PRINCE Edward will turn his mind to marriage once Ardent, his film production company, is established. ‘I want to concentrate on my career now,’ he says crustily. ‘But this is not what this interview is about.’ Can he not develop his career and marry? ‘I’ve got to make sure we have a track record before turning my mind to other things.’ Say, in two years time? Edward Windsor – as he is known at work – laughs. ‘Ask the commissioning editors.’ Last week he said that it would be 1996 before he knew whether his business was a success or failure.

We meet in his airy Charlotte Street offices, all grey and cream corporate good taste. There’s a video entryphone at street level and electronic security for the office. ‘Sorry, Edward’s on the telephone,’ says the receptionist, breezily. Fifteen minutes later HRH appears, in black stripy shirt with no jacket, cords, clubby tie, chunky signet ring with E beneath a crown and militarily cropped but thinning hair. He has slight shoulders, a clean living, kindly face, strong handshake and direct eye contact.

He carries my coffee to his office and apologises profusely. Sorry he’s late. Sorry about the short notice for the interview. Sorry about the mess in his office. He starts his tape recorder and appears surprisingly nervous. He exhales after questions, touches his eyebrow, fiddles with his fingers, holds his earlobe or crosses his arms defensively. I tell him I’m nervous. ‘That’s all right,’ he replies, consolingly. And how should I address him? ‘How would you like to address me?’ He laughs.

We have 30 minutes and the rules are that we must talk about Ardent, which he set up 15 months ago and of which he’s joint managing director, and about real tennis: specifically the 1995 TNT Express International Real Tennis Team Trophy, on Wire TV on 17 May – the first of his productions to be screened, in the latter stages of negotiation with Channel 4, and the project he’s taking to the annual television fair in Cannes on Friday. I am to be allowed one stray question.

OK. How did he feel when he was dropped from the Civil List in 1992? ‘It was like a kick in the teeth. People say ‘Oh, well, it was deserved, what did you ever do?’ he replies. “But you have only to look at the Court Circular records – the publicity was unbalanced. But once in this particular job, born into it, you can’t get rid of it. I still do the same work. But now I have to find other ways to fund my existence.’

Does he pay for any of his charity work privately? ‘Yes. I have to. But it’s not a satisfactory way of proceeding. It opens up the possibilities of straying beyond what people might regard as right and proper and being susceptible to commercial forces. Before I was in nobody’s pocket. But that’s not the subject we’re here to talk about …’

What is his response to the monarchy being pushed to justify itself and pay tax? ‘It’s not a position which the monarchy deserves. But it is far too noble to be drawn into that particular battle.’

EDWARD is in an impossible position – caught between trying to be an ordinary person and being a royal. ‘I’ve been living a schizophrenic existence for a very long time,’ he says, ‘so it’s nothing unusual for me.’ Does he really believe he’s normal? ‘I would never describe myself as quite ordinary or normal.’ He laughs fully. ‘But I don’t see myself as removed from the mass of people. I feel I’m part of it. I walk down the street, I use the roads like everybody else, go into shops and move around town hopefully without causing any interference to anybody else. We’re out there in the community, living and experiencing the lives of – or lives very similar to – a lot of other people.’ And he has a detective with him now? ‘Yes.’

Edward is accommodating – critics might say weak or compliant – in answering questions he doesn’t wish to discuss. He picks his words carefully, abrupt breaks between them, speaking with the same inflection as Prince Charles. Often he stops himself, as if to prevent himself saying something indiscreet.

His problem has been his search for a role in life. ‘I’m in a slightly more unusual position than most. But I believe I’ve managed to work out both roles in a reasonable way without causing any embarrassment to anybody.’ He had a crisis when he left the Royal Marines, against the wishes of Prince Philip. ‘It was obviously a traumatic period for anybody – for everybody – and wasn’t an easy decision to make.’ He resolved his conflict in the glare of front-page publicity. ‘We’ve gone well off the subject …’ He sighs, then coughs. ‘Unfortunately, the media has to be taken into account when making decisions. But you have to be convinced in your own mind that what you’re doing is right. I mean, whose life is it?’ he asks, heatedly. Is he a frustrated actor? ‘It might have been a job that I would have liked to have done. But it would have been totally impractical.’ He laughs, as he does often – sometimes obligingly, to be friendly, and at other times defensively. ‘So it really wasn’t worth continuing. Production is behind the scenes. It’s quite another thing to be out at the front regularly.’ Because of the possibilities of ridicule? The embarrassment if he were resting? ‘A whole lot of reasons, and those are personal.’

He is the first child of a British monarch to have entered business. ‘It was bound to happen before too long,’ he says, mock stoically. What qualifies him for the job? And what are his strengths and weaknesses? ‘Hummmph. My greatest strength and weakness is basically who I am. I can get my foot in the door – but after that I’ve got to be better than everybody else. There are people out there who are very nervous of commissioning me because of how it might reflect on them.’

At television parties he walks up to people and says: ‘Hi, I’m Edward Windsor … Most people are perfectly warm. I’ve been in the market place long enough for it to be no longer a shock seeing a face out of context.” Why doesn’t he make royal programmes? Exhales. ‘That would give the wrong impression to the market place and everybody else.’ He speaks definitely. ‘And because the people are alive, they are here and present. It would be intrusive. And I don’t want to trade on that particular association any more than I intend trading on my title.’

He has a high-calibre team and five projects underway – including a BBC2 motoring show and a series promoting Commonwealth ties. What did he learn from Andrew Lloyd Webber during his time at the Really Useful Company? ‘He taught me how you make money out of the business.’ How? He sighs. ‘In terms of documentaries it is quantity, in terms of drama it is quality. I’ll be shot down for saying that.’

HOW successful is the company? ‘We’re just turning the corner now.’ What will it mean to him if Ardent is a failure? ‘That’s a hypothetical question.’ And one that he won’t consider? ‘Well, I’m certainly not going to make any comment.’

SETTING up an interview with fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana is a nightmare. Until the last minute, the appointment time is changed and the venue is undecided. Then they offer half an interview – Stefano will talk, Domenico won’t. Then they relent. Next they refuse to have their photographs taken. I arrive in Milan to discover the couple don’t speak English. But, of course, I did forget to ask.

In the event, Stefano turns up and Domenico appears half an hour late. Stefano, 33, is impossibly good looking and charming and Domenico, 36, is all in black. Carla Buzzi, their PR lady with raven hair, black leggings and coal Dolce & Gabbana tent top, translates. This hinders spontaneity. ‘Are you lovers as well as business partners?’ I ask. Solo blah blah amore blah blah. ‘Ha ha ha,’ shrieks Carla. Natter, natter, natter in Italian. ‘Yes,’ comes the cursory reply.

They dress Madonna (‘a friend’), Sting, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Isabella Rossellini (‘a very good friend’), Julia Roberts, Kate Moss (‘not a good friend’ – but they discovered her), Kim Basinger and Brooke Shields. In 1991 Dolce & Gabbana – as they are known in labelspeak – were dubbed Italy’s hottest fashion property. ‘After four years nothing can be hot any more unless you use microwave,’ says Stefano.

Their 1994 worldwide turnover was £66 million, an increase of 81 per cent over the previous year. ‘British sales, buonissima,’ says Stefano. (They love British fashion. What the young do here gets taken up in New York and Milan, they say.) Now, 13 years after starting, they’re manufacturing accessories, perfume and furnishings too. Where do they stand beside Armani, Versace and Valentino? ‘We’re just chickens,’ says Domenico. ‘Like their nephews,’ adds Stefano.

Today they open their first British store, in Sloane Street. Armed with high heels, wielding long patent boots and brandishing studded belts, Stefano and Domenico will fight in the front line of the Bond Street versus Sloane Street battle – a fight highlighted by fashion oracle Suzy Menkes in the International Herald Tribune this week.

Army headquarters is three floors of decorated sandstone, opaquely stuccoed terra rossa and pastel ochre walls, and launch party soldiers from George Michael, Naomi Campbell and the Le Bons to Amanda de Cadenet. IT COMES as no surprise that the maverick duo has chosen to open in Sloane Street, just a few red patent heeled steps from Prada, natch. ‘Bond Street is too status for us,’ explains Domenico. It’s what this month’s Vogue dubs the New Snobbery. Old Snobs cling to their vulgar chain link handbags; New Snobs, identified only by the cognoscenti, swing plastic Prada ones discreetly. The point is that New Snobs spurn obvious displays of status. We meet in their private clients’ showroom, the day after Gucci scion Maurizio was shot on the streets of Milan. ‘Mamma mia,’ says Stefano. ‘All the fashion world is really shocked. We didn’t know him personally. He was not a social person, he was very intimate.’

On the wall is an imposing antique gilt frame containing a bra. The bra, Stefano has said, is like a jewellery box, protecting the most precious part of a woman. ‘We love the most feminine attributes of the women, like their breasts. The symbol of maternity and eroticism. Maybe because in our dreams we would like to be like them,’ he says now.

Dolce & Gabbana have changed the look of (biscuit-suited) Italian fashion with their ironic clothes, which draw inspiration from bordellos and pornography. Domenico says they’re not preoccupied with sex. ‘It’s an important part of life and has to be evaluated seriously.’

Stefano denies they peddle chic pornography. ‘I never show anything. You will never see a woman without a bra or slip. I want to show but not see.’ Their autumn collection has women in men’s tailoring and men who have plundered the wardrobes of Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali. (‘In this moment being trendy is not trendy. We have gone outside fashion’ – Stefano, Milan, 1995.) But their trademark is underwear as outerwear.

For autumn they’ve also shown bustiers and corsets underneath erotic little black see-through dresses worn by riding-crop wielding models in long black boots. ‘We’re talking about rich women who have very little to do and have an attitude that is a bit sodomising,’ explains Carla, for Stefano. Sodomising? ‘No, sadistic, but in a very chic way.’

This brings us to Madonna. She rejected Jean-Paul Gaultier, designer of the famous conical bra, in favour of Dolce & Gabbana to design the costumes for her Girlie tour. Shortly after they were reported as saying they had not seen her show and had not been paid.

‘The Washington Post said we were angry Madonna didn’t pay her invoices,’ says Stefano. ‘But the clothes were a present we gave her. We never asked for money.’

What about the material girl? What stories do they have to tell? Dramatic pause. ‘She likes cinnamon sticks and liquorice,’ replies Stefano. It’s hard to tell if he’s being ironic.

And what of Brooke Shields? Isabella Rossellini? Kate Moss? ‘The funniest thing is that these women all fit into the same dress,’ confides Domenico. ‘It’s a miracle.’

GEORGE Greenfield, the man who discovered Jilly Cooper, acted as a middleman between Margaret Thatcher and Robert Maxwell and was agent to Enid Blyton, Stirling Moss, Ranulph Fiennes, Rex Harrison, David Niven and Sir Francis Chichester, has finally put pen to paper himself. His book, A Smattering of Monsters, A Kind of Memoir, show that, if nothing else, he has learnt one or two things about the value of spicy titles.

Ask him who the monsters are to whom he refers and he’s mischievous. ‘I advised Lady Thatcher briefly and I’m also referring to Jeffrey Archer,’ says George. ‘But I’m using the word in the Latin sense of monstrum, meaning worthy of show.’

George, 77, the former head of one of Britain’s greatest literary agencies, John Farquharson Ltd, has spent 35 years importuning publishers and coaxing and bullying authors. He wears fawn cords and a brown cardigan. He has a moustache, sharp eyes and improbably arched eyebrows which give the appearance of being plucked. A raconteur, he has a theatrical manner, gesticulates with his arms and speaks in stacatto fashion, emphasising words unusually.

He recalls his meetings with Robert Maxwell. The proprietor offered George £10 million for Thatcher’s Memoirs only to withdraw the following day. ‘We all knew he was a a crook, of course.’ George remembers the negotiations. ‘Mark Thatcher, whom I rather like – he’s very punctual, polite and a bit of an oaf, but so what – said before a meeting with the Robert, ‘If we reach any conclusions, Mama wants to run them in front of her man of affairs, Sir Michael Richardson.’

‘When we were getting down to the nitty gritty in the meeting, Robert suddenly said ‘This sounds all right, but I must show my advisor Sir Michael Richardson.’ Afterwards I said to Mark ‘He can’t act for both sides.’ ‘Good God,’ said Mark, ‘I never thought of that.” Later, George was ‘kneeling in front of Thatcher,’ helping her with the contract for her Japanese rights, witnessing her signature for every page. ‘I suddenly felt a draught and realised my zip had slid down. There I was exposing myself to the great woman.’

George remembers David Niven fondly. ‘He was wonderful, very funny. Once he handed me a manuscript and said ‘It’s the most terribly boring, ghastly stuff.’ He was talking about his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon, which went on to sell over 8 million copies worldwide.

‘David once had a lot of champagne and said to Prince Rainier at lunch, ‘Oh Rainier, buddy, I’d love to be you. You’re the last of the despots. If you see someone you can say ‘off with his head.’ And Rainier said ‘oh David, you’re the one I envy, you’ve had all those women in Hollywood. Tell me, who was the best?’ David hummed and ahhed then responded that ‘The best was Grace…’ Rainier went blue. ‘…Gracie Fields,’ continued David.’ George recollects the six times married Rex Harrison wryly. ‘He was an extraordinarily vain creature. Originally he wasn’t picked for the film of My Fair Lady – MGM wanted Cary Grant or Rock Hudson and were going round all the beefcakes first. In revenge, when Rex got his contract, he made them take his old Rolls Royce from where he lived in Portofino to Calais, across to Southampton, on the Queen Elizabeth and all the way to Hollywood – just so he could drive five miles to the studio and back every day.’ George was Jilly Cooper’s first literary agent. ‘It’s always struck me as amusing how Gilly was stuck in the country writing raunchy novels while Leo was humping away in London. At times we had to lend Jilly quite considerable amounts of money as Leo was running his publishing house at a loss.’

It was also George who backed Enid Blyton – for whom he was agent for 15 years – supporting Big Ears, Mr Plod and naughty Golly after librarians banned the books from their shelves because they thought they were prejudiced, muddled and of limited vocabulary. ‘But there are no funny tales about Enid. She was a very naive woman and, very sadly, suffered from Alzheimers at the end.’

George gained a scholarship to Cambridge, was a pupil of Dr Leavis (‘marvellous little balding man, typical wild don’) and got a double first in English. He was then asked to go into intelligence but chose the army instead. ‘I was a complete fake. I had a pee before the meeting then in the interview they asked for a sample. I was straining away when a doctor came along and said ‘If you can’t manage, I’ll do it for you’ – and gave me a sample.’ George joined the Buffs where he was ‘blown up twice in one morning.’ He was unhurt. ‘Ever since I’ve thought that every day is a bonus.’

poss cuts He started his career in a small publishing house called T Werner Laurie but left after a farcial confrontation with the accountants who began insisting George tell them the plots of the books he wanted to buy. ‘They either couldn’t read or didn’t read. One day I told them I wanted to do something controversial about this negro married to a white woman on a Mediterranean island. I told them the plot and they said it was terrible. ‘I’ve just told you the plot of Othello,’ I said ‘and it’s been doing rather well for 300 years.”

We’re in George’s Hampstead house which he bought in 1952 partly with £500 he won as the then Capt George C Greenfield of the Buffs for the best novel in the Macmillan Centenary Literary Award in 1945. He lives here with Ann – ‘a former front theatre sister who operated in the noise of fire’ – his wife of 46 years.

He had two sons, but one died when he was five years old, in 1955. ‘He had that chromosome complaint where the kidney enlarges. Nowadays they can do transplants. The condition gave him a bloated stomach and he had to be plugged in at Great Ormond Street every so often to draw off the fluid. We knew two years before he died that he was going to die in two years, which was very hard. Of course we didn’t tell him.’

George’s other ‘child’ is 47 years old. ‘He’s also called George and works in a small publishing house. ‘It’s silly really, but my father was George and his father was, as was his father – going back 8 generations. The awful thing is that you open each other’s post.’

LADY Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, eldest daughter of the Duke of Marlborough whose family seat is Blenheim, divides her time between Fulham and the Oxfordshire estate. But not for her the windy west wing of the grand palace. Lady Henrietta has a snug farmhouse which was used by Blenheim’s deputy farm manager on her father’s 11,500 acre estate.

She’s been there for eight months, which is a long time for someone who has moved house four times in as many years. She house-hops because just as she begins to settle down in one her father sells it. ‘Basically, I go where I’m told, which is wherever my father wants me to go,’ laughs Lady Henrietta. ‘That’s why I never got around to doing anything much to the other houses. But this one is different. It’s in the middle of the estate and dad will not be selling me off. This time it’s roots – I hope.’ She’s the divorced mother of two boys and militarily organised, which is why, when she was given three weeks to move from her last house into this one – a ‘Georgian one with bits added on’ – she coped.

Lady Henrietta, 36, is a hands-on interior decorator, who does the books, runs the company and counts among her clients society figure Paddy McNally. Her second book on decor is called Classic Decorative Details. She is slim and elegant with pre-Raphaelite hair and wears a Marks and Spencer waistcoat and “what has been described as a car rug” wrap-around wool skirt. She speaks with upper-class plumminess and has two black Labradors by her side like ancestral sentinels.

The house overlooks a valley. It hasn’t been a working farm for years, but retains its outbuildings. ‘The garden has gone mad because I haven’t had the time to attack it, but this spring I’m going to get the contractors in.’ On the opposite side of the valley is the house of her brother, one-time aristocratic junkie James Blandford. ‘James and I have always been very close.’ She visited him often in prison. ‘The Scrubs was grim, but Pentonville was worse. I didn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed about him being there. I just wanted to be supportive.’

She went into group therapy with her brother and the rest of their family. ‘We had to get to the root of the problem. That was probably very beneficial for me, too. You learn to cope with things.’ She is reluctant to talk more. ‘It has sometimes been ghastly and gone on for a very long time. But, hopefully, we are through all that now.’

James and Henrietta were brought up in Lee Place, a 17th century manor. Their parents divorced when she was one year old and they were raised by her father. She didn’t live in Blenheim until she was 12, when the 10th duke, her grandfather, died. ‘We used to serve in the gift shop at Blenheim and hide on the long balcony overlooking the great hall and make ghoulish noises to scare the visitors.’

It was at Blenheim that she designed her first room, when she was a teenager. On being given their stepmother’s permission to choose their own rooms, James settled on a tiny one stuck between two floors, facing north and with porthole windows. Lady Henrietta, whose style is altogether more airy, decided on one overlooking the lawns and decorated it in blues, pinks and creams. It is this gut feeling for colour and space that she eventually capitalised on in her straightforward and single-minded way. She went on to gain one A-level from St Mary’s, Wantage, followed by history of art in Florence and a course at the Inchbald Interior Design School. ‘I would have loved to have studied law and become a barrister. And I’ve always had a desire to become a detective or criminal investigator.’ In 1980 she married German-born banker Nathan “Booby” Gelber. They had two children – David, aged 13, and Maximillian, nine. ‘David is more like me in character. I’m quite introverted. I like people, but they’re not a priority in my life.’

THEY divorced in 1989 after Lady Henrietta became friendly with financier Richard “Groper” Andrew, who had separated from his second wife, Lady Serena – and they were named in each others’ divorce cases. ‘Everybody gets divorced these days. It’s not a big issue,’ she says frostily. Richard ‘is still a good friend. But I see lots of people. I lead a very independent life.’

Nowadays she lives alone. This is reflected in her home. Her decorating style is one of restraint and economy. The sitting room has sea grass, a gilt sofa and a wicker coffee table with coffee-table books. There are two oils of Cherwell and Palm Beach – ‘nothing very special, but sentimental’ – by her grandfather’s cousin, Sir Winston Churchill. She doesn’t keep ‘anything of value’ in her house. On the contrary, she is more likely to have an old armchair from a junk shop in Oxford. She delights in revamping a “good buy” in some exotic velvet. She gives old prints the same treatment, really believing in the value of impressive frames rather than the content. There are family photos, one of her mother Susan (whose family owns W H Smith) on a Bahamas beach in a billowing canary dress, and many of her children. On a table is a leather-bound order of service from her parents’ wedding. The next-door drawing room is currently being decorated. To make the dining hall she tore down a wall and ripped out a lavatory and woodburner. Now it’s painted National Trust green with Zoffany fabric curtains with puff-ball headings and a dining table piled with showcase books. In the corner is a blackamoor statue. ‘He belongs to an uncle, but has been in the family for a long time. They live abroad and I’ve ended up looking after him.’

The decor upstairs is untouched although she has just put in an upstairs bathroom. Her bedroom is lilac, which she’ll change to blue, and has watercolours by her ‘great, great, great-grandfather or one of my ancestors.’

She smiles. ‘I’m proud to be a member of this family. But it doesn’t influence my life. I’m perfectly normal.

IT IS undisputed that hospital admission for asthma has increased steadily in Britain over the past 20 years; for children, the admissions graph goes uphill at 45 degrees. One in 10 suffer from asthma, a huge increase over the past few years. Nitrogen dioxide from exhaust fumes has been similarly increasing in the air: twice as high as 20 years ago.

Children on bicycles, engulfed in a cloud of exhaust smoke from a passing bus, accompany worried articles about our smelly and damaged world. It is surprising, then, to hear from two world experts that the incidence of asthma is no higher in cities than it is in the country. A recent survey in Scotland found that it was just as bad in Skye as in the centre of Aberdeen. Another survey compared post-Cold War industrial East Germany to clean West Germany and, again, found levels just the same.

And as for the hated ozone layer, Peter Barnes, Professor of thoracic medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital, says: “You’d expect the ozone level to be higher in cities, but it’s not. Ozone is formed by nitrogen dioxide and oxygen coming together, catalysed by sunlight. In the city, the ozone reacts again with the nitrogen dioxide to form oxygen. So the levels of ozone are actually higher in the country.”

Really knowledgeable people, like Professor Barnes and Dr Andy Bush, Senior Lecturer in Paediatrics at Royal Brompton, are willing to admit ignorance. The underlying cause of asthma remains a mystery, and the two experts do not pretend otherwise. “There are two issues,” said Dr Bush. “What is causing asthma in the first place; and if you’ve got asthma, what makes it worse?

“There’s quite a lot of evidence that pollutants can make asthma worse if you’ve got it, but I suspect they’re not actually causing asthma.” But the disorder attracts theories from the under-informed as irresistibly as cot death, anorexia, ME or any other mysterious medical horror of modern life.

Anti-pollutionists blame the increase on exhaust fumes; anti-smoking campaigners point to women smoking during pregnancy; anti-stress obsessives say it is overwork and anti-central-heating fanatics blame house-dust mites, a warm, modern house being a breeding paradise.

In trying to find answers, volunteers – asthmatic and non-asthmatic – undergo grim tests. They endure up to six hours in various kinds of polluted air in an exposure chamber, sometimes working on an exercise bicycle. “The tests are controversial,” said Professor Barnes, “because to get any effect you have to use high levels of pollution. If you do tests with nitrogen dioxide, you can’t detect the effects; but what seems to happen in real air is that if you have nitrogen dioxide mixed with sulphur dioxide, then you do have an effect.

“That’s the concern: pollutants are amplifying each other, and the combinations are what cause trouble.”

WHAT is clear is that asthmatics are all different and no one theory will account for all cases. Sylvia Dowding is south-east regional organiser for the National Asthma Campaign. Its aims are to fund research, build awareness and offer support. Her son, 25, had severe childhood asthma which is now controlled. Mrs Dowding feels that pollution can be a trigger. “If asthma is there already, pollution can bring it on. But when my son was young he had to spend a night in London for some tests. We thought the city air might be dreadful for him, but actually we had one of the best nights ever. It just shows how individual the problem is.”

The pollution theory is positively harmful, she says. “People might think, well, there’s nothing to be done, and give up taking medication, or give up trying to find the true reasons for it.”

Her son has been a smoker since he was 15, with no ill-effects on his asthma. “You need a tube to soothe the tube” as the wry asthmatic Joe Follows says to the hero of Ferdinand Mount’s novel Of Love and Asthma – a charming love story written by a man who knows just what it is like to be “a member of the great community of the bronchially strangulated”. The smoking asthmatic, like the chocolate-eating fatty or the one-lunged long-distance cyclist, is simply putting two fingers up to health theorists. Surely a good thing, even if it is medically slightly mad?

Dr Bush, though, has a thing about smoking and is convinced – though it is still only a theory – that passive smoking is an underlying cause of asthma. He cites a study in the Isle of Wight which showed that women who smoke in pregnancy are more likely to have babies with childhood asthma. In the second half of pregnancy, the baby’s tubes increase in size, but they don’t if the mother smokes. “The Government has breathtaking hypocrisy when campaigning for the health of the nation while allowing cigarette advertising,” he says. “Smoking in front of a child is a form of child abuse. My 15-year-old son tells me that about three-quarters of his friends are smoking.”

What the great doctor says may well be true, but there is a whiff of the hobby horse in his words.

Asthma is also being diagnosed more than it used to be and doctors admit that this is part of the reason why numbers are going up. ‘A lot of grown-ups say, ‘I always had a bad chest’,” said one south London GP. ‘Now almost any child who gets slightly wheezy at night is said to have asthma.” PROFESSOR Barnes said: ‘But an attack is an attack. You can’t hide it. And the increase in hospital admissions shows that asthma is getting worse.” In the waiting room at Dr Bush’s paediatric clinic, there were different things said about the pollution question.

The mother of Toni Watson, 16, from Shoreham-by-Sea, said: ‘We moved to the coast: we thought it would be the end of Toni’s asthma. But it’s been far worse. Perhaps it’s the main roads nearby, or the factories. We don’t know. We took Toni to Disney World in Florida in 1993 and for that whole fortnight she was fine. My other daughter has no problems with allergies in London, but when she stays with us she’s always coughing and sneezing.” The mother of Esther Grew, 13, said: ‘I do believe pollution makes it worse. We live at Wallington in Surrey. It used to be a village, now it’s so busy with cars going through to Croydon, it’s disgusting.”

Mike Lacey, father of nine-year-old Rasmus, said: ‘We live at Heston, three-quarters of a mile from the runway at Heathrow. We moved from Denmark last year. Rasmus hadn’t had any trouble there but it’s been really bad here.”

Farah, 11, who goes to Graveney School in Tooting, added: ‘I always take my inhaler before games: swimming and PE bring my attacks on. My asthma’s about the same in the town and in the country. But I’m allergic to cats.’ Mrs Turner, mother-of-three from Chingford, said: ‘My son has hay fever, my daughter Robin has asthma and the baby has the first signs of eczema. I’ve asked the doctor, ‘Where should we live? I want to get rid of this’. But there’s no simple answer. And you can’t get a doctor to tell you that traffic pollution’s bad for asthma. Perhaps it’s a conspiracy, to stop everyone moving out of towns into the country.”

The diary of a sufferer JOE Pitura-Riley (now three) would shout, scream and cough at night, and awaken at least six times, writes Caroline Phillips. His mother Annette was exhausted and could never sleep more than two hours for being at her son’s side.

If ever Annette or husband David, a corporate video presenter, allowed Joe into the chilly garden, he’d be wheezy and chesty. If Joe even ran to the bottom of the garden, he would gasp and rasp. And whenever he caught a cold, it would go straight to his chest and he’d have to be hospitalised. Joe was admitted to Guy’s hospital six times between the ages of 18 months and eight years.

The first time Annette took him to hospital, he was eight months old. She was traumatised. ‘I asked the doctor whether Joe was going to die,” says Annette, 33, a literature student.‘He had started to turn blue and looked so scared. I felt so helpless for this little baby who couldn’t get air into his lungs.”

SINGER Olivia Newton-John is in London to promote her new album which chronicles her triumphant battle with breast cancer.

Gaia: One Woman’s Journey is her first recording since she was diagnosed with cancer in 1992, and it is an album she has written, produced and paid for herself.

In 30 years, she’s sold more than 50 million records worldwide, spent four years in the singles charts in Britain and recorded 22 hits, including duets with John Travolta and Cliff Richard.

Yet people ask whatever happened to the squeaky clean singer once called the Singing Milkshake. Her career has seesawed since she starred in Grease in 1978. She had a short-lived success as a pop star, then her movie career went nowhere fast and her chain of boutiques crashed.

Grease was an amazing phemenon, she admits. “It was the highlight and I feel happy with that.” How does she feel about being dubbed a has-been? “That doesn’t matter to me. There will always be people with negative things to say.”

She lives on an Australian farm which has walls insulated with seaweed instead of asbestos, painted it with non toxic paints, used what she calls fall down wood or that from sustainable sources, has no carpets – just rugs – because of dust mites, keeps compost heaps and units for re-cyling everything and has a water filtering system.

She built the healthy house as an example to people -before she became sick with breast cancer. And it is here that she does transcendental meditation, yoga, takes homeopathic medicine, grows custard apples and avocados.

Last year it was rumoured that Olivia had constructed a very detached house in her 22 acre New South Wales grounds for Matt Lattanzi, her husband of ten years who is 11 years her junior, to live in.

Newspapers said that their marriage was on the rocks. But Olivia was reported as saying that she was building the other house for Matt to entertain in. “I live a quiet life,” she said.

Olivia speaks with a faint Antipodean accent but she was born in England, the daughter of a headmaster. When she was five, the family moved to Australia where her father, then only 40 years old, became master of a university college. Her mother’s father was a Nobel prize winner and a friend of Einstein.

‘My parents were educated and academic,” she says. “Then along came my sister and I who wanted to go into showbiz and caused consternation in the family. I could have been academic if I’d applied myself” -she giggles – “but I didn’t. I left school at 15. It wasn’t a conscious rebellion. It’s just that I wanted to sing.” From then on she won talent competitions, trips abroad and television appearances.[ Olivia was once engaged to Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch. “I can’t remember when or how long for. A year or two.” Then she had a lengthy relationship with Lee Kramer ,her manager. And what of Bee Gee Andy Gibb? “I didn’t think anyone took that rumour seriously.”

And John Travolta? “Never. Just friends.” And Cliff Richard? “A friend” – she laughs – “still a friend. I’m going to do a duet with him soon for his new musical.”

She met Matt, then a dancer, on the set of Xanadu. They took 6 years to marry. but have just reached their tenth wedding anniversary. Why did she choose someone so much younger? “We fell in love.”

The couple had a daughter, Chloe, now 9 years old. Then Olivia had a miscarriage. “Actually I had several. Three, I think. One occured before Chloe was conceived and the first two happened when she was three months pregnant.

” The last one, in 1988, was the hardest because I was five months pregnant. The doctors disagree but I believe it was caused by a CVS test (chorionic villi sampling to detect foetal defect).

“I grieved but there’s always sadness there. But you can’t dwell on it. You’ve got to let it go. It was a terrible thing but there are people who have been through much worse.”

Her troubles continued. In 1992 her fashion empire of 60 worldwide stores, crashed. “They were our baby. It was a difficult time. The hardest part was the lawsuits and litigation. We lost a lot of money.” Then Olivia was diagnosed as having cancer – which led to a modified radical masectomy,chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery.

I SLAMMED on the brakes of the car in heavy Christmas traffic. Adrian, my fiancee, got out and walked off. So I abandoned the vehicle, door open, in the middle of Kensington High Street.

Motorists behind hooted. I yelled to Adrian that if he didn’t want his car left there, he’d better collect it. Then I hurled the keys to him – or at least to a place estate agents would have considered within his walking distance.

Passers-by, captivated by the domestic soap but looking discomfited, pretended they weren’t watching. I huffed off, collected later by the kindly Adrian in his retrieved car. He’d complained about my driving. Leaving the car to drive itself had seemed a perfectly rational way to react. I’m pregnant. We’ve had 13 weeks of this madness. I’m normally slightly Mediterranean, but never like this.

In the week of the abandoned-car incident we went to a Sunday service in St Mary Abbot’s, seeking a venue in which to marry so that the bun-in-the-oven doesn’t come from a single-parent family when his father is away on business trips. We’ve been together nearly five years and I’ve been wearing the Phillips rock for one, so it’s not so much shotgun, but more of an about-bloody-time wedding.

The service started, and my betrothed said something suspect. So what does a girl do? Say shhh? Course not. Stomp out, that’s what. Flying past the congregation in Ferrari-red coat, bereft of keys and money. Then spend the rest of the day, happy as Santa, visiting friends and forgetting to go home for our lunch party.

I knew I was enceinte when the pregnancy test – well, four actually – showed positive. It seemed to me that the first three came from tampered stock, thus necessitating a fourth test. I was several loaves short of a picnic even then. Luckily, the beloved, watching Silence Of The Lambs, was in cheery mood when I broke the good news.

Immediately I suffered the most common complaint of pregnancy. Worry. First worry was who to have it with, so to speak. I chose John Malvern who combines professional brilliance with a sense of humour and a senior post at Queen Charlotte’s. A rare combination in a man.

Since then, like a third to half of all pregnant women, I’ve suffered from the misnomer of morning sickness. More like morning, noon, afternoon and middle-of-the-night sickness. And show me a cigarette and I rush to the bathroom.

Then came the gas, heartburn, burgeoning 38 double-D cups, indigestion, emotional instability, crying five times in a day, reduced libido, wanting a Thai curry in the middle of the night and dizziness.

My sense of smell has become bloodhound strong. People smell. Not just pongy, body-odorous types, but everyone. A friend once told me she always knew when she was pregnant when she could smell women menstruating. I thought she was bonkers.

JO CORRE spent much of his childhood in a dustbin. Jo, 27, is the son of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, the punk poseur who managed the Sex Pistols. The first time Jo jumped into a dustbin was with his brother Ben, to retrieve the toys Malcolm had thrown away because he wouldn’t tidy his room. ‘Once we’d discovered this place where you found loads of other stuff as well, we were, like, always in the dustbins,’ says Jo. ‘Most parents wouldn’t let their children play with us because we were really dirty.’

Jo’s parents never married (‘If anyone thinks they’re worse off because their parents aren’t married, they’re mad’) and Ben was sent to live with his father, Derek Westwood. Jo went to nine schools until he left home, aged 16. ‘I was sent to boarding schools from the age of five because my parents didn’t have any money. They’d put me in schools like Dean Grange or Bellon House for a couple of terms then come in the middle of the night and take me away so that they never paid the fees.’

Malcolm refused ever to let Jo call him ‘Dad’. (Malcolm hardly saw his own mother until he was a grown man, shared his grandmother’s bed until he was 10 and was raised without a sense of family.) ‘I remember calling him Dad once when I was five and he told me my father was the milkman. So I started calling the milkman Dad, until I realised that was wrong too.’ Malcolm also insisted Jo have the surname Corre, Malcolm’s mother’s maiden name.

We’re sitting on a roll of carpet above Agent Provocateur, the Soho lingerie shop Jo and his girfriend and business partner Serena Rees opened last week. They sell Vivienne’s prostitutes’ shoes with 12-inch heels, balcony corset tops with granny knickers and bunny cages and a £900 brass chastity belt. Serena offers us Nipple of Venus chocolates then goes off to ‘nail varnish Diane’s nipples because they don’t show enough.’ Diane is a shapely mannequin in the window in football net stockings.

Jo wears an olive cord suit, banker’s shirt, wannabe beard, long sideburns and a face of Vivienne intensity. He has a missing tooth (‘it fell out when it got rotten’), dirty nails and an ear pierced seven times. He speaks to the wall in a grating voice, and drops his aitches. But he has a genial disposition although he claims to have a ferocious temper. We return to the subject of his childhood. His parents believed in allowing him his independence. When he was eight and Ben just 12, they set off alone on their bikes to see their grandparents. The brothers lived in London. Their grandparents lived in Devon. And the journey took a week. ‘We stayed in youth hostels and tents. We had these really shit kids’ bikes with one gear, piled high with all this heavy stuff.’ Didn’t their mother think it dangerous? ‘No, it was an adventure. I mean like Mum always said if anyone tries to mess around with you, scream and make a fuss and don’t go quietly.

‘Anyway, we were looking for somewhere to pitch our tent in the middle of the night and the police went past. They saw these two young boys with all this stuff and thought we were runaways. They called our grandparents, then let us put our tent in the back of the police station.”

Two years later, he went to the South of France with a 10-year-old friend. ‘After four days, we were only quarter of the way to Paris. We couldn’t make it, so turned around and went to Boulogne and made a hut out of driftwood on Boulogne beach and stayed there for three-and-a-half weeks.’

HE STARTED working, aged 16, as a market trader, moved into dispatch riding then worked with his mother for nine years. Nowadays Jo lives in a rented Pimlico house with Serena and four others and spends his free time getting ‘completely smashed. But not drugs. I did a bit of pot from when I was about 12 and bits and bobs here and there when I used to go out seven nights a week.’

Jo is fiercely protective of his mother. Vivienne, who wears six-inch platform heels and peroxide pin curls while chainsmoking Gitanes, is the sort of parent who would mortify most offspring. ‘I was never embarrassed by her.’ He’s enthusiastic about her having a toyboy second husband, 25 years her junior. ‘It’s brilliant. Until recently Vivienne’s mother had one 40 years her junior.’

And sympathetic towards Vivienne turning up, aged 50, at Kensington Palace in a see-through dress. ‘She didn’t intend to. She wore a dress that she thought was beautiful and when you put camera flash on it, it went transparent. The same thing happened when they caught her at Buckingham Palace with no knickers on.’

But Jo scarcely sees Malcolm. He once paid for Jo to go on a school skiing trip, but insisted he read a book on the Sex Pistols first. ‘The day before I was due to go skiing, he wouldn’t let me go because I hadn’t read the bloody boring book.’

In the late Sixties, Malcolm and three friends dressed up as Father Christmas and went to Selfridges toy department where the store’s Father Christmas was already working. ‘They went through the department giving toys to all the kids. The staff were tearing around trying to find out which was the real Father Christmas. When the assistants tried to take back the toys, the mothers yelled, ‘How dare you, Father Christmas gave it to him’.’ His parents like to shock the stuffy English.

Big is beautiful for comedy actress Miriam Margolyes. Failure certainly does not frighten her and success means having another helping of smoked salmon

SUCCESS means never having to say you’re hungry, according to Miriam Margolyes. ‘I get nervous when food is taken away from from me,’ she says, firmly preventing the waiter from clearing the table. The 51-year-old comedy actress has risen in the last few years via voice-overs and BT commercials, her one-woman show Dickens’ Women and a truckful of character roles in films and television to become one of the most sought-after character thespians in the business.

She has just finished filming with Martin Scorsese (‘I was terrified because I admire him so much’) and worked with Jonathan Kaplan playing the mother in Ed and his Dead Mother, in which she plays a resurrected corpse who runs around killing people with a chainsaw. All of which means she has spent most of her time in Los Angeles, where she also recorded the BBC radio version of Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I. Just released on cassette, it has proved a stunning success.

‘I’m absolutely gobsmacked – it’s between Elton John and Patsy Cline in the pop charts. The royal family come out of it extremely well, except for Prince Philip. The point of the book is that it shows up what Thatcher has done to our nation. And I am all in favour of exposing that bitch.’ It’s 15 years since she recorded the porn tape Sexy Sonia: Leaves From My Schoolgirl Diary – ‘no repeat fees there and I had to do all my own sound effects’ – though there is scant sign that she has become ‘respectable’. It is largely her wicked sense of humour, as well as her size, that has made her such a favourite on the other side of the pond.

‘You can be whatever you want in LA and I try to steer a course between the Yiddisher Momma and the Venice Beach Girl – Shelley Winters and Jane Fonda. I would say on the whole Shelley Winters wins.’

Not that she has any intentions of adopting Californian lifestyles or fads. ‘I never had any plastic surgery and don’t intend to, though I might dye my hair. I don’t believe in all this New Age nonsense. They’re very frightened over there. They’re very frightened of failure and fat. And I’m afraid of neither.’

Meanwhile, she has another tour of Dickens’ Women in Australia and a new theatre project that she won’t discuss because she is ‘superstitious’. ‘I’m on a winning streak at the moment and enjoying every minute of it. Every bit of smoked salmon tastes as brilliant as the last. And that’s what success is, isn’t it?’ she laughs. ‘Smoked salmon every day.’

STUART Carroll, 42, was head of litigation and a senior partner at Nabarro Nathanson, a leading London law firm. He ran major cases of commercial litigation – acting for disputing governments and sports and entertainments personalities. He earned a salary in the hundreds of thousands. ‘More,’ says Stuart, ‘than a chief executive of a publicly quoted company earns.’ And there he was in the glossy corporate brochure – looking serious, professional, highly motivated and dangling his glasses authoritatively. But now he’s ‘taking off’ the rest of his life. He has stopped working – forever. ‘I hated the English winters, going to work in the dark and coming home in the gloom. So I’m living on an island where the climate makes me feel alive.’

What does he say when people ask him what he does? ‘That I enjoy myself,’ he answers, sitting by his villa poolside on St Bart’s. ‘Then they ask me what I do, and I say that I live on a Caribbean island, snorkel, swim, read and lie in the sun for 12 months of the year.’ Will he never work again? ‘I think there’s a very good chance.’

Before leaving his job in March, he had been working 12-16 hour days, six days a week, jockeying between London and New York.

‘I was wishing my life away by working and being frustrated that I couldn’t do other things because I didn’t have time, or because I used work as an excuse for not doing them. I spent my time saying ‘I can’t do this, I’m too tired and I’ve got busy meetings next week’.’

HE HAS never married and has no dependents. ‘I’ve always been guilty of putting work first – to the detriment of relationships. But I’ve had relationships that have lasted a few years.’ So he decided to up and off. ‘I thought ‘I’ve got to do it when I’m young enough to keep my options open’. This isn’t a mid-life crisis and it’ll be harder to make changes as I get older. I’ve still got time to make mistakes and fall flat on my face.’ He called together the four most senior partners in the firm – with whom he had worked for 12 years – and told them he’d decided to resign. ‘I said ‘I want to live in the place I want to live in and do all the things I want to do while I’m young’.’ The partners were dumbstruck. ‘There was a great deal of shock. They didn’t want me to go and asked me to think about it.’ Stuart didn’t need to think. He sold his three-bedroom Victorian house in Richmond and decided to live off the capital and its interest. He didn’t have a car. And he didn’t mind leaving his friends. In fact, he thought he’d probably see more of them in the Caribbean. So as soon as he had completed his notice period, he jumped on a plane.

He is 6ft and work-out lean. He has the face of a hard-nosed litigator, and one that is also enquiring, intellectual and kind. He wears expensive clothes – Paul Smith, Armani and St Laurent – which now dangle disconsolately in his villa cupboards alongside his new daily clothes – swimming trunks. He’s even-tempered, reserved and solitary.

He was brought up in London’s East End. His mother was a teacher, his father an accountant. Stuart went to a comprehensive. ‘It was awful. I didn’t start learning until I was 19 when I went to Tottenham Technical College for a year to do A-levels.’ Then he did a University of London law degree. He has a first-class mind. ‘I did the Law Society professional exams on my own. I couldn’t see any point in wasting time travelling to and from Lancaster Gate when I was living in Hackney. So I borrowed the course notes off a friend who had attended – and I passed and he failed.’ AGED just 23, he went into the law and became a partner at the unusually young age of 28.

These days he lives in a huge rented villa with a maid and swimming pool overlooking the ocean. Every day he visits the patisserie, then swims, snorkels and lies on a beach with white sand, turquoise water and reefs. Then he’ll sit in a cafe, sip cafe au lait and read Emma, Wuthering Heights, Ivanhoe or Pride and Prejudice. ‘I want to read all the classics I never read at school.’

His arduous morning is followed by a lunch of fresh local fish and an afternoon of sitting under a palm tree dangling his feet in glistening water or snoozing in the gazebo. He also draws, paints, learns French, does a strenuous form of yoga (‘hanging off walls and so on’) sees friends, travels and learns the lambada. When he tires of the island, he’ll move elsewhere. ‘I feel much better about myself,’ he says, ‘I’m living a more worthwhile and rounded life. I don’t have any regrets and I feel I’m going forward.’ But he is unemployed. Does he feel a loss of identity or self worth? ‘Not at all; I’ve never been worried about status.’

STEPHANIE Cole collects relations. She discovered her twin cousins when she was 11, her father when she was 21 and her half-sister when she was 38. As if this weren’t extraordinary enough, she was also expelled from school for throwing a book at her Latin teacher, once suffered so badly from agoraphobia she couldn’t walk to the shops, and became a Buddhist. We meet in her north London flat. Stephanie, tall with a massive jaw, piercing blue eyes and stern headmistress’s face and clothes, spits out her gum, makes a cup of instant coffee with dried skimmed milk, shoos away her cats and talks in a deep, self-assured, direct voice. She is an intense, likeably formidable and surprisingly unsmiling woman.

Stephanie is 53. In her latest role as Betty, in A Passionate Woman, she plays a 52-year-old who, before her son’s wedding, reflects on her own marriage and impending old age, and sees a wasted life. ‘I empathise with her,’ says Stephanie. ‘I’ve sometimes taken stock and lost confidence.’ Stephanie recalls her life. Her parents, wartime lovers, parted before she was born. She was brought up by her impecunious middle-class mother and great-aunt, and sent, aged five, to boarding school.

When Stephanie was 11, her mother located Stephanie’s twin cousins in a bleak children’s home in Wales and adopted them. ‘The home was horrific,’ she recalls, ‘a couple of bare rooms with a lot of tiny children sitting around.’

Stephanie, aged 15, was expelled from Clifton High School for Girls. ‘For constant insubordination. The Latin mistress laughed when I said I wanted to be an actress. So I picked up a Latin dictionary and threw it at her. Sadly I missed.’ She left school, learned shorthand, and went to Bristol Old Vic drama school.

Aged 21, she decided to meet her father for the first time. ‘We corresponded then met outside the stage door, hugged, then he said, ‘Shall we have lunch?’. I was painfully shy and he was very private. But he told me I had a half-sister.’ She thinks she might have seen him again. Curiously, she doesn’t remember.

Stephanie married Henry Marshall, a writer and theatrical fight director, in 1973. She became pregnant quickly, lost the baby at five months, then became pregnant again with Emma (now a 21-year-old stage manager). ‘I stopped working and had terrible post-natal depression. I got awful panic attacks, agoraphobia and claustrophobia. The agoraphobia got so bad I couldn’t even go to Sainsbury’s – just the local shop because I could rush home. If I went to the theatre, I had to sit at the end of the row so I could get out. The panic attacks were horrendous. Your heart goes very fast, you stop being able to breathe and you get terribly dizzy and sometimes lose consciousness.’ The doctor prescribed valium. Stephanie learned auto hypnosis.

Then when she was 38, her adopted brother Peter, 28, was diagnosed as schizophrenic. ‘His behaviour had always been appalling. He’d destroy all his possessions, neglect himself, become withdrawn, and would think the television was talking to him,’ says Stephanie, who is patron of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship.

Stephanie felt spiritually empty and became a Buddhist. After five years she returned to her Christian roots, often going to Quaker meetings. On her mantelpiece she has two Hindu gods, a buddha, Christ and native Indian religious artefacts.

IN 1982, an axe handle was dropped accidentally on her head during a performance of the farce Noises Off. Consequently, she suffers from tinnitus, a constant ringing in her ears.

Then six years ago Stephanie’s marriage broke down. ‘We’d been arguing constantly and had grown further and further apart.’

Her difficulties were helped by being in analysis. Finally she spent seven years on the couch. ‘I thought the breakdown was all my fault,’ she says. ‘I came to realise it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. I explored my lovely side and the areas where I’m vulnerable, stupid, unpleasant and malicious.’

Things looked up in 1989, when Stephanie traced her half-sister through Ariel Bruce, who specialises in finding people. ‘I rang her when she was going through the dustbin. Ariel had told her I was an actress – and my sister had been to the theatre the night before and was scavenging for the programme, just in case.’ The siblings met at Gatwick airport, laughed, cried, compared life stories, realised how alike they were and became friends. ‘She lives in the States now and we talk once a week.’ Before I go, Stephanie tells me one last story. About how she set off four years ago on a mercy mission to Romania, co-driving a lorry of medical supplies. ‘The big end went, the clutch went and then the gearbox went. We were stranded and had to fly home.’ The tale is typical.