However, Young has been selected as part of the first team in training over the last two days and is understood to have risen to the task impressively. Young, 26, only made his debut for England this summer when he was a late call-up to the tour of the United States and even then he played a total of just 18 minutes during two friendly matches as a substitute against the host nation and Colombia.

“We will definitely use the technology in Germany if the experiment works,” said Blatter Fifa will make a final decision next month.. The Charlton Athletic right-back Luke Young looks set to be Sven Goran Eriksson’s surprise choice to start for England against Wales in the World Cup qualifier tomorrow – and charged with the crucial job of marking Ryan Giggs. So the position has not changed as far as we are concerned.”Blatter also announced last night that Fifa will use goal-line technology at next year’s World Cup in Germany if a trial run at the Under-17 World Championship in Peru, which run, from 16 September to 2 October, proves a success.A “smartball” system has been developed whereby balls fitted with a microchip will send a signal to the referee when they have crossed the line. But an SFA spokesman last night said: “Fifa have said before that this is a matter for the British associations to decide. We are not currently party to any discussions on this and we have made our views entirely clear about an Olympic team. We have had a working party looking at the options and we will come forward with those and see what is the best way to achieve unanimity.”Scotland’s reluctance to get involved may now change because Glasgow is bidding to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games and will need the support of the BOA.

We would hope people will be open-minded about this and certainly Fifa have made that position clear. Davies, the FA’s representative on the British Olympic Association and the head of a working group looking at ways of fielding a British team in 2012, said: “What Blatter has said is welcomed by those of us who believe we have a positive contribution to make to football and the Olympics. The development raises the prospect of the likes of Wayne Rooney teaming up with the cream of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland in London in 2012, with a possible final at Wembley.Argentina are the reigning Olympic champions after beating Paraguay 1-0 in Athens last year.The FA executive director David Davies welcomed Blatter’s remarks. It can be a mixed team, it can be from just one of the home nations, whatever they want to do.”Britain qualify automatically as Olympic hosts, but it is unlikely there will be a British Olympic football team after 2012 because no united British team plays in the European Under-21 Championship, which acts as the qualifiers.The Great Britain team is limited to players aged Under-23 but three over-age players are allowed. He said: “We have confirmed in writing that they have to provide a Great Britain team for the 2012 Olympics, but the four British associations will not lose the rights and privileges acquired back in 1947.
“They will play with one team but it is up to them how they do it. Blatter said that Fifa had given written guarantees that fielding a host British team will not interfere with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland maintaining their separate identities. The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, has confirmed that a Great Britain football team will compete in the 2012 Olympics and their participation will not affect the home nations’ separate representation on the game’s world governing body.

When it came to a proper understanding of sport, some were eventually found out by television scrutiny; Hackett among them. An entertainer, a pedlar of dreams, accuracy wasn’t his strong point.Sports books have come on a bit since the days when each was dismissed by an editor’s avuncular, “Now remember, we’re aiming for young adults, say 12 to 15.”But books are a reflective form; for reasons that range from art to production schedules, news and comment is a different business A business short on humility.. Firm in the belief that sport was meant to be fun, he was from an era when sports writers were constantly instructed on their unimportance.A generation of sports editors preached anti-ego sermons Nobody cares about you, your busted dreams Not a happy group, I thought, listening to their complaints. “Relax,” a famed sports columnist, Desmond Hackett of the Daily Express, used to say.

Hackett made up more fairy tales than Hans Christian Anderson, but, to my knowledge, nobody suffered from his inventions. Club against club, player against player, recrimination and protest. Analysis without the responsibility of winning and losing comes easily to them.No wonder that some of us older guys turn wearily to the sports pages One dispute quickly follows another. But listen to some and you would think that only lack of opportunity prevented them from turning out in the Premiership.

They came across to me as well meaning, committed, hard working and introspectively critical. If anything, they were not arrogant enough, and wonder now whether more could have been made of the landslide governments.I was struck also by how much the former advisers liked Blair personally, even those who were frustrated by his rootless pragmatism and the sometimes chaotic informality of the working arrangements. Significantly, Mulgan had worked with Brown in the past.These advisers have been the source of raging controversy for a long time Ministers are scared of them Some civil servants disapprove of them. Mulgan suggests that during a period when there was no significant opposition, the Treasury in some ways was the opposition, keeping Downing Street on its toes, raising informed questions that no one else dared to asked. Only Mulgan fully appreciates the stormy genius of the relationship between Blair and Brown, but from an illuminating point of view. Liddle worries that the approach to the euro devised by Brown – we will only join once the five tests are met – prevented other ministers from putting a pro-European case.

Wall says his polite notes to the Chancellor on policy matters were not welcomed in the Treasury. Blair’s economics adviser, Derek Scott, confirms that often no one in Downing Street knew the details of budgets until shortly before their delivery. Mulgan says that they knew that Alastair Campbell was writing a diary aimed at publication long before the news reached the media As a result they were more careful in what they said. Mulgan would ban the publication of diaries from Downing Street insiders, and believes that policy-making would be better as a result.But the biggest constraint was the presence of the mighty Chancellor. He believes that the diarists in Downing Street constrained such creative exchanges. More widely, Mulgan points out that the best decisions surface from candid debate. Wall and Liddle accept that the Euro-sceptic newspapers influenced the direction of European policy, although less than Blair’s relationship with Gordon Brown.

Fifth – and no, it is not meant as an insultLondon IrishDirector of rugby: Brian SmithCaptain: Ryan StrudwickAlong with Leeds and Northampton, the Exiles have recruited boldly – an irony that will not be lost on Gary Gold, last season’s coach, who bemoaned the lack of star quality at the club before upping sticks and returning to South Africa. Can things be pulled together in time for a meaningful assault on the title? Maybe, maybe not That’s the fun of it. There is no shortage of quality at Welford Road, but there is more than a suspicion that this will be a transitional season, with all the quirks and cock-ups that generally occur under such circumstances.Warm welcomes Leo Cullen (Leinster), Shane Jennings (Leinster), Alejandro Moreno (Brive), Ian Nimmo (Heriots FP).Fond farewells Neil Back (retired), John Holtby (released), Martin Johnson (retired), Tom Ryder (Saracens).The tea leaves say… A new coach, a new captain and a new look to the back row, where Shane Jennings has been summoned from Ireland to perform the Neil Back role on the open side. Sixth – maybe higher if the backs catch fire.LeicesterHead coach: Pat HowardCaptain: Martin CorryAh, very interesting, Mr Bond. With Justin Marshall loading the bullets, the likes of Tom Biggs and David Doherty should be well worth watching.Warm welcomes Gordon Bulloch (Glasgow), Justin Marshall (Canterbury, NZ), Roland Reid (London Irish), Nathan Thomas (Cardiff Blues).Fond farewells Diego Albanese (retired), Phil Christophers (Castres), Duncan Hodge (Edinburgh), Mark Regan (Bristol).The tea leaves say…

The lovable Welshman’s long-running project at Headingley is beginning to bear fruit, as the outstanding success of his latest recruiting mission indicates, and it would be no great surprise if Leeds enjoyed their best Premiership season. A rugged seventh seems a reasonable bet.LeedsDirector of rugby: Phil DaviesCaptain: Stuart HooperRugby union may be the third game in town – fourth, now that cricket has become the new sex – but does Davies care? Does he hell. If Ryan gets them fit and Phil Vickery gets himself back on the field, who knows?Warm welcomes Ludovic Mercier (Pau), Peter Richards (Wasps), Mike Tindall (Bath), Rob Thirlby (Penzance).Fond farewells Christo Bezuidenhout (Blue Bulls, SA), Chris Fortey (Worcester), Seti Kiole (Clermont Auvergne), Alex Page (Bedford).The tea leaves say… Gloucester have recruited well, however, and should win a majority of the punch-ups by knock-out. The Big Bad Wolf was incandescent at some of the Cherry and White performances last time out and now he is the main man he will be even less inclined to put up with second best. It’s sad, but someone has to finish 12th.GloucesterHead coach: Dean RyanCaptain: Adam BaldingOne of these fine days, the menacing Ryan will allow his anger to get the better of him and take the field himself.

But being right and being good enough are not necessarily one and the same thing, and Bristol look worryingly lightweight up front, despite the return of the ever-combative Mark Regan. They will miss every hair on the head of their erstwhile line-out organiser, Jim Brownrigg.Warm welcomes Mark Denney (Castres), Brian Lima (Munster), Mariano Sambucetta (Brive), Roy Winters (Harlequins).Fond farewells Jim Brownrigg (London Welsh), Hentie Martens (released), Luke Nabaro (Doncaster), Ed Pearce (retired).The tea leaves say… The question mark concerns the backs’ ability to give the ugly mugs full value for their efforts. Olly Barkley will cut a dash in midfield and there are new wings in the intelligent David Bory and the seriously rapid Michael Stephenson. Bory may be past his best, though, and Stephenson is already injured.Warm welcomes David Bory (Castres), Andy Dunne (Harlequins), Pieter Dixon (Western Province, SA), Michael Stephenson (Newcastle).Fond farewells Brendon Daniel (Pau), Robbie Fleck (retired), Jonathan Humphreys (retired), Geraint Lewis (Bristol).The tea leaves say… Anything short of top three will provoke an inquest.BristolHead coach: Richard HillCaptain: Matt SalterMore realistically financed than at any point in the professional era and painstakingly prepared by the highly rated Hill, this season’s newcomers have done everything right for more than a year now. A pedigree breakaway specialist, he will give London Irish a new dimension.JUSTIN MARSHALL Scrum-half.

And the Conservatives paid a price for failing to get the right answer in 1997, 2001 or 2003. On each occasion, Labour feared Kenneth Clarke the most, and on each occasion the Conservatives would not have him as leader, mainly because he was pro-European.

Having got the answer wrong three times, the solution now being urged on the Tory party by an enthusiastic press has the deceptive attraction of simplicity.

Kenneth Clarke would have been the right answer the last three times – he must be the right answer now. But what if the answer to the question has changed? It was all very well in 1994. The opinion polls were clear: Tony Blair was the most powerful anti-Conservative weapon at Labour’s disposal. The polls are not so clear now.Indeed, they were not all that clear in October 2003, when Tory MPs deposed Iain Duncan Smith. Clarke was not a serious contender then because his views on Europe would have turned the Tory party back into a cartoon playground brawl starring such cartoon characters as Wild Bill Cash and John “The Vulcan” Redwood. When a middle-aged man in the public eye discovers that he has been chosen to act out a bedroom farce in his life for the amusement of the rest of us, there is nothing that he can do except blunder gamely on, his trousers around his ankles.terblacker aol
More from Terence Blacker. There are few more hilarious spectacles than a middle-aged man so desperate to get his end away that he pays a terrible price in terms of his career, image and, above all, dignity.

(Inexplicably, female sexual desperation is less inherently amusing, something to which those of us in favour of gender equality might usefully attend).We enjoy reading about these erotic disasters not because some clammily intimate need has to be expurgated – frankly, the images which some of them conjure up are rather less than aphrodisiac – but because life is dull, and laughter, even if it is a touch heartless, is to be treasured.Unlike the French, so po-faced and self-conscious about their much discussed affaires, the English can see the connection between desire and humour, between seductiveness and vulnerability. It is enough to point out that it is tired old tosh, this idea that to the south of the Channel resides a race of masterly sophisticated lovers while, on this side, we are giggling, bony-kneed incompetents. It is true that, unlike the French, we feel no need to boast pathetically about our fragrant mistresses, our suave cinq ?ept arrangements, but that is because we are blessed with an erotic confidence of which many other nations are jealous.So it would be unwise for Sven Goran Eriksson to turn to a grumpy French journalist for reasons as to why this is such a strange country. Instead, he should consider the great gallery of well-known bonkers and bunglers in which he now finds himself. What possibly could his private turmoil have in common with that of a former home secretary, a veteran writer, an actor and a Spectator columnist? Why were they all so keenly followed in the press and, in the case of one of them, dramatised no less than three times?The answer is, surely, that each of these stories is fantastically funny. All we can do, tragically, is to open our papers and read, with steam coming out of our ears, about the exciting private lives of public figures.Agnes Poirier, the London correspondent of Lib?tion, recently gathered up these tired old theories for a warmed-over article about the English and sex We are repressed and therefore obsessed, don’t you know. We keep our erotic natures locked away in the closet, expurgating them occasionally through humour.

It will also be the first time the Tottenham Hotspur player has appeared at the Millennium Stadium and, despite the injuries in the Welsh squad, he expects more from them than in the meeting last October.”I think they were disappointed with the way they played,” he said of Wales’ performance and 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford.

Paul Robinson believes that tomorrow’s World Cup qualifier between England and Wales will bear little resemblance to international football. “It will be different,” the 25-year-old said yesterday, “inasmuch as it will be like a Cup tie.”

Indeed, the England goalkeeper likened it to the defunct Home Nations championships “And every country likes beating England,” he said. One of the guys ahead of me was Jamie Hughes – and he’s playing junior football now.”It was frustrating but I just worked on making sure that my technique was as good as it could be, and everything would take care of itself.” Now a Buffon-sized 6ft 4in, Gordon is ready to tackle the tall order of defying the full force of Italy.. At the age of 15 – having become a goalkeeper “because I couldn’t run, it’s too much effort” – Gordon stood only 5ft 9in and feared Hearts would not take him on because of his size.

“They had other bigger, stronger keepers so I was almost looking for another club.”It was a difficult stage and I had offers from lower-league clubs. “It showed the resilience in the squad.”He has shown the same quality along the road to establish himself as Smith’s first choice. “I’ve studied videos of his free-kicks this week and I see how I should set up the wall. But against us, he put one in each corner, so he has both sides in his locker.”The defeat by Italy came on Walter Smith’s debut as successor to Berti Vogts but the recovery in morale, which began with a strong second-half performance, has gathered momentum “We took a lift from that,” Gordon said. “There’s not a lot you can do about Pirlo except hope for the best: get your wall right and hope he misses one sooner or later,” he said. “There was so much going on that it was only afterwards that it hit home that I had played in one of the world’s greatest stadiums.”Like Douglas, Gordon was beaten by a set-piece special from Andrea Pirlo.

“I could see there were several boats fighting it out behind us,” said bow man Steve Williams. “We had to pick up our pace but we didn’t need to go into a full dress rehearsal for the final.”Smith led for 450m before the Olympic champion Olaf Tufte fronted the charge which left him behind. The lightweight single scullers Jo Hammond and Zac Purchase also qualified for finals tomorrow, while the heavy scullers Annie Vernon and Colin Smith and the pair of Tom Broadway and Phil Simmons will contest the B finals for places 7 to 12.
Steve Williams, Peter Reed, Alex Partridge and Andy Hodge had three quarters of a length of clear water behind them after 500 metres, an already familiar racing pattern. Britain’s coxless four secured their 12th consecutive victory in the semi-finals of the World Championships on the Nagara river here yesterday. Are wild packs specifically exempted, or are their activities not regarded in law as cruel?D J WALKERHENBURY, CHESHIRE. I wonder if the resettlement of the grey wolf “to control the red deer and roe deer populations in Scotland” might contravene the law against hunting with dogs. The well-known description “this other Eden, demi-paradise”, irritatingly familiar in this family due to its constant use at weddings by best men who think it’s never been used before, comes from John of Gaunt’s dying speech in Richard II.SUSAN EDENWANTAGE, OXFORDSHIRE Just souls in Limbo Sir: June Tower (letter, 31 August) writes: “I have yet to meet a Roman Catholic or any other member of the Christian churches who can tell me what happened to souls before the birth of Jesus Christ.” The catechism – learnt by heart by thousands of Catholic children – instructed us as follows: “Limbo is a place of rest where the souls of the just who died before Christ are detained.” I always knew that this information would come in handy one day.JAMES PEARSONCARDIFF Cruel hunters Sir: I was fascinated by the report on the reintroduction of wild species into the UK (30 August), an admirable project.

Now, as we have become accustomed to just how bad Blair is at guiding the future of the country, can we hope that the Conservative Party sees sense and embraces what appears to be their only chance, the charisma of Ken Clarke? The government of this country needs a credible opposition.PETER M WILSONABERDEEN Shakespeare’s paradise Sir: If you are going to attribute quotations, take a moment to look them up and get them right (“In search of Eden”, 31 August). I was also pleased that the Conservatives seemed intent on self-destruction, appearing to shy away from any of their MPs who had even a chance of regaining power. After reading your article on bad interviews with “rock” stars (29 August), I can only assume that Luciano Pavarotti is in serious trouble as he was quoted as saying, “All journalists are shits”!GERRY COSGROVEWAINSCOTT, KENT Tories’ only chance Sir: Not long ago, I was wonderfully pleased that at last we had a Labour government. I would suggest one on 1 December as a pre-Christmas jolly.DR TERRY ALLCOTTWALTON, LEICESTERSHIRE Insult to journalists Sir: Apparently Ken Livingston faces charges from the independent Adjudication Panel for England for “treating a journalist with disrespect” (report, 31 August). This could replace the anti-Catholic bonfire night as a multicultural celebration involving Diwali and other religious celebrations around that time. Most European countries seem to have at least one a month, so let’s have two in the late autumn.I would suggest one on the last Monday in October.

To do away with them all would not only shed the clarity that many give, but would deprive us of the pleasure to be gained from discovering the richness of their origins.STUART LIVINGSTONECARDIFF Bank holidays in the autumn Sir: While I agree with the suggestion of Ray Edwards (letter, 1 September) that there should be another bank holiday between now and Christmas, I cannot support the notion that it should replace the May holiday.Britain has far fewer national holidays than most of our continental neighbours and we should be looking to increase the current eight to at least ten. However many of the similarly sounding words have different meanings because of their different origins. Perhaps that’s the good news.DAVID HUGHESLONDON N14 The richness of English spellings Sir: Masha Bell (letter, 27 August) asserts that there is never any good reason for spelling identically sounding words differently. Never is a dangerous word.She has a point with words such as practice/practise, variants from the same root. But beer and bier? Bare and bear?Context can often give meaning, as Masha Bell pointed out in the case of “bar”. I wonder if America is comparing what happened to the Twin Towers with climate change, and wondering what to fear most.Oil supplies were one casualty of the wind and rain. Whether or not this particular event was enhanced by global warming, things will get worse.Events have thrown Professor King’s statement that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism into stark relief.

After coping with the death of her mother, she split from her long-term partner, Del Palmer, a musician. And at a rate of one album every four years, she could hardly be accused of burning herself out.But since 1993, there has been virtual silence, punctuated by infrequent public appearances, such as receiving a lifetime achievement award from Q – at which she only agreed to be photographed with John Lydon, the former Johnny Rotten Her personal life appeared to have intervened. Both featured a diverse and difficult to categorise blend of styles matched by her often surreal and literate lyrics. But her fans cite her bravery in often talking about subjects long before they became fashionable – gay relationships, for example.Many see those as her artistic peak with the subsequent albums The Sensual World, in 1989 and The Red Shoes, in 1993 both being more hit and miss affairs. There have been only a handful of one-off appearances.Although her first album, The Kick Inside, went triple platinum, her artistic reputation among the cognoscenti hinges on two albums in the early 1980’s: The Dreaming, released in 1982 was the first she produced herself and Hounds of Love, 1985, produced on the 48-track studio she had built at her home. Curiously, she was always a reluctant life performer, doing only a handful of pub gigs with the KT Band in 1976 during her EMI training days and one tour, in 1979. Possibly her reluctance to tour afterwards stemmed from the death of her lighting director, who fell to his death on stage during a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon.

All her early singles were accompanied by imaginative videos, which made full use of her looks and her ability as a dancer. Imagine
the right hand held no knife, and was held up, empty, like the left hand is
It wouldn’t be a suicide picture. The failing gesture
of the raised left hand is beyond interpretation.

This is an image of someone whose life has moved outside human reach and
understanding She doesn’t act out a moment of decision or crisis. The
action of the figure has a slow drift, a slow sideways sway to it. The head
leans to the side with a look of inexpressible mildness. Her body may find itself diagrammed, but it
responds to this fix with the least rigid behaviour imaginable. Nothing
stiff, nothing staccato, nothing dramatic or heroic or agonised.

It might have given us a spectacle of
rigid, determined, unflinching, inexorable Roman heroism. Or, again, it
might have looked trapped in its predicament, stretched out, pinned down,
crucified on its dilemma-diagram.

Rembrandt’s Lucretia does neither. How does the body respond?

Another body in another picture might have acted out the structure with firm
and definite gestures of its own. There is also the body that inhabits this
structure, that’s caught in this fix.

When people don’t accept your work as an artist, it’s very emotional. She didn’t want that [rejection] for me and my brother.” He was still sharing a room with his younger brother, Jason (aka Jigzag), who appears as a producer on The Trinity.Sean’s first attempt at music bore the stamp of a serious young man. Aside from his father’s imprisonment, he had experienced bereavement when his first girlfriend (a fellow swimmer) died from a brain tumour a year after they split up.During our interview, he sings an early lyric a cappella. “It’s an alarm dis, it ah di ghetto story, you read about in the Star, watch it ‘pon TV. It’s an alarm dis, di ghetto story, you read it in magazine watch it on movie.

Pamela she well hungry, only have enough money to feed pickney, she send Steve and Johnny to find dem daddy, daddy him drunk and spend di money, they haffe walk ‘pon the road and beg fi money…”It was Garth Henriques, emerging from jail, who gave his son his first break, introducing him to his friend Cat Coore, the bassist of the reggae group Third World and getting him into the recording studio. An old schoolfriend – a Wolmer’s table tennis champion – had become a rising artist called Don Yute and had formed a “crew” with his friends Kid Kurrup and Daddigon, the latter having grown up around Bob Marley’s Hope Road home as the son of a Rastafarian. Moms was like ‘Forget that, forget that.’ She’s an artist and it was hard for her She has two kids and was alone and was trying to paint. “She was trying to encourage me for the piano lessons and I would try to build back these riddims. He was drawn to the dancehalls downtown, spotting musical heroes such as the gruff-voiced Shabba Ranks at the famous outdoor club House of Leo, a venue where an elastic-limbed dancer called Gerald “Bogle” Levy was making a name for himself.Fran Henriques had enlisted her son for piano lessons but Sean Paul persuaded her to buy him a Casio keyboard from a flea market and he attempted to recreate some of the digital rhythms characteristic of Jamaican dancehall music “I pleaded for it,” he recalls. I was 13 and I came 13th.” Sean Paul (a freestyle and backstroke specialist) broke into the Jamaican swimming and water-polo teams, enjoying the glamour and prestige of leaving his classes with a sports bag to fly off to Mexico or Barbados for international events.Meanwhile his aunt had established a sound system, Sparkles Disco, and Sean Paul, who helped her by carrying speaker boxes, developed a taste for partying and music. I got a call to him and he said, yeah, he saw us diving in and he was watching but he couldn’t see the end of the race because it went round a corner It was jellyfish everywhere and everyone got stung.

Garth Henriques had, as a teenager, been an Across the Harbour champion. “He was in prison and the prison is right on the harbour, so he could see me. Knowing that my father and mother were champions meant that I had a lot to look up to, to try and be a champion for Jamaica for myself,” he says. “I’m still a swimmer and the swim team are my closest friends.”In what was clearly a poignant moment, he participated in Kingston’s Across the Harbour swim, a two-and-a-half mile race in the shadow of the General Penitentiary, where his father was being held. In private school I had taken that for granted.”Barely had he started this new phase of his life than Sean’s father, Garth, was sent to prison, and served six years.During his difficult teenage years Sean Paul looked to the swimming pool at the National Stadium to give him a sense of order and ambition. Garth Henriques had been a champion long-distance swimmer and national water-polo player (making his fall from grace all the more painful). Fran, Sean Paul’s mother, before she became a respected watercolourist, had been Jamaica’s 100-metre butterfly champion Sean was at the heart of Jamaica’s swimming set “That was my life as a kid It taught me a lot of discipline Exercise does a lot for the mind.

That kind of stuff happened regularly when I was a kid.”Sean (only ever called Sean Paul when his father was scolding him) admits he was “not very good at school” and at the age of 13 he was moved to Wolmer’s, a “ruffians’ school” further downtown, where he was quickly identified as a wayward rich kid and forced to fight the bullies “Wolmer’s was a culture shock There was a lot of fighting There was 40-odd students in a classroom It shocked me because public school was not taken care of. He came from a good family but didn’t do a lot of schooling,” he says. “We had to go and get him and pick him up from the ghettos where he would be burning a chalice [marijuana pipe] with his friends. The Henriques name is a noted one in Jamaican society and Sean Paul was enrolled in the private Hillel Academy, a Jewish “uptown” prep school (though he is not Jewish, his father is part Portuguese-Jewish and part African-Caribbean and his mother is a mixture of Jamaican-Chinese and English).As his ancestry is complex, so was his early home life “My father was a hustler. It is also this more complex side to his personality that he chooses to focus on during a frank meeting at London’s Sanderson hotel, two days after he unveiled The Trinity inSoho.Sean Paul Henriques was born in St Andrew’s hospital, Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up in the middle-class district of Norbrook. This achievement took him from Mexico to Zanzibar but presented him with the challenge of how to follow it up.

Simple chandeliers in black or red crystal start at around £40 from Heals ( www.heals.co.uk; 020-7636 1666), while Grand Illusions ( www.grandillusions.co.uk; 020 8607 9446) sells a very pretty painted wire Fantasie Chandelier, £36, with matching wall sconces, £21.50.If budget is no problem, Glory Chandeliers ( www.glory-chandeliers ; 020-7633 0696), a family-run business in SE1, can supply antique, handmade Italian chandeliers from £2,000. Need to spice up a tired love-life? Want to impress a new partner? Then it’s time to introduce a touch of romance into your bedroom interior. Some of the things you need to consider include floral motifs, tactile, sensuous textures and soft, seductive lighting. Think ornate French romantic, sluttish Moulin Rouge or irreproachable English country virgin, and shake your boudoir, baby…
LIGHTINGA chandelier will provide an exciting, twinkly light, while wall-lights and table lights cast a softer glow and create suggestive shadows.

The electronic gambling commission has reported a £750,000 profit.Buyers pay 5.5 per cent stamp duty and 4 per cent conge (a property tax) along with 1 per cent document duty for homes worth over £150,000. The house prices and new industries are extremely modern, but almost everything else on the island stopped in the 1960s.The lowdownCost of living: You pay £200,000 for a two-bedroom flat near the cricket pitch or £450,000 for a four-bedroom house in good condition. A large stone house with an acre of land and coastal views will be £625,000. One-offs such as converted churches or forts will be more than £1m.Attractions: Cricketer Ian Botham, commentator John Arlott and Tory grandee Edward du Cann used to live here but in the absence of celebrities, there are two 1938 London Underground carriages that criss-cross the island on an hourly basis.Downside: Alderney’s eccentric property market is hard to call – some properties find buyers within a month but one large home has been on the market for 13 years.How to get there: There are daily direct flights from Southampton, Bournemouth and Brighton, but other locations need connecting flights, usually from Jersey. Travel to or from London takes five hours.USP: This place is Miss Marple meets The Prisoner. There are no parking meters on the main street, the airport lounge has a box of unfinished knitting that locals toy with while waiting for flights, and the police Land Rover’s number plate is 999..

The Stornoway Way is an entropic tale of energies sparked to life and quenched by landscape, language and culture. “We do not live in the back of beyond, we live in the very heart of beyond,” notes Robert Stornoway, the maniacally amusing, melancholy Hebridean hero of Kevin MacNeil’s novel. And so he is here as he projects the terrible loneliness of a don who belatedly realises that if liking people is half the battle, this was, in his case, “the wrong half”..

Unable to hurt the feelings of a nubile sexpot, he succumbs to her seduction, and I’ll never forget his priceless, slightly flattered, intensely panic-stricken look as she musses his hair into an impromptu Rod Stewart look.Russell Beale is absolutely matchless, though, at portraying characters who kick over all their emotional defences and retain a quiet, matter-of-dignity as they face up to humiliating truths. At least I think I am”), he is hilarious at the farcical aspects of Philip’s plight. Philip’s engagement to the beautiful, preeningly malicious young graduate, Celia (a spot-on performance from Anna Madeley) only starts to feel genuine when it begins to unravel horribly.But Hampton’s insight that Philip’s liking everybody through terror would wind up leave him as isolated as Alceste, who hates everybody from pride, is brilliantly realised by Russell Beale.Playing a dumpy, chronically apologetic and indecisive don (“My trouble is, I’m a man of no conviction. The kind of writer who has been forced to abandon the left wing for tax reasons is lampooned with an almost counter-productive heavy-handedness in the velvet-suited, strenuously “shocking” Braham (Simon Day) whose new novel is about a social worker who sees the light and becomes a merchant banker. In his place, we have Russell Beale’s Philip, a bachelor don who anxiously likes everyone and has to be a philologist because he is incapable of the critical judgements needed to teach literature.Pitch-perfect in terms of period feel, Grindley’s production can’t disguise the fact that the piece operates on different levels of achievement. The insularity of the milieu is satirically underlined by the political backdrop: the assassination of the Prime Minister and the majority of the Cabinet are ludicrously not enough to wrest the attention of the dons and literati from their own self-absorbed concerns.Hampton’s master-stroke is to put at the heart of the play a reverse-image of Moli?’s Alceste, the man who takes scathing hatred to an extreme. For the hypocritical hothouse of Louis XIV’s court, we have the backbiting, bitchy world of modern academe.

Now he’s portraying a philology lecturer in Christopher Hampton’s The Philanthropist, a play from 1970 which is receiving a welcome revival at the Donmar Warehouse in David Grindley’s sharply etched and highly entertaining production.
As the title suggests, this early work is a clever, witty inversion of Moli?’s great comedy The Misanthrope. He was the hapless astrophysicist in Humble Boy and a sublime mix of donnish self-importance and tortuous insecurity as the professor of moral philosophy in Stoppard’s Jumpers. For many in the audience, these observations and the vague menace of violence will seem all too familiar.To 1 October (020-7565 5000). Simon Russell Beale certainly knows how to go to work on an egg-head – and he seems to have cornered the market in bumbling, heart-injured academics. Nevertheless, Rachael Blake, Tanya Moodie, Paul Hickey and Neil Dudgeon give expression and humour to Crimp’s crisp writing.