Cameras flash and the fashion world applauds while eating cheese straws and drinking Lanson champagne. These are the British Fashion Awards – the Oscars of the designer rag trade.

It is all taking place in the tented world of the Duke of York’s barracks. The audience wears black and glitter and off-the-shoulder creations and looks as if it could swap places with the catwalk folk. And then there are the proper models, the 34-22-34 ones who say they won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 and earn up to £1,000 a minute, eclipsing their designer bosses. Naomi Campbell, Helena Christiansen, Tatjana Patiz and Linda Evangelista to be precise. This evening they appear swan-like, sometimes carrying poodles. Without them, any show would lack lustre.

At 10.30 the master of ceremonies announces: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please stand.’ Is this for Naomi, the woman they say expects to be treated like royalty? No . . . it’s Princess Michael of Kent, wearing a glamorous nun’s habit of non-English design.

Vivienne Westwood has won the British Designer of the Year title for the second year running. ‘I want to say thank you to these models, who are worth every penny,’ she says.

The women with pouting lips are seated. Their fees have quadrupled in as many years and they expect to be flown first-class while sales of clothes are falling in these recession-hit times.

Is it true models don’t speak, have no way of projecting their personalities and push lettuce leaves around their plates? And will Helena Christiansen demand a smorgasbord?

A cassoulet of wild mushrooms and asparagus appears. Linda Evangelista, with pimento hair, lights up a Marlboro. And the divine Vivienne Westwood, in a dress printed with Fragonard cherubs, tells me the girls are super. ‘Naomi is charming,’ she says. ‘They’re all professionals, always on time, not prima donnas. They’ve got a marvellous theatrical sense. It costs £5,000 to advertise in a glossy magazine, but with a show you get all this free publicity. When I saw Linda wearing my pink, my heart was beating. To see your clothes on this dream, this dishiest of dishes . . . but if I saw any of them in jeans, I wouldn’t think them that great.’

Princess Michael holds court, later on little clusters of beau monde gather around her. Many of the models weren’t keen on meeting the Royal. ‘Just not interested. They wanted to go back to their hotel,’ said one of their entourage.

Boy George whirls around. His comment? ‘Beauty fades, but talent lives on.’

I meet a supermodel in a Rifat dress. Naomi Campbell, serene and incandescently beautiful, is enjoying a successful evening and a cigarette. Nearby Linda Evangelista looks bored. She smokes cigarettes. When you look like that, you don’t have to do anything. She thaws. ‘I came as a favour for British Vogue and to support British designers. My services were free,’ she tells me. ‘”And what is she wearing? She gives the frostiest of frosty looks. ‘Armani’.

It’s 12.30. People are starting to leave. — And, suddenly, the supermodels have gone. Do they need beauty sleep?

There’s a police car outside the hospital tonight. In front of it, an alcoholic sits on a plastic chair, can of Special Brew in hand. His friend – a man with a savaged face – goes into the hospital, pushing through the transparent plastic swing doors.

This is the scene in casualty at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell one recent weekend night. It is one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in London.

It’s a deprived hospital in a deprived area, but is known for its excellent nursing and medical care. And it was here that they just had the Walworth Bell pub shootings – six shootings – six acute emergencies in one hour, and with new doctors who had been in the job for only three days. It’s 9.30 pm and already there is a queue of walking wounded that will take at least a couple of hours to deal with. A sign on the cream walls says: ‘There is a . . . hour wait to see the doctor. Emergencies seen first.’ The empty space has been covered with blank card.

The recent record time for someone waiting in casualty for a bed was 26 hours – with a fractured leg. But at the moment, things aren’t too bad. And people seem resigned to long waits.

The casualty patients – anyone who is not acute – queue on benches in front of a partition. A blurred and soundless TV is set up high and on the floor are cigarette stubs, drink cans and litter. A baby is crying: staff say they try to see children in half the waiting time. Alongside the infant, a cardiac case, with deathly face, is wheeled down the corridor. Just inches behind the casualty queue, the other side of the screen, are six patients lined up on stretcher trollies. One woman writhes in agony with renal stones. She has an ochre-yellow face.

Next to the trollies, in this smaller than small casualty area, people are examined in one of three curtained cubicles – discussing their problems with the corridor – or one of the three cubicles. Nearby is the emergency room, where they take the unconscious, diabetic, cardiac, asthmatic and ‘trauma’ victims – for example stabbings and shootings – who need to go to theatre.

There’s room for five here, but in the last few months they’ve been accommodating eight – more than 100 beds were closed last year due to financial restraint. If someone dies in casualty, it is here (with perhaps an asthmatic child to the left and a chap with stab wounds to the right) that the relatives come to view the body behind curtains.

The nurses take calls on the emergency red phone – one RTA (road traffic accident) and a young man who has been critically beaten up. Yet tonight they say it’s really quiet.

Behind the reception area, out of the view of patients’ eyes, there is a blacklist on the wall of regular hospital abusers. And on the door there is a memo concerning a bogus female doctor who is operating in the area. An Asian man with a public school voice and what looks to have been a bottle smashed over his head comes to reception. His ear hangs off. ‘Human bite,’ the receptionist writes on his form. His boyfriend bit him. They refused even to be admitted to the same accident and emergency, so his lover has gone to Guy’s.

It’s 10.30 and the tramps have started to arrive for the night. Two dossers are fast asleep on the cushioned bench in the hallway. The nurses sometimes let them sleep off their drink on the trollies behind the screen: rather that than the men go out and injure themselves.

Wiflred is a regular and this is his second home (whether his first home is a fixed address is unclear.) He doesn’t come to be seen by a doctor, and brings his dog and squirrel and bottle of meths. If a fight is going on, he protects the staff.

Now they’re bleeping security. A man with a shaved head and a tracksuit, late forties, is punching fisticuffs in the air. He’s drunk and with a face full of aggro. His friend got beaten up, so he wants to bash up the nurses. Someone calms him down. Then he proceeds to stand in front of every trolley that they try to wheel through. He tells the nurse that he’s come to the hospital because he wants to become a Christian. Then he lies on the floor, head down on the red tiles, in front of reception.

‘Come on, go and sit in the corridor,’ says one of the ambulancemen. The aggressive man paces, threatens to beat up the staff, lolls his tongue out at the nurse, red eyes rolling, and hits his head. (It later turns out he has a psychiatric history – as do many of the patients who make their way across the road from the Maudsley.) At 2.30am, a staff nurse attempts to discharge him, medically fit. Her voice is rising – and he is jerking himself off through his tracksuit while she talks to him.

The nurses rush around and despite the stressed working conditions, there’s an amazing feeling of dedication and supportiveness. Morale may waver according to the bed situation, but the nurses are in reasonable spirits. To alleviate the problems, the hospital opened an emergency admissions ward with 20 beds in August, which cuts down emergency queuing. They are also planning a rehabilitation centre, which will free up even more beds.

At 11.35 three undertakers, grim faced and charcoal suited, come in to pick up a body. A boy pushes up against the reception glass. ‘I’ve got bad sunburn,’ he says. A woman arrives: ‘I think I’ve sprained my wrist.’ In emergency casualty, a policewoman emerges from a cubicle. She’s wearing a plastic apron. The staff are pressurised and she used to work in A and E – an unusual occurence, this – so she’s helping clean up the body of a young boy battered to death. The sister says she sees about one serious assault a week. Back in the reception office, a policeman is on the phone. ‘We’ve managed to identify the body, it’s Mark . . .’

Outside, a teenager keeps getting up from a trolley. He has overdosed on heroin. ‘I want to go ‘ome.’ The security guard keeps bringing him back. They’ve admitted one overdose each night this week. ‘Fackin’ ‘ell,’ he says. ‘You take too long to see me around ‘ere.’ Later on he walks out, on his fifth attempt. ‘Oh let him go,’ says the nurse. ‘We can’t keep on watching him.’

An ambulance has just knocked down a pedestrian. They bemoan the fact that the vehicle is now going to be off the road for three hours. The 999 calls are stacking up. They’re legally allowed only one patient in an ambulance – but a nurse says she saw seven getting out of one vehicle after a fight on New Year’s Eve.

Sid is one of the community of regulars. He has duly medicated himself before arriving. ‘Me and me mate was taking all sorts of pills.’ He has a cross tatooed on his forehead and a look of permanent mourning. He perks up to tell about the time he came to have his spleen taken out. That was when someone ‘who used to be a friend’ beat him up. Sid tells his war story with relish. He appears really to enjoy life – and its attendant attention – only when he’s ill. Tonight he’s in because he rode his pedal bike into a stationary vehicle when cycling around a corner .

His apparent enthusiasm is matched by that of Mr and Mrs Blidi, an Algerian couple, with their 22-month-old daughter Hannia. She wears Moslem head dress. ‘We all been here regularly,’ says Mr Blidi. ‘We go here, Guy’s or Westminster.’ Hannia fell down when she was in an aeroplane. She sleeps through her parents’ concern. One family bought their child in because she was having nightmares. The trouble is, GPs won’t go out in this area at night.

Nearby, a dear old lady – 90-plus with hennaed hair – lies wrapped in a red blanket. She looks spirited and her feet – bare and gnarled – protrude. She’s fallen over. The air smells deeply dank, of feet and the strong and acrid smell of anxiety sweat. There is no air conditioning. ‘Damn fool thing to do,’ her daughter, who lives with her, bellows. ‘What were you doing? Playing football?’ The daughter, wearing brick-coloured shorts and a vindictive expression, paces up and down. ‘People will think you’re loopy. They won’t be far wrong.’

It’s 3.45am. A lady who was mugged and has no money sits waiting for some coins from petty cash before she can go home. Inside, the nurses who work a nine-hour 23 minute shift remain. Outside, the police car has gone and three empty wheelchairs stand discarded.

Maverick and inspirational fashion designer who is a byword for the avant-garde and once jumped on a policeman’s back during a punch-up. Fervent and shy woman who is not afraid to shock and put punk, bondage and conical external bras on the catwalk. Humorous and scholarly lass who wore a fig leaf on her body suit on television and wants people to appreciate the intellectual curiosity behind her designs.

Enter, often on platform shoes, the weird and wonderful Vivienne Westwood; the erstwhile Punk Prophetess and Queen of Street Cred who is fed up with being dubbed a rebel.

‘I’m a bit tough looking today because I’m on my bike,’ she says in her soft northern accent. (Her intonation used to embarrass her, but now she’s more interested in what she says than how she says it.) For best, she currently wears her eponymous black velvet dress with Boulle – 18th century French furniture designer – print on it.

Right now she’s wearing polka-dot jeans – ‘how could I say I invented the polka dot? But I never saw a giant one until I started doing them’ – Azedine Alaia cap, rock-climbing boots, masculine ribbed camera and a leather thong around her waist, ‘which looks a bit like a whip’. She looks a mess. She’s wearing none of these in the picture because she didn’t want to be photographed. ‘It’s such a bore – I’d have to do my make-up and hair, which takes about one-and-a-half hours.’

The first impression is of a dizzy, gentle woman who is warm and friendly. She has an ageless face, marvellous cheek bones, pencilled eyebrows and pins in her hair. At the age of 35 she changed her blonde and spiky punk hairstyle and went reddish brown; now she has just gone blonde again. ‘So half of it is the colour of cabbage leaves with this other colour over it.’ Her eyes light with humour and she fiddles with her hairpin. ‘I like myself physically. I probably see all kinds of things in my face that other people don’t see – I think it’s very nice with all kinds of secrets and depth to it.’ She later says: ‘I know I’ve got these horrible saggy things around my chin – but I wouldn’t dream of having a face-lift or anything because I know I wouldn’t look like me.’

She rests her head on her hand, fingers across her brow. ‘I’ve amazing confidence in my looks – I think any man is either mad or stupid who wouldn’t prefer me to every other woman in the room, wherever I go!’ And how does she feel about her body? ‘That’s fine as well. I’ve always taken pleasure in it.’

She’s 50 years old, with a disco soul. ‘I don’t care about my age. If I were advertising in a lonely hearts column I’d say, ‘I have all the intellectual and sexual advantages of being a 50-year-old’.’ She’s a gorgeous woman: slightly dotty, warm, soft and unconventional with an extraordinary imagination. She sits relaxed, with open body language, and talks non stop – darting around in conversation seamlessly while she puffs on a Gauloise.

I ask if she could be a little briefer in her answers. ‘As Aldous Huxley said, ‘Brevity may be the soul of wit, but it can be the very body of untruth’.’ She laughs. ‘I prefer to tell the truth about everything,’ she says later. She thinks she’s very direct and honest.

How would she describe herself? ‘More than anything, I’m prepared to work for the future. I know it’s stupid to talk about horoscopes, but I’m a snake in the Chinese ones and I identify with that very long-term plotting sort of person.’

She says she wouldn’t want people to think she had an interest in matters mystical or religious. ‘The greatest function humans have is to be as critical as possible. That’s my function – but I wouldn’t say purpose because I don’t think we have a purpose apart from the ones we invent for ourselves,’ says the former teacher.

‘What am I meant to talk about? My virtues? My vices?’ She goes off to get a cigarette, claiming that it bores her to think about herself. I kept thinking she might be a prima donna, that she might throw a wobbly – but nothing like that happened and she remained scrupulously polite. ‘I think I’m kind. I’ve got a good sense of humour – I take pleasure in amusing myself and knowing that what amuses me will amuse others.’ She clearly enjoys making fun of herself. ‘More than anything at all really really really I am unorthodox. It’s like completely instinctive – I’m never satisfied to do things the way other people do them, never was.’ She’s also concerned about genius and style and being an artist.

Although pedagogic and serious, she seems light and content with herself. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m complacent.’ I don’t, just content. ‘I suppose that’s because I had a sane mother who loved me and thought me wonderful.’ Her mother was a cotton mill worker, her father a grocer. ‘The other reason is that I really don’t care about myself – and also because I’m doing what I want.’

Is she an anarchist? ‘I’ve been asked that – but it was such a long time ago that I’ve forgotten what I’m meant to say . . . I think I’m a civilised woman. I can’t imagine myself killing anyone – and you have to ask yourself that sort of question if you say you’re an anarchist.’

And is she eccentric? ‘Yes, undoubtedly – and proud to be so in such an age of conformity.’ Shy? ‘Well, funnily enough, I am shy until I get in front of people. I hardly ever use the telephone.’ Vulnerable? She appears to be so – and friends have described her as a marshmallow. ‘I don’t feel at all vulnerable – I never get upset about injustices to myself. I don’t care if I do get knocks, because I have faith in what I’m doing.’ She’s not rich. ‘But I think I’m going to be quite rich, possibly very rich. Oscar Wilde said, I never waste money, I spend it . . . My ambition is to have a salon, a base in the middle of town where you invite intellectuals to talk.’

And what about her relationships? She married dance hall manager Derek Westwood when she was 21; and she has a son by her erstwhile lover, former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. She gives brain stimulation priority over that of the body. ‘I don’t mind if I don’t have a relationship because I love to be on my own so much. But I’m a very loving person.’ She lives alone in Clapham, in the flat she’s had for 20 years. She’s choosy about men and often finds relationships too much of a compromise.

‘I’m quite happy not to have sex again until the day I die. I can manage without it.’ Don’t you like sex? ‘Oooh, I think it’s brilliant.’ She wants an uncomplicated relationship, but doesn’t have the time to look for one. ‘I wish men would proposition women more and that I could proposition men. I’ve tried, unsuccessfully, a little recently on somebody – but I’ve given up.’ (Little laugh.) ‘They say art and creativity are a sublimation of sexual drives – and maybe that satisfies me. You know, what do you call this thing where you do it yourself, you’ll have to give me the technical word, ah yes, masturbation – I find that very satisfactory.’

JESSICA is pummel pummel pummelling Lucia’s bare feet, her face creased with concentration. She reaches over for a bottle and, splosh, pours orange and cinnamon oil onto her hands and returns to her massaging.

Jessica is two-and-a-half years old. And Lucia – who was wearing Ninja Turtle slippers before they began – is much, much older. She’s three and a half. Jessica is giving Lucia a reflexology massage in the sunny garden, touching points in her feet to get a balance in the body’s energy, but not quite understanding this yet. Some of them laugh when they’re having their feet done, learning to do it two pairs at a time.

These are little people at Little People, London’s first – and only – holistic nursery school, where they have daily massage from a grown-up and reflexology and organic lunches, along with a combination of Montessori and traditional education. Where touch is allocated as much time as pre-reading, pre-writing and play.

Downstairs, through The Messy Room and past four knee-high loos in a room with no door, is The Quiet Room. Alexander, just two and wearing nappies, is listening to taped dolphin and whale sounds mixed with wind instruments and getting an all-over body massage from a big person called Molly Molloy Madigan. (She’s Irish.) He’s being gently stroked with orange oil to aid his digestion and lies there sucking his thumb and occasionally giving a mini grunt of satisfaction. It lasts 20 minutes and he falls asleep.

If a child is finding it difficult to settle into a project, Molly picks him up for a massage. One didn’t like it initially, but soon got into it. ‘Sometimes another watches. Teaching them to do it is very important, so they can care for each other,’ says Molly.

She had the idea for her school four years ago, and opened it last September. We’re now sitting talking on wooden chairs that stand probably eight inches off the ground, made by a religious community in Surrey who dedicate their lives to making furniture for children.

Little People was formerly the ground floor of Molly’s home – light, spacious and jolly – in her Victorian house in Archway. The nursery smells of essential oils which she burns every morning, rosewood and bergamot today. They are summer smells which help to lift the spirits and keep us happy, she says. Certainly the atmosphere is calm and cheery, no tears even as the children are dropped off. (They don’t have a pick-up service.) Molly’s wearing Japanese massage sandals – you know, those funny things that have rubber spikes that stick up into the soles to do good works on your feet – and tartan-pattern cotton trousers. She is telling me about her brainchild.

‘I needed to go back to work after having my daughter Sarah. I wasn’t happy with what was available in the line of full day care, so I decided to set up what I would have liked to have found.’ Sarah is four now and has another year there.

Instead of running the short hours of nine until four, Little People suits big working people and is open from eight until six, five days a week. It costs £125 a week – which Molly swears is standard – but she negotiated a reduction for the twins and says she has helped parents with financial difficulties.

‘I didn’t go into the project with views on whether it would be a good business deal, but rather just wanting to give other children what I hoped to give my own daughter.’ There are currently 14 children and capacity for 25; half are male and the rest wee girls, aged from two to five. The infants are called names like Sasha, Jacob, Romilly and Zachary. All English and local to the area, they’re the sort of kiddies, she explains, who go to osteopaths and use herbal and homeopathic remedies. (Molly herself uses Bach Flower Rescue Remedy if they have a little bump or bang.) And their mummies and daddies are things like graphic designers, journalists and teachers.

And the staff? Well, there’s Molly herself, 35, from Galway and a state registered nurse; and Kris, a man with long blond hair, batik shirt and Montessori and early-years training; and Ann, a traditional junior and primary school-trained teacher; then Maria, who’s an artist, and then Patsy, the Jamaican cook who is also wearing Japanese massage sandals and does cooking projects and things like tie-dye too. The whole place is Right On, in the nicest possible way.

Molly came to England when she was 17. A non-practising Catholic and the eldest of 10 children – a fact she reveals with evident pride – she’s used to looking after little ones. She worked for 12 years in nursing, ending up at the Royal Free Hospital.

‘I was unhappy with nursing because I felt it was losing a lot of the care and healing, which is what I like to do now.’

She went to work in her husband’s architectural practice, got pregnant, started having massage herself, learned baby massage, thought about starting up a natural health clinic for children . . . and ended up opening Little People. ‘It’s hard work. But with nursing I was used to that.’ An average day at the Little People involves breakfast, then singing, games and noise followed by creative work, toilet visit and handwashing; then lunch, teeth cleaning, free play, rest and massage. Depending on the day, there will also be messy activities or rhythm and dance or something. Which brings us to their food. It contains neither colourings, preservatives nor any other gunk. Take Monday: ‘Vegetarian moussaka with roasted pumpkin seed and wheat salad followed by silk tofu and strawberry whip.’

Or Wednesday: ‘Mixed-bean casserole with wine, mashed potato with ground almond, black olives with avocado salad, stewed apple with soya sauce.’ If it sounds like a baby boom parody of the health boom (the minor Mung Bean Set?) the children apparently adore it. And they cheerfully set the tables, acting as two and three-year-old waitresses and carrying the food from the kitchen. Then they serve each other.

They don’t have a discipline problem. ‘Parents tend to ask how we handle children expressing their positive and negative feelings. Basically I let the child express what he needs to. To deal with a temper tantrum, you need just see where it’s coming from.’

If its origin is a dispute with another child, Molly – who’s done something called Parent Link, which helps in these matters of major litigation – shows them the best way of handling the problem among themselves.

She did a lot of research when formulating her ideas for Little People. She found many nurseries ‘disgusting, with appalling food and a poor quality of care’. But her philosophy is to develop the whole character of the child, so he leaves with his trust and self-esteem not just intact, but enhanced, and an inner confidence.

Are there any disadvantages to her new approach to childcare? ‘The only thing parents worry about is the atmosphere being too cosy and too cuddly and too loving.’ This sounds like a great problem. ‘But they wonder what’s going to happen to their child when he goes to his next school . . .’

ONE day senior ad man Alistair Treves was earning more than £100,000 – and the next he was on the dole. ‘I get paid £50 a week from social security because I have a wife and children.’ He had worked for leading London advertising agency Young and Rubicon for 21 years.

He used to have a chauffeur-driven car, his own fancy motor and holidays in Florida. Now he’s recognised on the number three bus where he sits on the top deck and practises Chinese breathing techniques and relaxation exercises.

He’s a rare breed: a senior professional who has been made redundant and will talk about it. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. These things occur in modern life.’

We’re sitting in the garden of his four-bedroom Victorian house in Dulwich – a better class of sun streaming onto our faces, mugs of Lapsang Souchong in our hands.

Alistair, 44, has a boyish haircut atop a long oval face with expansive pink cheeks and facial expressions that look as if he is mimicking himself. And he’s wearing Saturday-lunch-in-Bibendum kind of garb: pink polo shirt, grey cords and navy blazer.

Until he left his job on 10 January, he wore three hats: assistant managing director; director of client services, running a department of 80 people; and group director, handling £35 million worth of business. In the Eighties the agency had been making money, money, money. But then the recession hit and by 1989 it was biting with rottweiler teeth. Costs and overheads were out of control, they had too many senior people, and the budget for 1991 was looking dire.

‘I was called back from a day’s leave at 5.30 one Friday (30 November). I didn’t realise I was the third senior person to go in there. I was like a marked man.’

A white collar redundancy! The Gaultier fabric of his life threatened! Would he not lose his status and everything he had worked for? Would he have to reschedule his mortgage? Lose the respect of his wife? Tell the kids they couldn’t have mountain bikes?

He looks at his light and spacious residence: freshly painted, immaculately tidy, with a guinea pig in a pen in the kitchen, a wife planting in the garden and the sort of vehicles that a three and six-year-old leave strewn around the place. Owing to management upheavals, he no longer felt he fitted in at Y and R; and he’d long wanted to get the hell out but couldn’t think of a way.

His pay-off after 21 years was hardly guinea-pig feed. (He won’t reveal the sum. ‘There’s loyalty among thieves,’ he says. But it would be enough to keep the show on the road for about a year if he didn’t earn a penny. He can’t or won’t imagine the show coming to an end.) He had neither savings nor credit card debts. He has a pension. Y and R is still paying for his private health care. And homes like his £300,000ish one weren’t selling. So he worried, briefly, whether he might end up on a caravan site in North Wales or have to move to New Zealand.

Instead he went to Peckham Social Security and queued for three hours. Then he was told he had been misdirected and should really be at the Department of Employment. So he queued there – and was then told he was meant to be in Peckham. ‘It was a real eye-opener. I realised for the first time how lucky I am.’

Now he’s not exactly sitting around at home. He still gets up at 6.45. ‘No reason to stay in bed, there’s too much going on,’ says the man who has decided he wants to do ‘anything and everything’ in the communications business. He’s approached 90 headhunters and spends his time ‘meeting terribly interesting people’. He’s been doing a little consultancy work too.

But what of his ‘over £100,000’ mortgage? He howls with defensive laughter on being asked whether he will manage to pay it. It’s a forced laugh and his fists tense up noticeably. But he hasn’t reduced it. And will he keep his children at private school? ‘I’d clean the bloody streets to make sure they stayed.’ A lot of streets, I say; ha, ha, he says.

They’ve slashed their outgoings by a third. ‘We went into siege mentality.’ They’ve stopped buying spirits, reduced their wine intake and cut out new clothes and eating out. ‘It was strange coming from an industry of largesse – where I was eating out breakfast three days a week, lunch four days and dinner a couple of times. Now if anybody kindly buys me lunch, for a change I appreciate it.’

He’s become less arrogant. And he’s realised the fragility of life. ‘When you’re made redundant, it’s a bit like a death. You wake up to life and think if there are things you want to do, just get on and do them.’ But what of the chance that he might never be in full-term employment again? Pause. ‘Good question. I don’t know. I’ve got another 30 years of working (he’s 44). If I’m not in full-time employment again, it’ll be out of choice.’

So what of his loss of status? ‘I’ve never been hung up on that. I didn’t make advertising my life. I have a supportive wife, a young family, other interests.

‘My wife told the children that Daddy hasn’t got a job at the moment. Andrew occasionally worries about Daddy getting a job.’ And are his kid’s worries justified? Daddy hoots with laughter. ‘I’m laid-back. I know we’ll make it.’

Until 18 months ago, Dorothy Berwin and Seth Stein lived in his little-larger-than-a-doormat bachelor flat. Very high-tech, it had aluminium floors, aircraft chairs from a jumbo jet and the most minimal minimalism. Dorothy kept most of her clothes in a mobile wardrobe unit-her car. ‘It was like being on a constant camping holiday.’

Now Dorothy and Seth have made a few changes. They have got married. They have moved into what was a former Notting Hill Gate nurses’ hostel-and they have developed agoraphobia. Their old flat would fit into their current kitchen, and you could land a microlight in the new sitting-room. ‘We used to lie in bed, stare at the ceiling and wonder how long it would take to walk there,’ says Dorothy, 30, grilled-vegetable enthusiast, red Comme des Garcons skirt lady and head of business affairs for Zenith Productions, a leading independent film and TV production company. Seth, 31, in Ralph Lauren shirt and Levis, laughs.

She’s impish and clever; and he-with a dry wit and gentle disposition-is New York gone Barcelona: the former by birth, the latter in looks. When they first saw the conversion, Dorothy’s mother-a lady of some taste-said: ‘Isn’t it wonderful? You can move straight in.’ And then Seth ripped it apart and demolished it.

Built in 1850, the building-of which they bought the ground floor-had previously been full of nurses’ bedsits in decline. Their current 50-foot sitting-room was four bedsits. This hostel had been connected by a passageway to the block behind, a hospital.

But the flat on which they exchanged was a luxurious new development. ‘It had serious gold handles and lots of twiddly bits everywhere,’ explains Dorothy. For ‘twiddly bits’ read chair rails, decorative tiles, frilly knicker Osborne and Little curtains and trellis-work motif on the best quality handmade Colefax and Fowler carpet.

And so they set about tearing down the brand new curtains, stripping the flat, ripping up carpets untouched by human foot, bartering a marble fireplace for a generous Thirties sink from the Dorchester, getting rid of all ornamentation and knocking down walls. All achieved with some pocket money and what they dub low-budget expensive taste.

The thing you need to know about Seth is that he’s a talented architect who worked for Richard Rogers and then Norman Foster, whom he left 15 months ago to set up on his own-in other words a baby of the high-tech generation who has discarded his aluminium nappies for modern clothes sewn with much care and attention to detail.

His work-relished from Islington to Italy-is about modernism that is not alienating, stark or cold.

Take their sitting-room. You burst into it through a Tutankhamen passage. Asymmetrical, with tapering walls of natural pigmented plaster, it gives a feeling of length and perspective.

Inside, there are soft white walls, motorways of white silk curtains, a chandelier of white Christmas fairy lights with clothes hanger wire, a fire with a concrete hearth set with Seth’s collection of pebbles picked up on beaches, a Sarah Charlesworth diptych-half of which is all black-called Fear of Nothing, and an acre of vegetarian carpet (Seth’s name for seagrass). ‘When it’s damp, you can throw alfalfa seeds on it and they sprout. Come the siege, we’ll be able to live on it for a month.’

Then there’s the furniture-or rather, there isn’t. ‘The typical situation is to go either to Conran or IKEA.’ Seen It Before, in other words. The little but great furniture there is was designed by Seth, apart from the Bonnetti and Garouse-they did the Christian Lacroix showroom in Paris-rope-coloured curvy-backed sofa and an Eileen Gray chair. There’s a dining table made of salvaged yet still distressed Victorian floorboards on a modern steel frame. A fire-engine-red table, a graphic solid square which tapers to a rectangular base off-centre, irregular and appearing to float. And not much more.

It was here that they recently held a party for 200 friends: a flat-warming-cum-engagement do, with Sixties moving blob oil projections on the walls, dry ice and funky music-all because Seth always wanted to be on Top of the Pops.

Next door is the study, nocturnal and introspective with its big white door with a single steel handle, grey varnished plaster and high-tech bookshelves that aren’t bookshelves-they’re floor decking for warehouses-clutter and Fornasetti classical motif Fifties-shaped chairs. The kitchen-with natural materials, handmade terracotta tiles, timber cabinets, stainless steel with linen finish, fig trees and Dorothy’s mother’s 30-year-old cooker-is not just modern, it’s ergonomic. The inspiration for the flat came from a Manhattan loft space. ‘As London gets more like New York City in terms of pace and grottiness,’ says Seth, ‘you need your home to be more of a simple haven away from the stress. We fantasised about having a large, white, simple space.’ Simplicity. Ah, simplicity.

BARBARA Chandler’s Supersaver is a Fagor white or brown built-under electric oven with hob controls, plus gas hob and electric hood for £375 (usual price £500). From Buyers and Sellers, 120-122 Ladbroke Grove, W10 (071 229 1947/8468), while stocks last. Credit card orders accepted. Please show or refer to this edition of the Evening Standard to qualify.