes pop-up retail a smart investment, he says, and electronics firms are likely to be next at the party. "Although it really is just a curious rewriting of one of retailing's most ancient principles," he reflects. "Is it that different from the travelling pedlar who hawked his wares warning that he wouldn't be there tomorrow?"


(The Times, London, December 18 2004)

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Evening Standard: Analysis - Mark Thompson's BBC cuts

By David Rowan

TO SOME depressed BBC staff, it looks like yet another Government victory. Thousands of job losses, a 15 per cent cut in programme budgets, 1,800 staff exiled to Manchester - and that's even before the Culture Secretary sets her own terms for granting a new charter.

Amid the gloom that has enveloped White City this week, there is at least a consensus that Mark Thompson's initial pronouncements show him to be a bold Director-General. But has he actually been far bolder than he needed, as some are claiming, imperilling the corporation's programming strength simply to curry favour in Whitehall?

"If you see this as a game of cards, it does look as though Thompson is playing all his trump cards too early," says Luke Crawley, a Bectu union representative who is meeting BBC managers this afternoon to negotiate the detail of the cuts. "My fear is that the Government will say, fine, we're pleased to see you're prepared to beat yourself so willingly, we'll finish off the job. And if he has got it wrong, thousands of staff will have lost their jobs for nothing."

The fear in Wood Lane is that last week's announcement was just the start.

Already Thompson has pledged to lose 2,500 support jobs and 400 in factual programmes, but hundreds if not thousands more are expected to go next summer, once department heads reveal how they will trim 15 per cent from their budgets.

Bectu says the cuts will be " devastating", the NUJ that there is already "no more fat to trim".

"Nobody's talking about anything else," explains an unimpressed documentary-maker.

"This has come at Christmas, and now we've got nine months of uncertainty with the threat of compulsory redundancies. After the Greg [Dyke] era, when we were all promised jobs for life, we're now all promised jobs for months.

Talk about a wakeup call."

The Evening Standard interviewed a number of BBC television and radio producers and editors this week, none of whom, understandably, was willing to be named.

One frequent concern was the hidden political manoeuvring suspected to have shaped Thompson's strategy. "The whole move out to Manchester is clearly designed to impress the politicians, but it's hardly going to help his declared goal of cutting costs," said one. Others detected more direct political intervention by BBC executives with close links to government.

While offering no evidence, some pointed fingers at Nicholas Kroll, the corporation's new director of governance, appointed in September from the Department of Culture.

WILL Wyatt, chief executive of BBC Broadcast during the Birt era, says that while BBC executives have always kept in close contact with politicians, this would have been Thompson's own strategy.

"There are conversations all the time between large public organisat ions and the sponsoring ministry, and Mark would be pretty daft not to acknowle d g e what they would expect from him.

It's nothing sinister - I don't think he'd be handed a list of things that had to be carried out.

He'd just know that he has to show that the corporation is lean - as they'll send in their own team of sharp-toothed accountants later on to go through the books."

Wyatt believes Thompson's axe could have gone even further: "The production side of the BBC is clearly too large in the factual area," he says. "Mark's played it pretty well. It's time to shake down and modernise."

One senior BBC administrator suspects that Thompson was simply judging the Government's "mood music" in his quest to retain the licence fee - even if that led him to be tougher than expected.

"The BBC would much prefer to get its retaliation in first - that's part of our whole culture of independence," the executive says.

"Yes, there was some Government pressure to get the governors' house in order and make them more independent - but in terms of the value for money review, the commercial strategy, the move to Manchester - that's all been internally driven."

So what of Kroll, who helped write the 1996 Broadcasting Act and, as acting permanent secretary at the DCMS, led the interview panel that chose Gavyn Davies as BBC chairman in 2001?

"He really didn't come here with an agenda demanding substantial change and cutbacks," the administrator says. "His agenda was that the governors should be more independent from management.

And all these proposals have come from management."

There was certainly resistance to Thompson's plans in closed meetings of the governors.

Perhaps it was the awkward admission inherent in the D-G's proposals that mismanagement had over- extended the BBC during their watch. But their chairman, Michael Grade, appears to have given Thompson his full support.

"This is not Grade v Thompson," says an outsider who knows both. "I think Michael sees the logic of what Mark says, even though he doesn't like it. I'm not sure even Mark likes it."

The real objections have come from the rank and file, whose loyalty to the new DG has been severely tested in the past week.

Making his mark: but Thompson may have been too hasty in announcing the redundancies Some of those the Standard spoke to complained of inconsistency in his declared intentions.

"It's as if one end of the corporation doesn't know what the other end is doing," says a documentary-maker. "In the recent commissioning rounds, the contemporary factual unit came out very well, yet that's the department they want to savage.

Meanwhile, they're highlighting the department for the quality of its programmes."

CONCERNS have also been aired that Thompson's pledge to put more work out to the independent sector will increase costs, defeating his moneysaving agenda.

"There seem to be so many aims in conflict," a Radio 4 programme-maker says.

"There's no clear focus, and our head of department claims to know little more than we do. No wonder morale is terrible."

Internal power games are also overshadowing Thompson's credibility. "Our fate was sealed when they put Peter Horrocks [head of current affairs] in charge of one of the reviews," the documentarymaker says. "So he thinks that no jobs should go in current affairs, and that all the cuts should be in rival departments. It's pathetic."

The cuts were accompanied by a pledge to boost "serious" programmes such as Panorama and Newsnight. Yet even here, the vague promises are being greeted warily. "People on these programmes are wondering if the planned money is just being mentioned for PR," says one staffer.

"You get stories about 'serious journalism being bolstered', but are we going to see this money?"

At the very least, Thompson's honeymoon appears to be over.

But if a new round of cuts is demanded next spring, he may have a fight on his hands to retain the loyalty of his staff. John Birt, some programme-makers were recalling this week, may have succeeded in securing the licence last time round. But how many within the corporation remember him with goodwill?

(Evening Standard, December 15, 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Public knit-ins (The Times)

By David Rowan

It's Saturday morning at the Ritzy cinema, Brixton, and as the opening credits roll for the new Bridget Jones film, around 30 pairs of knitting needles in the audience busily purl, slip, tink and tog. For a while now, knitting has been officially "cool" - which probably explains why the cinema's management has helpfully agreed to keep the lights on for this morning's mass knit-in. But Pauline Wall, chatting to friends as she starts to plan a lace scarf, has little time for the hobby's celebrity faddishness. The 32-year-old equities researcher is here on a mission: to reclaim public spaces for today's hard-core amateur knitters.

"I hate all this 'knitting is the new yoga' bullshit, with celebrities wheeled out for publicity stunts," says Wall, originally from Sydney. "In a year or two, three-quarters of the people knitting now will have stopped." Instead, she sees public knitting sessions serving a higher purpose - offering women in particular new opportunities to network socially. "You might remember knitting circles from your mother's era," she explains. "Well, this is a modern take. Where it was once a quiet housewifey thing to do at home, now that we have jobs it's a reason to sit around together having a chat. A lot of my girlfriends are third-wave feminists. What used to be a dirty word we're now embracing because we can."

They are known as "stitch 'n' bitch" sessions, and in the past few months the number of public knit-ins has grown sharply across Britain. Wall organised this morning's gathering through her Knit Chicks network (and almost all today's participants are women in their twenties and thirties), but there are equally active groups from Aberdeen to Cambridge. Mostly they meet in pubs or cafes, but the more subversive groups, such as Cast Off in London, have knitted on Circle Line tube trains and in the Savoy's American Bar. Pauline Wall's group was last week due to invade the Foyles bookshop cafe. "I've emailed them to ask," she says, "but as they haven't got back I take it as tacit approval."

The knitters' arrival is not always welcomed. The Savoy ejected Cast Off, and Brighton's Threadbare knitters were told they were creating the wrong image for the Cricketers pub. "But then we were approached by the landlord of the Hobgoblin, which is quite a goth pub," recalls Penny Nicholas, 31, a founder member of the Threadbare. "Now there's all these black-clad body-pierced students welcoming us as fellow eccentrics." A local museum even exhibited a collection of the group's knitted breasts. "If people on trains asked what you were making, you'd say it was a baby's hat," Nicholas explains.

Sussex is currently a particular haven for public knitters: the Brighton group talks to the Hastings Extreme Knitters, who photograph each other skydiving while cross-stitching, and some lady knitters from Lewes have modelled naked for a charity calendar. "Knitting's always been there, it's just becoming more public," explains Nicholas, a hospital PA. "This is a way of saying, 'I knit and I'm not ashamed'."

But does anything more profound explain the boom in these public gatherings? "You've really got me," says Pauline Wall after a think."There are all these theories going around that it's post-September 11, people getting back to the wholesome activities that their grandparents knew." Is that her view? "No," she says. "It's just a wonderful networking opportunity that gets you out of the house. And unlike trainspotting, with our hobby you get to keep warm in winter."

(The Times, London, December 11 2004)

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The Times: Selling sugar in the obesity wars - an investigation

Sugar is the new threat in the fight against flab -but it is a cunning enemy, reports David Rowan.

To appreciate the scale of today's childhood diabetes epidemic, just ask Terry Wilkin at Peninsula Medical School, in Plymouth. Since 2000, Professor Wilkin and his team have been tracking 300 healthy local schoolchildren, chronicling their physical development and monitoring everything from insulin to cholesterol in their blood.
When the study began, the children, then aged five, were already showing worrying signs: almost a third of the girls were overweight, a tenth of them clinically obese. In blood tests, the fatter children also tended to be more "insulin resistant" -an early indicator of type 2 diabetes.

Four years on, the pattern is hardening. Type 2 diabetes, once regarded as only an adult disease, is now one of the fastest-growing threats to British children, and Professor Wilkin and his team want to know why. "We're looking both at eating and activities," he says, "but my impression from our studies is that the energy imbalance in young children may not lie with physical activity. What concerns me more is that it's the calorie-consumption element we get wrong. Wherever we have high-energy-dense foods (such as cakes, fast food, chocolate, fizzy sweet drinks), we'll identify obesity."

After years of official advice to cut our fat intake, health campaigners are now focusing their efforts on sugar. Could the sugars added to soft drinks and processed foods be as responsible as fats for Britain's obesity crisis? The sugar industry refuses to accept a link, but with sugar making up the extra calories in many low-fat foods, policymakers are increasingly concerned.

Now the Government is talking tough. "Sugar is next, once the present campaign on salt is over," Imogen Sharp, the Department of Health's head of health improvement and prevention, told the Royal College of General Practitioners in September. Her department, she said, would be "looking at a campaign to reduce the amount of sugar people are eating". The view was echoed, if less specifically, in the Government's health White Paper last month, which called for lower sugar levels in our foods.

In his Plymouth clinic, Professor Wilkin is careful to point fingers at factory-produced food in general, rather than sugar alone. "Yes, whenever you process food, you're adding sugars, but the problem lies with energy-dense foods more generally," he says. "It would help to limit our consumption of refined sugars, but going back to natural food is the solution."

If the Government does take on sugar, it will have picked a powerful enemy. The sugar industry is among the world's most effective food lobbies, securing vast agricultural subsidies and protection under EU quotas. British Sugar -part of Associated British Foods, which as a group has annual sales of £5.2 billion -processes the entire UK sugar beet crop of 9 million tonnes, turning it into 1.3 million tonnes of white sugar. Tate & Lyle, based in London, is Europe's largest cane-sugar refiner, with sales last year of £3.2 billion and profits of £227 million. The industry defends its position through political lobbying, school education campaigns, the sponsorship of favourable scientists, aggressive legal challenges and, critics say, blatant manipulation of health bodies.

The British consume about 2.25 million tonnes of sugar each year, three quarters of it indirectly in drinks, processed foods and confectionery. Overall, added sugar provides 13 per cent of our calories, well above the World Health Organisation's (WHO) recommended 10 per cent limit. Typically, this works out at about 20 teaspoons of added sugar every day for men and about 13 for women.

Consumption is rising disproportionately among younger people. The 2003 National Diet and Nutrition Survey found that men aged 19 to 24 relied on sugar for 17.4 per cent of their calorific intake -almost twice the "healthy" WHO limit. The Department of Health is clear that this is costing lives. In a background paper for its Choosing Health White Paper, the department estimates that every 1 per cent drop in sugar consumption (as a proportion of our calorie intake) would prevent 750 obesity-related deaths. That exceeds the 600 lives it calculates would be saved by a similar cut in saturated fat.

The problem for many consumers is knowing just how prevalent sugar is in their diet. Would you know from a food label that maltose, dextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrolysed starch, muscovado, amazake and carob powder are all sources of sugar? Would parents be aware that heavily advertised children's cereals, such as Kellogg's Frosties Turbos, which claim to benefit bone and heart health, may contain five times as much sugar -40 per cent by weight -as cornflakes?

Campaigners are particularly concerned at the marketing of high-sugar foods to children and, increasingly the media is listening. Cadbury's was forced on the defensive last year over its "Get Active" promotion, offering sports equipment in exchange for chocolate wrappers. School education packs have also raised concern.

A video from the Sugar Bureau, the UK trade association, explained that tooth decay was caused by "bread, rice, crisps and cucumbers". A cucumber, the video stated, was 80 per cent sugar -a calculation based on its dry weight. The video was withdrawn after protests.

"Parents are shocked when you explain that a 500ml bottle of Coke contains 10 teaspoons of sugar," says Kath Dalmeny, policy officer for the independent Food Commission. "When you give a child a drink, you don't think it's the equivalent of two-and-a-half packs of sweets." The industry undermines public health messages through its advertising, she adds: "The NHS spends around £880 per person a year treating disease, yet its budget for health promotion is just £2.20.

The industry, meanwhile, can swamp any official messages. So they use a technical word like 'carbohydrate' rather than sugar, as it sounds healthier. They don't explain that sugar is a simple carbohydrate -exactly what we shouldn't be eating."

The Sugar Bureau sees no scientific link between sugar consumption and weight gain. Indeed, sugar, its literature states, may increase a dieter's chances of losing weight. "By including some low-fat sugary foods such as arctic roll, jaffa cakes, sorbets, fruit yoghurt, rice pudding, jelly beans and currant buns in their diet, slimmers can easily top up their carbohydrate intake, without adding too many calories," it says.

If you exercise, the bureau adds, you "need" sugar to replenish lost energy: "Most people can't manage a heavy starchy meal immediately after exercise. But a soft drink or a sugary snack can start to refill carbohydrate stores straight away."

Also, if children become hyperactive at sugar-fuelled parties, "detailed studies" prove that "this is a consequence of the situation, not their sugar intake".

British Sugar's Silver Spoon website, meanwhile, cites "scientific evidence" that people who consume high levels of sugar tend to be slimmer. Its advice: "Aim to eat more foods which are high in carbohydrates, such as pasta, rice and sugar."

"This is utter baloney," says Jane Clarke, the Times nutritionist. "With today's sedentary lifestyles, we don't burn up enough sugar to justify eating the sugary stuff -pasta and rice fine, but no one can tell me that their body physiologically needs a sweet drink."

The industry's influence has been felt most forcibly at the international level.

Six years ago, two United Nations health bodies -the WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) -were considering lowering their recommendations for dietary carbohydrate intake. In secret, two industry-funded groups spent $60,000 (£31,000) sponsoring a key meeting in Rome where sympathetic "experts" were heard. The resulting conference press release was headed: "Good news for kids: experts see no harm in sugar". It took a Panorama investigation this year to disclose the involvement of the two industry groups, the World Sugar Research Organisation and the International Life Sciences Institute, backed by Coca-Cola and Tate & Lyle.

The WHO and FAO faced more overt pressure in spring 2003, when their Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases said a healthy diet should comprise no more than 10 per cent of "free sugars" (added sugars plus those naturally present in honey, syrups and juices). The US Sugar Association wrote to Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO director-general, promising to "exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature" of its "misguided, nonscience-based" findings. This included challenging the WHO's $406 million funding from Washington.

Occasional leaks reveal how the lobbyists solicit influence. A recent letter to a WHO director from Richard Cottrell, the director-general of the World Sugar Research Organisation and head of the Sugar Bureau, suggests that his groups would offer "substantial sponsorship" if offered the status of non-governmental organisations. This would give them access to internal WHO meetings. Professor Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force, called the proposal "a ruthless and vicious strategy" to undermine efforts to improve health.

He asked: "Does the sugar industry really believe it can bribe the WHO?"

Dr Cottrell refuses to discuss his leaked letter, or the campaign against the 2003 WHO recommendations. "Anybody who thinks that we have a secret mechanism of undue influence is living in a paranoid fantasy" is all he will say. He does, though, believe that his industry-funded bodies deserve NGO status. "Neither organisation is profit-making. Being a non-governmental organisation merely allows you to take part in the debate." He says that he has numerous scientific studies disclaiming any link between sugar and obesity. "Too much of everything causes obesity. I don't see any evidence that targeting certain types of food would work."

Manipulating the food supply, he says, could cause "dramatic" price rises and unforeseen "adverse health risks" for some people.

The industry also finds outside voices of support. Last month, the Oldways Preservation Trust, "a non-profit food issues think tank", invited journalists to Mexico City to cover a conference on the benefits of sugar and sweeteners. Those who accepted heard an epidemiology professor, Adam Drewnowski, criticise the WHO's description of soft drinks as "energy-dense foods", adding that their high water content gives them "the energy density of fresh carrots". Conference sponsors included Coca-Cola's Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness and Tate & Lyle.

Those who challenge the industry can find life tough. When the pressure group Action and Information on Sugars (AIS) challenged advertising claims that Ribena ToothKind "does not encourage tooth decay", it faced more than two years of legal arguments from GlaxoSmithKline that reached the High Court. The Advertising Standards Authority, backed by the AIS, won the case, but only after the pressure group's then chairman, Jack Winkler, claimed to have been threatened six times with legal action unless the group apologised. Today, Winkler, a food consultant, believes the Government is serious about taking on the sugar lobby. "The White Paper is cautious, but the impact on NHS budgets of rising diabetes will force them to act," he says.

Back on the front line, Sarah Jarvis, a GP, treats the consequences of the British diet in her surgery in Shepherd's Bush, West London. "In the past decade the incidence of obesity has jumped," she says. "I see teenagers with type 2 diabetes, people in their twenties who get out of breath walking upstairs, people in their thirties with osteoarthritis." Even so, Dr Jarvis, the author of Diabetes for Dummies, is wary of targeting sugar alone. "Ready-cooked foods contain huge amounts of hidden sugars and fats, yet because people see the words '96 per cent fat free', they presume it's healthy -even though the fat has been substituted for sugar and other refined carbohydrates. We're eating fewer calories than at any time since the Second World War, yet we are getting bigger," she says. "That's because we're eating the wrong kinds of food. This is about more than simply sugar."

LIKE IT? LUMP IT

* OBESITY Three quarters of British adults are now overweight, with 22 per cent of us officially obese. Obesity is a risk factor in diabetes, heart disease, renal failure, joint problems and possibly cancer. Weight gain occurs when the body consumes more energy than it expends. Sugar is a big source of energy. And consuming too much sugar also hinders our ability to burn off stored fat.

* APPETITE A sweet drink or snack before a meal may make you overeat -it affects our body's ability to recognise when we're full.

* HEART Too much sugar can raise levels of fatty acids called triglycerides. High triglyceride levels are linked with high cholesterol, and are a known risk factor for heart disease.

INSULIN The more often we eat sugary food, the more insulin we release to process the sugar -and it has been said that too much sugar can lead to insulin becoming less effective. The result might be type 2 diabetes.

* TEETH Sugar causes tooth decay. A recent study published in the British Dental Journal found that the risk of tooth erosion was 220 per cent higher in 14-year-olds who drank fizzy drinks.

(The Times, December 11, 2004)

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The Times Magazine: How Bratz beat Barbie

Move over, Barbie: there are some hot new kids on the block. David Rowan visits Bratz HQ to discover how these ethnically ambiguous, fashion-crazy dolls are winning our tweenagers' hearts and minds

Richard Landry designs high-end celebrity homes for the likes of Eddie Murphy and Rod Stewart. But today he appears to be winning over that infinitely more fickle customer: a streetwise eight-year-old fashionista from South London. With its Jacuzzi, private lift and sun-deck, Landry's "deluxe three-storey high-rise apartment" has utterly charmed Robyn Henry, who stares transfixed in her fluffy pink coat and knee-length boots, a white handbag swinging elegantly in time with her beaded hair. "Wow! Look at this!" she calls across Hamleys to the two adult cousins who have brought her here this dank November Saturday. "It's the coolest thing in the world! That's what I want for Christmas."

At £149, Landry's gaudy plastic dolls' house won't win any awards for value. But this is the official 2004 "Bratz Pad", built for today's hippest fashion dolls, and brand loyalty is all to consumers like Robyn. She already owns four Bratz and six of her Lil' Bratz friends, for whom today she'll take home a few hot new fashion outfits. "I love Sasha and Cloe, but Yasmin's my favourite," she explains coyly. "She's got the best clothes." Robyn also owns a dozen Barbies - "and the car, and the house" - but, well, she hasn't played with them for ages. "I don't like them much," she whispers, screwing up her nose. "They're not teenagers, like Bratz."

The evolving tastes of one little black girl from South Norwood reflect a more global headache for the world's biggest toy firm. Mattel, whose Barbie range used to command 90 per cent of the international fashion-doll market, has lately slumped towards 60 per cent and seen profits dive. In Britain, a retail audit recently put the 45-year-old blonde into second place. The Bratz, a clique of sultry-eyed, collagen-lipped fashion flirts, have come from nowhere in three years to tell Barbie Millicent Roberts to retire back to Willows, Wisconsin. And the tweens - the booming consumer demographic aged between six and 12 - have broadly tended to agree.

MGA Entertainment, the family-owned California firm that launched Bratz in June 2001, says it will earn $3 billion (£1.6 billion) this year from the dolls and accessories, ranging from the Luscious Lip Phone to the Dazzlin' Disco Karaoke. Barbie still makes more money - $3.6 billion (£2 billion) last year, according to a rather defensive Mattel - but the fashion dolls are tearing out each other's hair. This year, Mattel - with 25,000 employees, as opposed to MGA's 460 - has made some awkward financial disclosures as its upstart rival has eroded Barbie's market share: a 73 per cent fall in profits in the first quarter; a 13 per cent drop in sales in the third. The Bratz, meanwhile, continue to sashay funkily into new markets - increasingly, as in the UK, claiming first place.

What explains the extraordinary appeal of Bratz, beyond catwalk chic, huge expressive faces, and skin tones that cross ethnic boundaries? How have Meygan, Sasha, Jade, Cloe, Yasmin and their newer friends tapped this mysterious pre-teen psyche in a way that increasingly eludes Barbie? It cannot be price: Hamleys sells the Bratz "Formal Funk" dolls for £29.99, whereas a remarkably similar MyScene range, from Mattel, is £7 cheaper and includes a DVD. Old-style Barbies cost less than £10 - yet for some reason, the store's Bratzworld section is far busier this Saturday afternoon than Barbie's magical land of Fairytopia.

The answer lies 6,000 miles away, in a nondescript 150,000 sq ft office complex adjoining an airfield in Van Nuys, southern California. Apart from a temporary vinyl banner, there is nothing to suggest that 16380 Roscoe Boulevard is home to the midriff-bearing dolls "with a passion for fashion". Since MGA moved here a few weeks ago, having suddenly outgrown its old offices, there has been little time to install corporate signs - even if Isaac Larian, the Jewish-Iranian immigrant who founded the company, has arranged for a mezuzah, a scroll containing passages from the Torah, to be affixed to every doorpost as required by Jewish law. Behind one of these security-guarded doorways a buzzing hive of doll designers, hair stylists, make-up artists, couturiers, seamstresses, package creators and "inventors" is finalising what will be the 2006 and 2007 Bratz ranges. Colour box templates are grabbed from printers, Vivienne Westwood monographs are pored over at workstations, tiny hand-stitched leather jackets are handed around for colleagues' thoughts. Animated creativity pervades the long open-plan room, punctuated by occasional giggles and girl-like sighs of approval at the latest arrivals from MGA's Hong Kong factory.

At one end of the building, Poottipong Phoosopha is painting almond-shaped eyes and swollen red lips on to a rack of bald plastic heads. In a room next door, Kristen Kirst is oven-baking the disembodied heads before experimenting with new hairstyles. Beside her, above a montage of Brad Pitt magazine photos, are 60 impaled heads with frizzy blonde locks, black ponytails, white platinum bobs, auburn spikes with green extensions - whatever combinations Kirst feels might excite her fashion-aware consumers. "I'm a Mattel refugee," she whispers as she prepares to root a new style for Jade, her "absolute favourite". "They just want your typical boring styles you've already done ten times." Nearby, another designer in a goatee and a reversed baseball cap declares that he, too, left Mattel "because it was inhibiting my creative freedom, always people telling you what to do". But after Kevin Bloomfield joined MGA, he was excited to find Isaac Larian receptive to his idea for an innovative boys' action figure. The company now sees Alien Racers as its next billion-dollar brand. If the Bratz have a mother figure, it is Paula Treantafelles, a product designer who joined MGA five years ago from Mattel. "I was there towards the decline of their Barbie brand, though they'll never admit it," Treantafelles smiles. "Executives moaned that girls were getting older, faster, so they couldn't be blamed for Barbie's diminishing age profile. I didn't agree. I'd heard about this crazy Iranian guy who could challenge their taboos. So I came here."

Within six months, she had brought Larian her idea: a fashion doll specifically targeting the seven to ten-year-olds whom Mattel was failing to reach. "At this age they're very different to four to six-year-olds," she says. "They're about self-expression, self-identity. When Barbie was in her prime, girls were taught to be career women, to be men's equals. Today, yes, career and education matter, but it's also ‘express yourself, have your own identity, girl power'. Strangely, Barbie might have missed that message."

Her answer was not simply a doll, but a "self-expression piece". Bratz, unlike Barbies, have no "back story" - there are no "Doctor Bratz" or "Vet Bratz"; each can become whatever, whoever their little girl owners want them to be. "The only time we could express ourselves as girls was through our fashion. It really didn't matter what you looked like - you could be blonde, blue-eyed or dark-skinned, dark-haired. I wanted each doll to have a different personality that would be expressed through her fashion." Fashion matters here. Across the company, from design to licensing, executives monitor trend-forecasting services, MTV and the international catwalk. Lui Domingo, 32, one of two main doll designers, used to create £6,000 couture dresses on behalf of Mary McFadden in New York and Richard Tyler in LA. That was before he spent five years outfitting Barbie. "If you had a new idea, Mattel made you go through well over ten approval processes," Domingo recalls. "If, heaven forbid, you picked a colour other than pink, you'd have to justify yourself in a large conference room to 20 people."

The dolls could have been called Fashion Frenzies, Girrlz or Girlfriends, but the name Bratz was suggested by Carter Bryant, another former Mattel employee whose initial drawings Treantafelles felt "exuded the attitude and expression we wanted". Mattel is now suing Bryant, claiming he secretly worked for MGA while still employed by them; he is countersuing, claiming that Mattel wants to "hijack" Bratz, which he says remained just an idea until after he left. Separately, Mattel is also suing Ronald Brawer, a former employee who in October took over MGA's sales and marketing divisions. Mattel claims he took with him "highly confidential materials"; MGA describes the writ as "frivolous nonsense" timed to deflect attention from poor quarterly results. (Mattel chose not to respond to anything in this article, beyond stressing that "the Barbie brand has been and continues to be the No 1 brand for girls".)

Treantafelles never played with Barbie as a girl. "I never understood how I could aspire to be a 30-year-old mummy when I was still trying to get to be ten," she says. This new doll, then, would be the "anti-Barbie". "Where Barbie is completely profiled - this is my sister, this is my hobby - Bratz would be whatever you choose it to be. We give you the palette, identify with it as you wish." She also wanted "to turn Barbie's proportions upside-down" - hence the oversize head and huge detachable feet. "You're not idolising something supposed to look like you," Treantafelles says. "Instead of 'I should look like that physically', it's 'I want to identify with that'."

And whereas Mattel introduced black and Hispanic Barbies in 1980, Treantafelles - herself Greek-American - wanted to blur the ethnic lines. "We were so careful not to say, 'This is our Hispanic character; this is our African-American…'" At one of our first focus groups, this beautiful little Indian girl saw our darker-skinned doll, and was so excited, screaming hysterically. She'd finally found a character that identified with her. Little did she know that Barbie culture identified that doll as African-American." "Listening to the kids" is coded into MGA's DNA. The company relentlessly focus-groups with children, invites their feedback via its members' clubs, talks back to their Bratz fan sites. Throughout the company, the lessons are drummed in: eight to ten-year-olds aspire to be 16, and so they will reject toys their younger sisters might play with; edginess and rebelliousness reinforce the independence they crave; they absorb "adult" media messages more completely than may be apparent.

"All these wild emotions are playing in your head when you're ten," Treantafelles says. "You want to be pretty, you want to wear fancy clothes. We're just materialising these wild impulses, no different from Beyonce or Christina Aguilera." The punk-inspired range for spring 2005, "Pretty 'N' Punk" - black leather and chains, tartan miniskirts, ripped T-shirts - has tested particularly well. "I don't think that's an accident," Treantafelles says. "It takes the rebellious dark side of every little girl. Is it appropriate? Yes, she understands it completely. We've kept the halo above the logo."

In a darkened room in the San Fernando Valley, halfway between Van Nuys and Hollywood, Isaac Larian is staring intensely through a one-way mirror while distractedly picking at a plate of raw vegetables. Behind the glass screen, Ashley, Joy, Cassandra and five other eight and nine-year-olds are transfixed as Joy, the moderator, unveils four large jigsaws featuring their favourite funky friends.

"Cool!" they coo in unison. "They're awesome! I love Bratz!" adds Jessica. "I'd hang them on my bedroom wall."

"How are we going to get that across on the packaging?" Larian calls across to four MGA colleagues, each scribbling away frantically. "Let's see if they'd buy all four."

Joy has already pre-empted his question. "I might, but that would waste all my money," Sara says thoughtfully. "Ha!" Larian interjects. "I love it, kids are so honest." It is 5.45pm on a wet Wednesday evening, and the weekly Bratz focus groups have been going for an hour when Larian arrives. For a billionaire chief executive, he seems remarkably informal, an open-necked shirt beneath his brown leather jacket, Blackberry e-mail device in one hand, phone in the other. Yet despite the casual appearance, Larian is in complete control here, refining questions for the moderator, berating organisers for showing photo boards rather than actual products. He insists that The Times makes no reference to specific products being tested tonight. "Mattel is dying to find out what we're doing," he explains.

His research staff talk a lot about "age compression" and "KGOY" - a marketing term for "kids growing older younger". When Barbie was introduced in 1959, they point out, her target market was six to ten-year-olds. Today, she appeals mostly to ages three to six.

Another Mattel toy, Fisher-Price's Little People, used to be pitched to two-year-olds. Nowadays they are for one-year-olds. The distinction between childhood and early adulthood has also blurred. Three years ago, the Argos store chain was condemned by British child welfare groups for marketing thongs and padded bras to nine-year-old girls. Pop stars such as Britney Spears, meanwhile, have brought what activists call "hooker chic" into the pre-teen bedroom. To some campaigners, these cultural messages are irrefutably linked to "premature sexualisation" and perhaps even to a lowered age of puberty. The toy industry sees them simply as an untapped commercial opportunity.

"I was looking for a way into this tweens demographic, which has $22 billion to spend," Larian recalls, back in his office. "That's the highest disposable income of any demographic. They don't want to play mummies any more, and they're becoming more multicultural. You've also got the guilt trip from parents working so hard. If your daughter nags you for a doll, you'll buy her one, two, maybe three."

Larian, 50, had his own focus group to convince him: his daughter Yasmin, now 16, and sons Cameron, 10, and 18-year-old Jason. So when Treantafelles first showed him Bryant's sketches, he sought Yasmin's advice. "She said, 'They're really cute.' I thought, if Yasmin thinks so, so will other kids." He still had to convince a sceptical sales force, more familiar with electronic toys and singing baby dolls. So Larian put on make-up and a dress, and addressed his staff as "Persian Bratz". Eighty million dolls later, Bratz now accounts for most of the company's profits. Larian's story is textbook American dream. He arrived from Iran in 1971, aged 17, with a one-way ticket and $750 in his pocket. "I'll never forget that after 30 days, I had 25 quarters left, no job, and was scared to my stomach. I was a kid." Larian walked for 11 miles down a Los Angeles street, stopping to ask for work at every restaurant and gas station.

Eventually, Spires Coffee Shop said he could wash dishes for $1.65 an hour. He would work until 7am, and then study civil engineering.

He discovered that making money was easier. He imported Korean brassware, then moved into consumer electronics. Larian's big break was reading in a newspaper, when in Japan in 1987, about Nintendo's hugely successful Game & Watch toy. "I asked them to give me American distribution rights," he remembers. "They said no, but I was very persistent. Finally they said yes. That year we sold $22 million of Game & Watch."

He soon learnt that children are fickle. "You had to give kids a new fashion, a new product, every three or four months or you would die. We didn't see that. The next year, we had $10 million of inventory. It was scary. I quickly sold the lot to Dixons at 25 cents to the dollar. I thought, forget about the toy business." But he persisted, forming Micro Games of America to license Donkey Kong, Power Rangers and Star Wars merchandise. There were huge sums at stake. When MGA claimed that George Lucas's company, Lucasfilm Ltd, had violated its Star Wars licence by letting another firm sell electronic toys, Larian won $5.6 million in a legal settlement.

By the mid-Nineties, turnover had reached $60 million. In 1997, Larian launched a doll, Singing Bouncing Baby. A Walmart buyer questioned what a games firm knew about dolls; so he changed its name to MGA Entertainment (the MGA stands for Micro Games of America). The doll became a bestseller, and the Walmart buyer challenged Larian to find the new Barbie. So when Treantafelles and Bryant made their pitch, he knew they were on to something. Larian is an unlikely billionaire. His greatest extravagance is a leased chauffeur-driven car, and he only agreed to that "because I was on the Blackberry and cellphone so much that I got into two accidents". In Iran, he says, he was a socialist. "That's one of the reasons I picked civil engineering, so I could go back and build roads. Money can be a blessing and a curse. I'll probably end up giving 90 per cent away to charity."

Meantime, there is still plenty more of it to be made. A new entertainment vice president, hired from Disney, is overseeing a second Bratz DVD, a TV series, and a feature film. A celebrity hit squad is busy ensuring the dolls are regularly photographed in the hands of teen icons such as Avril Lavigne and Hilary Duff. And, of course, there are the 300 licencees busy producing all manner of spin-off merchandise.

"The tween is much more sophisticated than people credit," Marcy George, US licensing director, says during a merchandising brainstorm session. "I met a designer today who was actually talking about embedding rhinestones into swimwear flippers," says Holly Stinnett, a senior brand manager. "They'll be pearlised with glitter, really cool and Bratzy."

Isaac Larian walks in. "Hey, let's not give the enemy too much information," he says. "Frankly, you'll have a whole room that's Bratz - her toothbrush, bedding, apparel, basically her whole life. The opposition, meanwhile, is too busy with corporate politics and suing people. Mattel's boss comes from the cheese industry. [Robert Eckert used to run Kraft Foods.] They don't see that selling cheese and toys are very different.

"It's kind of sad," he continues, "that instead of innovating, the world's top toy company is imitating. After 45 years of working, maybe it's time for Barbie to retire." A more serious question is whether Bratz dolls are sexualising little girls. Last January, a child advocacy group, Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children, led a protest against Bratz and other raunchy dolls outside the International Toy Fair in New York. In a letter sent to the Toy Industry Association, the group spelt out its concerns: "Bratz dolls are highly sexualised dolls with extremely high heels, eyes heavy with make-up, large puffy lips and very skimpy, tightly fitting clothes," it said. "These dolls are at the forefront of a toy trend that promotes stereotyped and sexualised behaviour that children cannot understand. They make the way bodies look a focus of play and equate self-worth with appearance."

Another group, Dads and Daughters, is running an e-mail campaign against MGA's "Secret Date" range of Bratz. "Is there a benefit to anyone but the manufacturer when that toy comes with a seductively dressed female doll, a mystery date, champagne glasses and date night accessories?" it asks. Kay Hymowitz, who has written widely on the commercialisation of childhood in books such as Liberation's Children, believes that the marketing industry is deliberately sexualising girls for profit. "Marketers make it sound like KGOY is just a fact of nature," Hymowitz argues. "The truth is, they have played a central role in making it happen. They want to sell products; they know kids who are independent and ‘empowered' are more likely to tell their parents to buy those products. They know that the way you seize kids' attention is to make them feel older and more glamorous - and sexier."

This "premature sexualisation" can have wider consequences. Ruth Coppard, an NHS child psychologist based in Sheffield, says she sees the impact in 12-year-old fathers and 15-year-olds on the pill: "It's a great commercial opportunity - but is it ethical?" Coppard asks. "The little girl doesn't necessarily understand the sexual connotations of the clothes she sees on television and wants to wear. She might think she's just being fashionable, but the older people around her do pick up those sexual messages. And that erodes our respect for childhood." The consequences, Coppard says, partly explain Britain's high rate of teenage pregnancy. Predictably enough, such views hold little traction back on MGA's design floor. "We are not making a deliberate effort to sexualise these dolls," insists Lui Domingo. "We are making them fashionable, and coincidentally the fashions these days are rather sexy." "As soon as you put a sexy outfit on a doll, all of a sudden it's inappropriate," adds Paula Treantafelles. "The truth is, the celebrities these girls aspire to, the Beyonces and the Aguileras, they're far more inappropriate than Bratz."

Besides, Isaac Larian is smart enough to see the PR benefits of a little controversy. "You know, it's always adults who make these claims about sexualisation," he says. "Ask the kids, and they don't say they like Bratz because they're sexy. It's because they're fashionable."

His warm, gentle expression suddenly becomes one of utter determination. "We're going to make toys that the kids like, not the parents," he says. "They're the customers. The world has changed."

(The Times, London, December 4 2004)

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Trendsurfing: Tech-enchanced fashion (The Times)

By David Rowan

Remember all those futuristic visions of "smart clothes" and "wearable computers"? They're finally hitting the high street. From coats with built-in MP3 players to microprocessor-controlled running shoes, mainstream fashion is starting to get seriously wired. Some of these new products aim to monitor health and fitness, others simply promise high-fashion fun. All that remains is for the designers to agree on their terminology: is this "intelligent apparel" are we talking about - or is it "soft computation"?

You can't get much more mainstream than the Gap, whose US branches have just introduced the Hoodio, a £37 children's fleece jacket with built-in FM radio. The control keypad is built into the sleeve, the speakers hidden inside the hood. Or, if you want to hear MP3 tracks while snowboarding, consider the Hub, a "mobile communications and entertainment jacket" from O'Neill that wires in a music player (and Bluetooth phone connection) using electrically conductive fabric. Even the sneaker firms are at it, with adidas hyping the "1", a running shoe containing a 20-megahertz computer. The computer, linked to a sensor in the heel, supposedly analyses the running surface so that a motor-driven cable can adjust the shoe's cushioning.

As Joanna Berzowska sees it, this is just the start. When Berzowska is not designing innovative fabrics for companies like Nike, or advising medical firms on "electronic textiles" that monitor patients' health, she is researching wearable tech at Concordia University in Montreal. Her projects have included dresses that change color to indicate their history of use and mobile-phone aerials woven into jackets so as to minimise radiation. So what other "smart" clothes does she see arriving in the shops some time soon?

"You're going to see textiles that incorporate sensors to monitor heart rate, blood pressure or respiration," she says. The results are already being used in sports training and healthcare. A company called Sensatex sells a shirt that collects everything from body temperature to caloric burn, sending readouts to your watch or PDA. Philips Research has even developed "electronic underwear" that can warn of a heart attack. "The latest sensing fabrics are not only comfortable, but they're also washable," Berzowska says. "So as well as having medical benefits, you also get to keep clean." Look out, too, for clothes as energy sources: jackets with built-in solar panels to recharge your gadgets.

"But fashion will be the killer app," she adds. "Wearable technology will mainly be about playfulness. People want to personalise what they wear, to say something about their lifestyle. So you will be able to customise your clothes and have some fun."

Such as? "I'm working on a wearable fabric that can change colour, thanks to the electrochromic inks," she says. "So you'll have a black jacket, and every now and then it displays a picture of a squirrel." Heat-responsive inks and
light emitting diodes are also providing amusement. "We're working on dresses that illuminate when someone gropes you. And we've got textiles that change shape with changes in temperature. I call them 'distraction dresses' - you might get shapes of breasts, for instance, popping out all over your dress."

It might be a while before that one makes it to the Gap, but Berzowska doesn't think tech-enhanced clothes should always focus on practical solutions. "Maybe it's a gender thing," she reflects. "The engineers at places like Nike think it's all about efficiency. But why should we forget the playful effects of fashion?"

(The Times, London, December 4 2004)

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Interview: Dan Chambers, Five (Evening Standard)

By David Rowan

HOW desperate is Five to shed its reputation for downmarket sleaze? Just ask its programming boss, an energetic philosophy graduate with a penchant for John Stuart Mill. History, the arts, poetry, modern philosophy - these are the "intellectual" shows that Dan Chambers is now making his priority. They might not match Cosmetic Surgery Live for ratings - but as Chambers sees it, they might just save the channel.

"I want to position Five as more upmarket and intelligent than we've ever been perceived," he explains with an enthusiasm that never wavers throughout the interview. "More and more people were defining their viewing habits as not watching Five. If the channel had continued as it was, with Keith Chegwin's willy flapping about, it would be in real trouble by now."

Since he succeeded Kevin Lygo last autumn, Chambers - at 36, Britain's youngest programme director - has accelerated Lygo's strategy of boosting arts and documentaries. Now, with £190 million to spend, he has decided relentlessly to pursue a younger, more upmarket audience. Isn't he trying to steal Channel 4's clothes?

"Yeah, I think so," he replies. "Channel 4 is doing less history and science nowadays, and its commitment to specialist factual has declined. And that's an opportunity for us."

So next year, his schedules will include a specially commissioned Andrew Motion poem, a nightly 45-minute "intelligent" documentary, and a philosophy series starring "the brainiest people in the world".

"I'd love Gorbachev to tell us what's happened to the socialist movement, even if it's subtitled," he says. "I want every week there to be something that makes you say, 'God, I'm surprised to see something that intelligent on Five'."

If highbrow is his big idea, sceptics might question why his current evening highlights include The World's Wildest Police Videos and Sex and the Settee.

But Chambers believes that he can have it both ways.

"At 7pm and 8pm, there's a large available audience if we do upmarket programming," he says. "None of these shows will get enormous ratings, but what they will get is publicity that will help reposition the channel. But by 11pm, the people still up are disproportionately young and we can aim programmes at that audience - although we do far less sex programming than ever in the past."

The late-night erotica scheduled by Dawn Airey, when programme director, has caused lasting damage, Chambers suggests. "We still suffer from the legacy of tits and arse, as a lot of people who don't watch Five regularly still perceive the channel as full of sex and lowquality programmes."

He seems unconcerned that Airey publicly attacked him in August for voicing similar views at the Edinburgh Television Festival. "She just launched into this tirade about how I've got to stop slagging her off," he recalls with a grin. "She apologised afterwards. But when she was here the output was Red Shoe Diaries, Blue Review ... It was really raunchy, dirty-mac-brigade TV."

Chambers has borrowed another trick from Channel 4, where he used to run science programmes and helped launch Big Brother. In 2005, Friday night on Five will become comedy night, with new home-grown shows and some expensively acquired US imports.

Chambers spent a reported £500,000 per episode on Joey, the Friends spin-off - a sum he says is exaggerated, but not too far off.

"I spent the money only having seen one show," he admits, acknowledging the enormous risk.

"But we knew it was the Friends team, and we knew the lead character inside out. And within three minutes you're laughing your socks off, which is a good sign."

GRAHAM Smith, who helped develop Little Britain for the BBC, has joined Five and is overseeing around 10 new comedy projects.

The results, Chambers says, "will be really channel-defining".

He has had his failures. Back to Reality, the £4.7 million reality show, achieved poor ratings, which Chambers attributes to newspaper sniping. "The word 'flop' became attached to it early on, and that becomes self-perpetuating. Yet the three weeks it was on, it repositioned us as the channel that had the youth profile of Channel 4, which in commercial terms was where we wanted to be."

He admits that it was derivative, and that he made a mistake scheduling it against strong opposition at 8pm. "I suppose I didn't have enough faith in the show to put it at 9pm or 10pm. But that wasn't the case when it came to The Farm."

The Farm, in which Rebecca Loos famously befriended a boar, generated lurid tabloid coverage as well as 37 (rejected) complaints to Ofcom. Don't such shows compromise his "upmarket" mission?

"The Farm was for young people, our poetry is very much for an older audience," he says. "A brand can accommodate a spectrum of shows. Besides, coverage of Rebecca and the pig didn't do us any damage. The Sun's interview with the pig certainly added 300,000 or 400,000 viewers, which can't be bad."

The show is likely to return next year: Chambers "loves" reality programming, and is actively seeking fresh new formats.

"The Farm was a genuine challenge, not like I'm a Celebrity with its bushtucker tasks, or Big Brother, where they sit around and do nothing in an artificial environment." As for Big Brother, he believes Channel 4 is in a difficult position. "They got so much attention this year because they made it so outrageous. But they also incurred the wrath of the regulators and all the channel's founding fathers. Next year they'll have to be more cautious - but that might get a smaller rating."

THE big question for Five is whether it merges with another broadcaster or goes it alone.

Either could work, Chambers believes - but he is relieved that a merger with Channel 4 was formally dropped two weeks ago.

"It was always going to be an uncomfortable partnership," he says. "And I think we can do a lot better. With Five, there's a very clear growth story, which 4 haven't got. On Freeview, the platform increasing at the fastest rate, we're regularly doing 10 per cent [of audience share]. If Freeview becomes the dominant platform for viewing terrestrial TV, we'll be the second biggest commercial broadcaster after ITV1."

Five is also likely to announce its own digital strategy within a few months. "It could be one channel, it could be four or five," he says. "Yes, we're coming to the party late, but as a broadcaster reaching almost seven per cent of the population, the cross-promotion potential for new channels is enormous."

As for his own future, Chambers is reluctant to think too far ahead.

His career has been "a whole sequence of luckinessses", ever since his friendship with the Marquis of Bath's daughter at Oxford gave him diary stories that led to newspaper work.

Still, how did he rise so high so young? "The thing about TV," he reflects, "is that age doesn't matter.

Nothing really matters - apart from how well your programmes perform. But I'd like to think I've got another two or three years here."

(Evening Standard, December 1, 2004)

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