This weekend a ‘chatathon’ will raise money for charity and reveal a new champion talker

Maria Meredith, aged 31, talks non-stop. Her loquaciousness, inspired by an occasional nod, runs smoothly from the subject of holidays to ironing, the media, children, cement and her kitchen fittings. She talks incessantly – she offers a marathon of words. One imagines her builder husband, like some enforced trainee Quaker, coping by placing insulation wadding either in his ears or mouth.

He concedes that he doesn’t talk much when his garrulous wife is around. When he is out, she soliloquizes to the cats: she says she started talking at 15 months and hasn’t stopped since; she is nicknamed ‘The Mouth’ at her work (as a food supervisor for Marks & Spencer).

This week her chatting will make about pounds 220 for charity. The occasion, the LBC Chatathon on Saturday, will give her ample opportunity to talk her way to the title of Taylor’s Conversationalist of the Year, while raising money for the Association For Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus. (Each entrant has to talk friends out of at least pounds 100 worth of sponsorship).

Last year, the fifth year of the competition, 120 contestants, evenly divided between the sexes, entered. And Kate Holmes, a financial consultant, became the first woman to win the title. ‘Who says that women are born talkers?’ asks Sam Kirby, the organizer.

On the first day, competitors have 10 conversations of 50 minutes, changing topics and partners hourly. In the quarter-finals, the contestants will converse with celebrities, chosen for their gift of the gab: ironically, the organizers are remaining tight-lipped about who the celebrities are. The semi-fiinalists and finalists will then talk to each other for an hour. Judges Willie Rushton, Barry Cryer, Claire Rayner, Alan Coren, and Kate Holmes, will preside over each voluble contesting pair.

Last year the subjects ranged from ‘exploration’ – Meredith went into the battle of words with a combined attack ranging from pioneers to the Easter Islands, to he feline friends’ stubborn garden explorations – ‘to what makes news?’ This, Meredith explains, means ‘Royalty, disasters and pop stars’ bed hopping. ‘

The topics are announced at the beginning of the session, and the contestants – all aged over 18 – are awarded points for interest, wit, lucidity and cogency. ‘They are eliminated if they don’t keep up a cogent conversation,’ explains Kirby. Similarly, contestants are penalized for pauses, monolgues, swearing, unintelligability and for droning. Laughter will not be penalized unless unduly prolonged.

Men impose their wishes more. Meredith noted last year that they tend to get a point across in conversation by raising their voices. ‘They think the one with the loudest voice will win. ‘

Dr Sarah Hampson, lecturer in psychology at Birbeck College, University of London, agrees. ‘Men are much more experience at making forceful points verbally,’ she says. ‘The most obvious example is that men interrupt so frequently. ‘

Kate Holmes, 30 had never done any public speaking before she won the Chatathon last year. But, she says, she does a lot of talking in her job.

In last year’s Chatathon, she was astonished by the number of men who didn’t have conversation. ‘They had monologues, using the occasion to get on their soap boxes. They tend to assume they are right and have confidence in their views. Unfortunately, a lot of women talk trivia. ‘

As a judge, she says she will be looking primarily for politeness. ‘Bad manners are a killer to good conversation. The men tended to harp back to the same thing, whatever you were talking about, in order to get their point across. ‘ She will look for people who spark off the imagination of their partner. ‘That is when you are really communicating properly and exchanging ideas. ‘ And she will mark down for what she calls meanness. ‘Last year a lot of the men would intentionally choose subjects they thought you would not know a thing about. ‘ Holmes, however, felt at home. Who says that women aren’t born talkers?

Janet Morgan’s business is other people’s business techniques – and how to make them more effective

When Dr Janet Morgan talks, corporations and governments listen. ‘Vaguely 40’, she is described ‘rather grandly’ (no formal training) as a management consultant. ‘I am just asked in as myself, to notice things. ‘ In a recent edition of the BBC’s staff newspaper she wrote an article that showed exactly what she had noticed during her four-year stint as special adviser to the then director-general, Alasdair Milne.

The gist of it was that intelligent people frequently run round in circles tripping each other up. ‘People had started to feel paranoid and ground down. I told them to get on with the job and keep their nerve. ‘ She also suggested how they might go about it.

The BBC, she says, is implementing her master plan. ‘The ‘upward referral’ system, whereby difficult decisions are passed to superiors, has been disbanded; meetings have been halved; minutes are shorter; and people have been requested to take the ‘No Entry’ signs off their doors ‘and replace them with more friendly notices’.

Unfortunately, Morgan has not been there to see it all happen, having moved on to become adviser to the board at Granada Television.

She is a glowing example of her own belief that ‘women are good at thinking about lots of things at once’. Apart from exercising the theories of organization learnt as a political historian (she worked in the Cabinet Office and lectured in politics at Oxford University), she has also written a biography of Agatha Christie, edited the diaries of her former employer and mentor Dick Crossman and, according to her entry in Who’s Who, finds time to enjoy making ice-cream. Her tiny stature believes vast stamina and a towering intellect. She has only failed once – when, in 1966, she did not become the first woman president of the Oxford Union Society.

Despite her own dazzling ability to organize, she has no time for the theory that women, by the very nature of their many-stranded lives, are better managers than men. There are, she says, hopeless male managers and hopeless female ones.

‘The sort of woman one tends to see in a senior position is probably excellent or she wouldn’t have got there, because it has been such a hard struggle. So we tend to think of women as being somehow better at it. But really we are not comparing averages.

‘It’s not so much because it is a male-dominated structure that the BBC has got into this organizationally ossified state,’ she says. ‘It is because those who should have been thinking about the way the BBC runs as an organization have been too busy and distracted to do that. ‘

Morgan concedes that women are more inclined to realize that a problem cannot always be solved by the application of a theory pulled from a filing cabinet: ‘They are very good at making judgements by feeling and hunch. And anyone who has looked at how scientific discoveries are made realizes how important that is.

They are also adept at simultaneously thinking of several jobs and the baby at home – ‘they have lots of antennae out’ – and have terrific stamina. ‘All that stuff about women going barmy every three and a half weeks is rot. ‘ She is surprised, she says, by how feeble men can be.

On the down side, she refers to what she calls the Queen Bee syndrome: the type of woman who devours any competing female. She also says some women fail to make the most of themselves – ‘sometimes because they feel sorry for men’. Women also tend to feel guilty. ‘They carry other people as passengers and often feel it is not worth being insistent or making a fuss. ‘

Naturally, Morgan has conquered her own difficulties. She has never been on an assertiveness training course (‘Do you think I should?’ seems a disingenuous response). She admits she may be unable to reach high shelves – ‘but I can always get a ladder. ‘ Somehow, one feels there will always be a tall man standing nearby, or at least someone to pass her a ladder.

Seven years ago, when I was a politics student, I attended a weekend seminar – one which, offering instant enlightenment, promised to change one’s life. Students who had attended it glowed with confidence, displaying an enviable clarity of purpose, and enhanced ability to communicate. The course had its biggest impact at Bristol University. It was not run under the aegis of the university, but rather of oner Robert D’Aubigny a former actor and son of a meat salesman. It was called Exegesis and folded in 1984.

The seminar, which employed a range of heavily-confrontational, psychological techniques in the name of self-development, had a liberating effect on my mind and pocket. Something that was based so much on fear and authoritarian leadership patterns was reprehensible. But it offered some valuable insights and perspectives which have had a lasting, beneficial effect.

Exegesis wasn’t a cult: there was no religious worship and no devotion to a person. Participants were not brainwashed although, as a malleable teenager, I was probably soemwhat indoctrinated. There were no signs, at that time, of Serious Money on the same scale as the fleet of Rolls-Royces owned by Rajneesh, guru of the Orange People, although it became clear later that D’Aubigny had strong material and political ambitions. And there were no Scientology-type billion-year contracts (affirming a belief in reincarnation) on offer. Yet Exegesis constituted the very extreme end of the enlightenment kick.

Many other self-development programmes are not as sinister as generally believed. Insight, for instance, is a gentle, distant cousin of Exegesis, founded in the United States in 1978. ‘American cult courses alarm TV-am staff’, ran a recent headline in a national paper. For TV-am’s managing director Bruce Gynell had encouraged staff to attend Insight self-awareness courses. ‘Insight is about being caring, compassionate and concerned about other people,’ Gyngell is quoted as saying. It is not inconceivable that this outlook could have advantageous business applications.

Insight courses – six days with about 150 participants – involve an initial outlay of pounds 75 and a post-seminar ‘donation’. ‘The largest contributions have been over pounds 20,000, most pay pounds 300 and about 5 per cent have been dissatisfied and had refunds,’ says the ebullient, 30-year-old UK director, Ruth Lederman. She says 40,000 people have taken part in Insight worldwide and 1,500 in the UK since it started regularly in 1985. A prominent Harley Street doctor recommends it to his patients – ‘I have only gained benefit from it’ – but nevetheless wishes to remain anonymous.

The course combines a variety of techniques from ‘mini lectures’ and guided meditation to group interactions. They will not give specific examples: ‘that would be like giving away the punchline to a joke,’ says Lederman. ‘The seminar is about bringing out excellence in individuals. ‘

In the United States, whole companies have undergone the training; here, chunks of companies have taken part. Designer/supplier Janet Reger took the Insight course two years ago, while adjusting to her company’s liquidation and an unhappy marriage. ‘Insight is the best thing that every happened to me,’ she said. Two of her seven employees have now taken the course. ‘We make decisions more easily and express ourselves more clearly,’ says Reger. ‘Business is now very good. ‘

Judy Tame, 33, a financial consultant to Allied Dunbar, went on the seminar in 1984. Now 12 people from her department of 50 have taken her lead. ‘It creates a happy, positive atmosphere,’ she said. ‘Tensions are solved more easily, and we have a clearer vision for pulling ourselves out of difficult patches. ‘

The claims for Transcendental Meditation (TM) are equally startling. TM, which started in 1958, is a self-help technique popularized by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, former guru to the Beatles. Teachers now wear business suits and intense looks. They claim to be able to fly: ‘We are in the early stages of levitation and call it ‘hopping’,’ says conference administrator and TM teacher Richard Johnson.

TM is a simple, mental technique, practised while sitting twice daily for 20 minutes and using a sound from an available selection of mantras. Its teachers say it induces a state of deep rest during which the metabolic rate drops by 16 per cent and the body rids itself of accumulated tensions, emerging deeply refreshed. Fees are on a sliding scale according to income, and range from pounds 65 to pounds 245 for six hours of instruction in four sittings.

Johnson claims that TM improves mental clarity and also believes it reduces stress and the likelihood of illness. Dr Roger Chalmers, president of the British Association for the Medical Application of TM, says that more than 350 scientific studies conducted over the past 15 years support such assertions.

TM says some 3 1/2 million people have taken part in its courses, including 150,000 in this country, 600 of whom, it claims, are doctors. A recent symposium held for the Society of Occupational Medicine ‘was greeted with enthusiasm,’ Johnson says.

Gordon Crompton, 32, managing director of Crompton Machine Company, did TM two years ago – ‘feeling unwell after a stressful period in business’. Sceptical, he feared it might be mad and mystical. ‘But my well-being and health improved. The tension has gone and I am able to cope much better. ‘ So he introduced it to his factory; and 35 per cent of the 50 employees now meditate. ‘Now they approach new projects positively, he says, ‘and we seem to be getting higher pfoduction figures for less effort. ‘

Life Training is another programme that promises positive results. It claims 20,000 people have taken it worldwide since 1981; 1,200 in England since starting in 1984. The training, which costs pounds 240, takes place over an intensive weekend, or over six evenings (pounds 60). The brainchild of two US Episcopalian priests, both trained therapists, Life Training is similar to Exegesis and Insight, and teacher David Templer dubs it ‘an experimental workshop. ‘ Using discussion, meditation, improvized theatre and games, the course is a synthesis of a range of psychological, philosophical and spiritual traditions.

Templer. who also works as a freelance marketing consultant, has found it helps him in the business world. ‘I am less combative and find I co-operate more easily. ‘

Robert Stephens, 43, vice-president of Mellon-Picet International Management, did the training three years ago. ‘I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at a personal and business level,’ he said. Initially he thought they were ‘a bunch of weirdos’. Now he says he sees that the format is a catalyst for a more open and honest way of relating.

Not everyone, however, is convinced. Hans Eysenck, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at London University, says: ‘There is no evidence that such courses do any good and there are certain, albeit infrequent, cases when people have been harmed. So-called self-knowledge can be dangerous, particularly when it awakens neurotic fears, anxieties and stresses, as often happens.

‘Many claims are made for these self-awareness programmes, none of which is substantiated by the evidence. They are cults in the same way as many forms of psycho-therapy, such as scream therapy, are – and claims for these have not been substantiated either. ‘

Somebody has just died. The straw strewn on the pavement and the cobbled lane outside the house signify as much. Meanwhile the gas lamp flickers above the door, and a wooden handstick indicates that this is a weaver’s house. The house is dark inside, except for a few candles, and a Cockney expresses his concern for my safety – before driving his taxi on to Liverpool Street Station.

At 7.30pm, the door opens to reveal a Californian in jeans. This is Dennis Severs in his unique Georgian home in Folgate Street, Spitalfields. It is not open to the public, unless your manner appeals to him when you phone to book, and he also has a reputation for throwing people out if their attitude displeases him – even though they are paying Pounds 20 a head for the evening.

On arrival, Severs tells us that he gave up years ago trying to explain the purpose of the visit; but that does not deter this madcap American from talking about his house and its elusive inhabitants as if he had to make up for centuries of silence.

‘We’re not here to see a house or its pictures, furniture or porcelain. And we’re certainly not here to learn anything,’ he lectures the eight people now huddled in his candlelit kitchen – a kitchen, like the rest of the house, that is decorated and lived in as it was in the 18th and 19th centuries.

‘We’re hear to dream and get the 20th century out of our heads,’ he informs the assembled company, before locking us in his dark and dank 18th-century cellar to facilitate the process. Thus starts a three-hour tour. ‘Weird,’ exhales the American woman spilling out of the chair next to mine.

Severs lives in his 1723 home in proxy for a mythical 18th-century Huguenot family of his own extraordinary creation, called the Jervises.

The walk round his authentically detailed home is accompanied by entertaining chat by Severs and cleverly hidden cassette recordings. Entirely believable comments about the illusory family, their lifestyle and relationships are interspersed with intentionally incorrect historical detail and endless trivia.

Severs’s technique is to put his visitors into an atmosphere and bombard them with things that filled the hearts and minds of the Jervises, ‘so in the end you haven’t just had a glimpse of the past, you have been there’.

We stand in the kitchen in front of an open fire, a chicken turning on the spit; and it does not seem self-conscious because that is how Severs cooks every day. While he enthuses about the quirky life beneath the stairs, regaling us with stories of the cheeky maid Rebecca, one begins to feel as if his 18th-century servants have just left the room. The house retains its original atmosphere not just because of the material objects, but because of the magical environment he creates and its authentic temperatures and smells.

We go upstairs to the dining room, hushed and in mock excitement, like children looking for fairies they only half believe in. It is like walking on to a stage set for 1724: the pomegranate and half-empty wine glasses scattered on the table, and Mr Jervis’s wig left behind on a chair.

From there we move forward to 1760 and the smoking room where Mr Jervis holds his assemblies and organizes his business. He burns market palletts in the fire, and dust fills the room. We follow into the drawing room, where on dark evenings they listen to stories, just as we are doing. The smell of orange oil hangs in the air, mingling with the lavender flowers that are swept to the edge of the room. Then Mrs Jervis’s fan falls off the chair to the floor, and we hear her riotous party leaving downstairs.

Next is the bedroom, an intimate room containing Mrs Jervis’s messy make-up and sentimental knick-knacks. Here the carpet is cleaned every day with damp tea leaves, to restore the colour and pile. Just as everything in the house is faithfully dusted with rags steamed in cedar oil.

In the dressing room, the fire is burning and tea is steaming in cups on the table.

Upstairs the Dickensian attic represents 1835 and the Industrial Society. An entire family called the Laceaux live there. (William Jervis got Mrs Laceaux pregnant, so it was his Christian duty to bring the family into the house, one understands. ) The room shocks, for it is stark, with peeling paint and dripping water. It is freezing and one of our company complains. ‘They lived through it and so will you,’ retorts Severs curtly.

It is pleasurable then to move on to the second drawing room – and 1840. The room is the antithesis of those upstairs and represents the cosy bourgeois reaction to them with its gas lamps, well-dressed furniture, swathes of material and acres of ornaments.

The trip is not for those without imagination and a sense of irony. ‘Pernickity intellectuals who come always end up looking like char-women wearing tiaras,’ explains Severs.

Dennis Severs, 18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields, London E1 (01-247 4013), by appointment only. Eight people at a time, three evenings a week at 7.30pm, £20 a head. (c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 1987

David Cassidy, the pop superstar who could not cope with fame, is back – on the West End stage, in Time. Caroline Phillips spoke to him

It is unnerving when one’s erstwhile teeny-bopper poster materializes and picks up a cup of coffee. But that is what happened when I met David Cassidy: former pop idol, former teenage Super Puppy, former superstar. He points out the difficulties of being lumbered with being a former Something. ‘Why don’t you just say: ‘David Cassidy, actor, comedian, man in search of his own identity?”

Cassidy is 36, going on 28. Still very small, he wears black jeans, a roll-neck sweater and his hair is dyed blond. Jet-lagged, having just flown in from America, he’s tried and tense. But he is still polite, with a ready sense of humour. He also seems neurotic and fragile. Early on, he asks ‘Am I being boring? Am I too guarded?’

Cassidy is in London to make his West End stage debut on April 13 as the Rock Star in Dave Clark’s musical, Time. In it, a bunch of singing humanoids are summoned up to the High Court of the Universe to defend and save Earth, which appears set on course for destruction. The only wit is supplied in the form of a massive hologram of Sir Laurence Oliver’s head. ‘I always wanted to work with Oliver’s head,’ says Cassidy. ‘At least I can tell my kids, if I ever have them, that I worked with part of Oliver. The best part, I might add. ‘

He will take over from the timeless Cliff Richard, the nation’s sweetheart, for a three-month run. ‘Cliff is an institution here. There’s a kinda ‘hands-off Cliff’ feeling. ‘ Why did he decide to take the part? ‘Because they offered me a lot of money. ‘

Cassidy immediately wrestles with his leg, attempting to put his foot in his mouth. Why does he say these things, he wonders? His real motive is that he considers the show a great challenge. ‘I want to be though of as an actor here – because I am. ‘ He has spent the past five years in theatre, both regional and Broadway.

From an acting family – his father was the late Jack Cassidy, his mother Evelyn Ward appeared in the Broadway production of South Pacific – Cassidy was, self-professedly, on the way to becoming a well-respected actor in the 1960s. Then came 1970 and The Partridge Family. He was cast, aged 19, as the 16-year-old dewyeyed son of a suburban family who had their own rock’n’roll band. His vulnerable look and pleasant light voice appealed to early teens.

The marketing men used David Cassidy to sell lunchboxes, bubble gum and toothpaste. He became the face on the back of cornflakes packets and one of the most screamed-at stars since Elvis. His earnings were conservatively estimated at pounds 100,000 a year.

He recalls: ‘I used to work seven days a week. From 7am-7pm shooting, then from 7.30pm to midnight recording. At weekends, I’d do concerts. ‘

At the height of his career a fan magazine alleged that super-clean Cassidy was a drug user: ‘They printed that about everybody, I’m not unique. Let’s clarify the issue: I do not, have not, don’t advocate them. ‘

He soon had wall-to-wall gold discs and kerb-to-kerb girls wherever he stayed. He can’t remember, but he thinks he has about 25 gold discs (‘I keep them in a box in the closet’). His first hit with The Partridge Family, ‘I Think I Love You’, sold more than five million copies. In his time, he has sold more than 30 million records. He was kissed goodnight, glossy lips on glossy prints, by as many girls. When Cassidy went out, it was under a blanket.

The boy who had been raised by his mother and grandparents in a small town in New Jersey, and went to church every week, lost his identity. ‘I had become something larger than life that I had not wanted or intended. I felt really lost. ‘

He became paranoid and a recluse, hiding from the hysteria. ‘I could not handle the way people dealt with me. People saw me in the street and couldn’t believe it; they wanted to touch and be close to that kind of success. ‘

He was no longer looked upon as a singer and actor who wanted to have ‘real honest’ relationships with people. ‘You talked to people and they didn’t see you: they saw the stuff around you – the magazine covers, all the screaming and the craziness, the television shows. ‘

He felt isolated. ‘Everyone wanted something from me – no sour grapes – but I was finding it hard to keep my sanity. I associated with the one or two people I felt comfortable with, or I stayed alone. ‘

He was, he admits, en route for ‘one helluva’ breakdown. ‘I didn’t know who I was any more, or how I got like that. But I believe the values that were instilled in me by my family saved my life when I was really lost. ‘

In 1975, Cassidy ‘retired’, at the age of 24. He bred thoroughbreds on his farm in Santa Barbara, near Los Angeles, avoided music, saw a therapist and married and divorced actress Kay Lenz. ‘It’s been kind of a metamorphosis,’ he explains.

He maintains he is now more happy emotionally; he has been married to the steeplechaser Meryl Tanz for three years. ‘I’m still pretty much of a longer. My wife lives on the farm and I spend a lot of time alone in LA. I’ve set a course towards simplifying my life. I no longer do things I don’t want to do or don’t need. I’m too old and bored with doing things that don’t make me happy. ‘

He runs five times a week and visits a gym. ‘It’s good for me mentally. I don’t do it because I’m trying to become Sylvester Stallone; it’s important at this time of my life to try and maintain whatever is left of it. ‘

Cassidy says he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life, until four years ago, when he made his comeback in the Broadway production of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 1985, he returned to the top 10 with ‘The Last Kiss’. ‘That’s the only gold disc I keep out,’ he says.

‘It has taken me 15 years to come to what I really want to do,’ he says – be a respected working actor. He is working on the co-production of a film with one of his three half-brothers. ‘I want to be able to work and do all sorts of different things – maybe even join a rep company. I don’t just work for money, I don’t go where they pay me the most. ‘

In order to take up the role in Time he turned down the chance to appear in a play at the minimum Equity rate, but says he will chase that dream when he returns to the US. ‘If you ask me who I’d most like to be ..well, I’d really most like to be myself, and after that Jimmy Stewart. He’s the best American actor, both in serious and comic drama. ‘ Perhaps Cassidy keeps a poster of Stewart on his wall.

As the Cynthia Payne case continues, Caroline Phillips flew to Paris to talk to the celebrated Madame Claude

It never really occurred to me that I would make a good prostitute – it wasn’t the sort of thing the university careers officer ever suggested. But it was the first thing that struck Fernande Grudet; Madame Claude, that is, erstwhile owner of the world’s most prestigious call girl agency and brothel, based in Paris.

‘I’d soon have you married to a Duke,’ she said, fixing her doe eyes (pencil-pleat Saint Laurent skirt to match) on me. Nor would it be the first time she had effected such a marriage. Looking uncharacteristically amused (the finely structured, tight-lipped face almost manages the relevant muscular exercise), she says: ‘It makes me laugh when I see the photographs of the ladies and countesses in the social pages of Tatler, Harpers and Vogue, and count up which ones started off by working for me. ‘ Her major coup was when one of her girls – ‘the daughter of a mere concierge’ – married a peer.

‘I have retired,’ she adds, turning her attention to the wine list (her choice of restaurant: un bras et une jambe job). She points to a very expensive bottle of Chateau Margaux. While my face matures to a cheap claret colour, she sits there demurely: 63, looking an elegant fortyish.

Madame Claude gave up her call girl network 10 years ago: ‘Sexual liberation meant that the market was shrinking. ‘ But the primary reason was that she had run into tax problems. By 1975, her earnings were estimated at pounds 600,000 a year, and she faced charges of tax fraud and procuring more than 2,000 girls.

So she went to the United States for a decade’s vacation, and returned last year on bad legal advice believing, mistakenly, that her tax sins had been absolved. She came back to a four-month prison sentence, albeit in a converted 17th-century castle in the South of France. The prison experience failed to ruffle one of the Vidal Sasson-clipped hairs on her head. ‘Prison destroys those who can be destroyed,’ she says, pragmatically. Instead, she reflected on life (‘I have no complaints, no regrets’); watched television and completed her second book, Le Meilleur C’est L’Autre, which should appear in English soon.

The book contains advice to women on how to keep a man, culled from years of being confidante to thousands of disgruntled (mainly married) hommes. It runs the gamut from psychological hints to practical tips oon how a woman can retain her looks and mystery.

She believes that women are superior to men and can instinctively exploit them. But her views are pessimistic. She regards love, with its concomitant jealousies, as a handicap. And she believes that the sexes share little in common. ‘If you didn’t need a man and a woman to make children, they would never talk to each other,’ she says.

The critics derided her book ‘because I didn’t name names’, she says, claiming she doesn’t like scandal and prefers discretion. More to the point is the fact that she still owes pounds 2 million income tax on profits; and with many of her old faithfuls still pacing round Whitehall-sur-Seine, she probably prefers to let sleeping ministers lie.

Her girls were groomed for the most refined tastes, at prices that made dinner at Maxims beforehand seem like McDonald’s. ‘The men wanted the best and were prepared to pay for it. ‘ Kings, princes, ministers and ambassadors were, she claims, among her clients. But it was not easy to find her: ‘You needed high-class contacts to get my number. This was to maintain the calibre of clients. ‘ She had daughters of diplomats and generals, countesses, secretaries, students and married women working for her.

Recruitment was no problem: she maintains she was over-subscribed. ‘About 20 girls a month would come to me, and I would choose one. ‘ She judged them initially on ‘face, figure and intelligence’, and would have one of a handful of ‘friendly’ clients monitor sexual performance. ‘They would tell me whether the girl was any good, useless or worth educating,’ she says in the manner of a sophisticated executive talking about product packaging. Indeed, she liked to regard her girls as smartly-wrapped Christmas parcels, which saved the men the time of shopping.

Despite having been educated in a convent – her first job was selling Bibles – she says she had no qualms about her work. ‘I am a well-balanced woman with no hang-ups. ‘ Instead, she treated her profession with the utmost professionalism, rapidly becoming a workaholic in order to achieve the quality she desired. ‘I took out everything that is shameful in prostitution and elevated it to something chic and dignified,’ she says. ‘The girls were proud to be Madame Claude girls. ‘

She is a perfectionist, and wanted to create the perfect woman. ‘I felt like a sculptress,’ she says. She would send her ‘graduates’ to couturiers, beauticians, health farms and plastic surgeons. She taught them correct posture, to talk intelligently and read books. ‘A man wants a woman who is sophisticated, funny, intelligent and interested in him – totally supportive and never bothering him with her problems. ‘

It seems that she found the correct formula. ‘No one has matched me, before or since. ‘

On Thursday the General Synod will consider the ordination of women in the Church of England. Caroline Phillips listens to both sides of a bitter argument

The controversial and extrovert Reverend Martin Flatman greeted me, wearing washing-up gloves. Labour voter and anti-nuke demonstrator, he believes in the equality of women: ‘My wife and I even share the washing up. ‘ But some, he says, might believe he is a male chauvinist – because he is against the ordination of women.

Father Flatman, 40, became a priest in 1972. He has been working in the parish of Cowley St John, Oxford for the past five years. He loves his job and might stay in it until he is 70. ‘Nobody can chuck me out unless I break the law,’ he chuckles. Yet he is anguished, suffering doubts. And all because of women.

‘I’d be forced out of my job. I’d probably end up without a home or an income, because there is no promise that there will be any compensation. ‘ Father Flatman recognizes that the day of such misjudgement may not be night for perhaps a decade. ‘In the meantime I suffer the uncertainties. ‘

In 1975, the General Synod decided that it had no fundamental objections, in principle, to the ordination of women into the priesthood. The debate has proceeded at elderly parson’s pace. But on Thursday the synod will consider a recent report from the Bishops, before the Church of England can set the legislative wheels in motion.

The fact that some people will find it impossible to remain within the Church if women are ordained – producing a schism perhaps on the same scale as the Reformation – will also be discussed. As will a code of practice and ‘safeguards’ for dissenters, such as conscience clauses and compensation.

In Father Flatman’s view it is a decision that should not be taken without much thought and prayer: ‘It is a fundamental change and one that assumes that the Church has been defective for the past 2,000 years. ‘ If women were forced on to him in the priesthood, he would leave, because he feels he wouldn’t be able to do the very thing he believes he has been called upon by God to do.

In fact, he would follow his wife’s precedent. She became disillusioned, ‘felt that the Church had lost its way’, and converted to Roman Catholicism. ‘She is right behind me and sick of all the agonizing,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t be able to become a Catholic priest because I am married. And even if things changed, I don’t know whether they’d want me. ‘

Flatman’s primary objection to the ordination of women is that he could not accept a Church that severed itself from moves towards unity with the Catholics: ‘In effect, we would be saying ‘snooks to you’ to the great church of western Christendom. ‘Such a fundamental change to the belief and practice of the Church should only, he thinks, be effected with the weight of the whole of Christendom behind it.

Father Flatman says that the Bible shows men and women to be different. ‘Sadly that has often been taken to mean women are inferior, which they are not. They are equal and complementary, with different God-given roles in the Church. As such, women play significantly roles without being priests. ‘

He maintains that the Equal Opportunities bandwagon – ‘a very small part of a larger question’ – has shrouded these profound truths. ‘If you want to have a balanced society, it is very dangerous to push women into everything that men do and vice versa. I don’t want men to push women into their place. But I dislike the tendency to make women into ‘pretend’ men, to form an hermaphrodite society. ‘

He rebuffs the argument that a Church lacking women priests fails to represent humanity as a whole: to believe that, he says, would be to believe that the only people who represent humanity are priests.

In the United States women can be ordained as priests and, he warns, they cannot get jobs. ‘Christians like the idea of having women as priests – but they don’t want a woman as their priest. If the parishes have a choice, they tend to choose men. ‘

Deaconess Anthea Williams, 37, says: ‘Women should have been ordained long ago. I’m prepared to stick to my guns. No one will sway me. ‘

Deaconess Williams grew up in a vicarage. ‘That’s where I learned my role models,’ she says ‘I found out that women could work full-time in the Church. ‘

At the age of 24 she became a parish worker, and at 30 she was made deaconess. She has been ‘very happily’ married for six years and now works in her St Mary’s Maidstone parish in Kent. As a deaconess, she is the closest thing to a priest, yet not officially ordained.

She is to become a deacon, one of the first, on Friday, and as such she will be able to perform marriage ceremonies. But she feels angry that she lacks the authority to participate fully in the work of her parish.

Her parishioners suffers, she says. ‘I have the sort of relationship with people that would make a lot of sense of ordination. If people die, I bury them. I baptize their babies. When we come together on Sunday morning, it would be logical to celebrate Communion with them. It is frustrating having to defer to someone else for that. ‘ Neither can she pronounce absolution nor bless people.

Unlike Flatman, whatever happens, Deaconess Williams will not leave the Church. She believes that people who threaten to do so are scaremongering and childish. ‘If you have a commitment to something, you stick with it – even if it gives you up. It’s puerile to say, ‘If the game doesn’t go my way, I’m going to leave’.’

She is unmoved by the issue of the unity of the Church. ‘People get terribly worried and frightened about schisms. But there is going to be a rift either way. And there’s nothing that terrible about splitting. Unless women are prepared to be noncomformist, they have no spiritual home to go to. ‘

In her view people who obstruct the ordination of women are misguided and standing in the way of the Holy Spirit. ‘They adduce theological arguments in support of things that are not proven. It is perverse to suggest things that are not obviously true.

‘There is more evidence to suggest that ordination would be fruitful than that it wouldn’t. Many women are already behaving like people who have been ordained as priests, performing well in ministerial roles – and we have to justify why it hasn’t been done for them. ‘

She dismisses theoretical considerations, particularly the belief that because Jesus was male only men can be priests. ‘It is disgusting the way Jesus gets dragged in to justify a particular way of ordering the Church. The Bible is not a book of legal precedent, it simply lays down guidelines. She maintains that the way the Church is organized affects what people believe about God. ‘Any merits of being of the same sex as Jesus are greatly outweighed by the pastoral advantages of the message women can deliver. If women are excluded from ordination, the implicit message is that it is not OK to be a woman. ‘

In common with Flatman, Williams believes that the sexes have complementary roles to play. ‘It’s just wishful thinking on the part of the ‘antis’ to say that women have their part to play outside the priesthood. The differences in the sexes will be more clearly seen when women are ordained. Then we will be able to see clearly the different ways in which they exercise their priesthood. ‘ She says that some people would prefer a woman, ‘just as they choose a woman doctor’.

Deaconess Williams claims that the ordination of women in the US has been a success: ‘Women priests are spreading like wildfire. There are very few places now where they aren’t welcome. And they are not just foisted on to a parish. They have to be chosen for the job – which means that they are securing employment against male competition. ‘

When they heard that their son, Peter, was an Aids virus carrier, his parents felt annoyed. ‘We didn’t think it was our turn for another problem. But now we just want to let people know the positive things we feel about it’, says Norman, his father, a 36-year-old computer systems manager.

Eighteen months ago Peter, a haemophiliac, developed antibodies to the virus after receiving contaminated blood-clotting agent. He was then nine, and it was the first case of its kind in Britain. ‘But we are level-headed, and haemophiliacs and their families are used to dealing with problems’, says Norman.

To the family’s disappointment, the local haemophilia centre did not know what to do. ‘They didn’t seem surprised that it had happened, but said that there was nothing to worry about’, says Peter’s mother, Doree. Aids is not a notifiable disease, but because of the risks ofblood spillage the parents decided to inform Peter’s primary school: ‘We wanted them to take precautions in case Peter injured himself in the playground. ‘

The result was that many of the parents, fearful for their children, boycotted the school – and a quarter of the pupils were kept away. ‘I thought they were going to come and daub our house with a red cross,’ says Doreen. The couple were particularly worried that the disturbance would escalate and that Peter would be taken away from school. ‘Being haemophiliac, he can’t ever do manual labour. He desperately needs his education’, Norman explains.

However, after two public meetings and a talk at the school by an Aids expert, the outcry died down. Classes were back to normal after three weeks. Indeed, Doreen and Norman were impressed with the support they received. ‘The only time I got really depressed was when our dentist refused to continue treating any of us’, Doreen says. ‘But Peter’s friends went out of their way to play with him and invite ‘im round to tea. ‘ In addition, they felt the school eased a lot of the pressure during the trouble, installing a special assistant to allay parents’ fears and keep a watch on Peter.

Norman’s complaint is that, despite an impression to the contrary, there is no counselling and back-up system available to families of carriers. ‘It just doesn’t exist. We haven’t been offered anything unless we have gone out of our way to ask for it. ‘ ‘In a way, it was fortunate that the problem happened to us’, Doreen adds. ‘Peter was young, so it was not the emotional shock it would have been for somebody older. And because of his haemophilia, he has aways had to face up to the problem of being difficult. It could have happened to a less confident family. ‘ Both parents have been tested for Aids and been found antibody negative. It is reassuring to think that you can live in such close contact with someone without being contaminated. As far as Peter is concerned, he is bored with all the fuss. ‘

Their son’s predicament has had little effect on their day-to-day lives. They still kiss and cuddle him, and simply observe normal hygiene precautions. ‘We keep an eye on any health problems – but you would do that with any child. We are mindful of blood spillage and take extra care when injecting him, to avoid jabbing ourselves,’ Doreen explains. The only time she was scared was when Peter developed what she thought were the first signs of the virus swollen glands. It turned out to be mumps.

They have yet to face the greatest problems. They are worried, for instance, about his next school. ‘Parents will be involved who haven’t been before. But we have gone through the battle for his education, and that has laid the cornerstone for the next struggle’, Norman says. ‘Then there is the problem of girls,’ Doreen says. ‘I can envisage irate parents turning up on my doorstep when Peter gets to the stage of trying to kiss girls. And what will happen when he wants to marry and have children? All we can do is give him the information and support and ensure that he is honest. ‘

Always in their mind is the possibility that Peter might develop the full-blown Aids syndrome. ‘It makes me sick when people bang on about divine retribution, homosexuals and promiscuity’, Doreen says. ‘I think – what about a 10-year-old haemophiliac? If he develops the syndrome, we’ll cope. You can’t just crumble into a heap. ‘ (c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 1986

After the laid-back Sixties and street-marching Seventies, hard work appears to be back in vogue.

‘I’m here on a hit-man contract, then I’ll transfer, make a packet and retire in 10 years,’ says one Porsche-driving, chain-smoking, 25-year-old executive. He is typical of the new breed of work-loving, reward-seekers who drive themselves to their limits.

Trend-watcher Peter York says: ‘The number of kids who want to go to business school, who are going into business as if it were a totally new idea, is phenomenal. ‘

The ’80s mark the coming of the Age of Hard Work and Longer Hours, a trend, according to George Bickerstaffe of the Institute of Directors, that is permeating organizations right across the board (and Board).

Mr Bickerstaffe believes that today’s Mr Average Businessman barely has time to sleep. He cites the City whizz kid whose gargantuan salary demands a super-human performance to justify it.

Peter York, 38, is an owner-director of the SRU group of consultancy businesses, a TV and magazine journalist and co-author of the Sloane Ranger Handbook.

He says: ‘Executive used to be a euphemism for having perks and a high-flying time. But what is relatively new is the idea of the excitement being the business itself and not simply the rewards. ‘

Clive Bannister, a 27-year-old management consultant (the Company Man), works until he drops. He does a fairly consistent 12-hour day, seven days a week and has had one week’s holiday this year.

‘If you work hard,’ he says, ‘you end up feeling good and valuing your every action because you put so much sweat into it .. at the same time I am getting on faster and I’m also very well paid. ‘

He does not even pay lip service to stress or illness. ‘The former is a piece of self-serving mythology. ‘ And the latter? ‘I don’t get ill because I don’t have the time,’ he says.

Stanley Berwin, 60-year-old founder and senior partner of solicitors SJ Berwin & Co, starts work at 6.30am and often does not finish until 2am. He says work has always come first and second, family third and other commitments a poor fourth. ‘I regret that I never saw my children grow up,’ he says. ‘My wife has been an angel. ‘

But he does not believe that such marathon efforts are a sign of the times, maintaining that all very successful men have always had to work extremely hard.

His fundamental motive for working so hard is a desire to prove himself. To my suggestion that he has proved himself already and that he could lessen his workload, he says: ‘That would be retiring. ‘

To most people, the public face of Sandy Gall is as an ITN newscaster. But he is equally a veteran war correspondent, having covered Vietnam, the Congo and Amin’s Uganda. And recently he returned from a perilous two months dodging Russian patrols in Afghanistan in search of the guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Masud.

This was Gall’s third trip to Afghanistan and his second filming of Masud. He has also recorded how the Pashtuns, the majority tribe, were faring. This time, he wanted to see how Masud was progressing. ‘I wanted to go back because it is a disgrace that the fighting is still not being reported properly. After all, it is their Vietnam’, he says.

After waiting a month in Islamabad – ‘I hadn’t realised the high passes were snowbound and we physically couldn’t get across’ – Gall, along with an ex-army man and a cameraman, were smuggled over the Pakistani border with the help of the Mujahiden guerrillas. They were disguised in local shalwar (baggy trousers) and kameez (long shirts).

The trio entered Afghanistan in the north and spent two weeks trekking through Nuristan to the Panjsher Valley. They then went up to Takhar Province and northwards to Farkhar. For a country still at war, it was a remarkably incident-free trip.

The team twice drove in a captured Russian jeep. Otherwise they rode or walked across mountainous terrain in uninterrupted stints of 10 to 12 hours. Food was scarce and they survived on vast quantities of rice and tough goat – supplemented with their own supplies of bully beef, tinned sardines and tinned cheese.

When they found Masud in Farkhar, Gall discovered a remarkably able and well-organized commander who is still full of confidence. ‘He was half-way to becoming a Tito-type overall partisan leader and running the war very well in his own northeastern constituency. ‘

Masud was planning an attack on an Afghan army garrison of about 300 people, just north of Farkhar. It was heavily defended, with machine-gun posts on the surrounding hills.

On August 17, Masud attacked with heavy weaponry, including machine-guns and devastating BM12 multi-rocket launchers. The cameraman went into the thick of the action, and the battle footage should be spectacular. Masud claimed a major victory, finally overrunning the last post in a new attack 36 hours later.

Gall feels that Masud is making headway, but that he is an exception. There have been huge changes since his last visit. ‘The balance of power has shifted in favour of the Soviets and Afghan governmen,’ he says. The Russians have improved their tactics in the past two years and adapted conventional tank-fighting methods to guerrilla warfare in the mountainous country, employing more special Spetnaz forces to carry out strike operations.

‘In many areas the Mujahideen have been put under extreme pressure and some are very dispirited. But there is no suggestion they will give up, even if they are beaten to their knees. ‘

However, Gall is wary of generalization, pointing out that covering and assessing the war is almost impossible. ‘You have to walk or go on horseback, so you only get to see one area. You rely on other people’s reports. ‘ Still, he will attempt an assessment in a one-hour documentary on ITV in November – after considering the plight of the Afghan nation and profiling Masud.

Their ‘plight’ he says, is that one-third of the population (5 million people) are refugees in Pakistan and Iran. There are also swarms of internal refugees living with relatives in shanty towns or caves in the hills.

‘Guerrillas are a very elusive target, and so every day, Russians are carrying out atrocities and killing civilians. It is not reported because there is nobody there to do so.

In December it will be seven years since the Russians invaded. ‘It must rank as one of the great tragedies of the century, one of the most vicious wars and the biggest since the Second World War’, says Gall. ‘It shows no sign of letting up. ‘

Nor does Gall. The proceeds of the Boisdale Ball for Afghanistan on September 25 will be divided between Afghan Aid and the Sandy Gall Appeal, which supplies Afghans with artificial limbs.

When Vanessa, a battered wife for 10 years, met a battered husband, she found it difficult not to laugh. A year later, she takes the issue very seriously indeed. ‘I think it may be worse for men’, she says. ‘They aren’t likely to tell anyone and there isn’t a refuge for them to go to. ‘

These are the problems being addressed by Jenni Manners, co-ordinator of the Women’s Aid Centre, a refuge for battered women in Swindon, Wiltshire.

‘I was extremely puzzled when men started phoning asking for help. From 1980, three or four would ring a year’, she says. ‘But since 1985 I’ve taken about three dozen calls, mainly from the Swindon area. ‘

She suspects the incidence of violence perpetrated on husbands could be almost as prevalent as ‘wife bashing’ – itself the most unreported crime until the 1970s.

Can the phenomenon be accounted for by the growth of feminism, or has it always been around? Jenni Manners has no explanation for the sudden increase in calls from men, but decided to take some action. Earlier this year, a team from the centre went to visit the world’s only refuge for battered men in Vasteras, Sweden. There 15 people are involved in offering help on the telephone.

The team was impressed, and now the local Labour council is looking into funding a 24-hour help line and refuge for battered husbands in Swindon. The only problem is that the men who Jenni Manners has counselled are unwilling to be publicly involved in the project. So the scheme will be run by the women from the centre. Ironically, the male victims who call up often feel a woman would be more sympathetic.

The popular image of a battered husband is ridiculous. ‘People have this idea of a wimp of 5ft 2in being bashed by his 16-stone wife. Nothing could be further from the truth’, says Jenni Manners, fresh from advising a client of 6ft 4in who was beaten by his 5ft 4in wife. She has never counselled a male victim shorter than 5ft 8in. The violence ranges from kicking and scratching to stabbings with potato peelers and kitchen knives.

‘Kitchen implements and boiling water are favoured. But then I have seen a couple of men with fractured skulls. One was coshed with a brick while he was building a patio, and the other got whacked with a piece of wood after suggesting to his wife that they should see a marriage guidance counsellor. Ashamed to confess they are the victims of their wives’ assaults (and having no refuge), many men enter hospitals claming to have bumped into a door or dropped a kettle. Frequently no one beyond the immediate family will know what is really going on. When Jenni Manners sees the men – ‘occasionally in their homes, but more often on a park bench or in a pub’ – they often admit to a catalogue of injuries.

The men come from all walks of life. ‘It exists in every class, just as violence towards women does. It’s just that the higher up the social strata you go, the more ways there are to get out of the situation. ‘

She has counselled managing directors, solicitors, lorry drivers and policemen. Usually they are in their mid-30s to late 40s. ‘If there is any trait in common, it is that they are caring men – often exceeding the generally accepted male role in terms of looking after the kids – and they are respectful of women. ‘

Colin, a taxi driver, is one such example. Extremely reticent, he is 26 and looks 10 years older. (His wife, an office clerk, was 11 years his senior. ) He put up with his wife’s violence – which started just three months after they married – for six years. She would draw blood from him with her bare fists and sharp rings or hit him over the head with a frying pan.

‘Initially, I was quite shocked – I didn’t know what to do, because she used to go crazy – but I would never hit a woman’, he explains. The outbursts occurred bi-monthly and were, as with wife bashing, worse when his spouse had been drinking. Did he ever take steps to restrain her?

‘At first I did. I used to try to calm her down by talking to her, but that made no difference. Sometimes I sat her on the floor, but then she would re-attack when I was off my guard. ‘Jenni Manners confirms that restraining the assailants tends to increase them even more.

Colin got used to it. ‘I knew what to expect and found it easier just to let her get it over with. ‘

He could not make out why she did it. He simply knew that he was ‘frightened and didn’t have anywhere to go’, and that retaliating could have made things worse. He was also worried that it was his fault and that it would recur in another relationship. He did not tell anyone.

‘You’re ashamed of making a fool of yourself. People would think you were wet and not a proper man. ‘

He thought of notifying the police, but knew they dislike getting involved in domestic situations. ‘Help, my wife’s bashing me’, is likely to provoke ridicule. In Jenni Manners’s experience, those who have been to doctors are greeted with disbelief, followed by a prescription for tranquillizers.

Then by chance one day Colin picked up the once-battered Vanessa in his taxi – and moved out to live with her. His wife still comes around to terrorize him at Vanessa’s house, ‘out of jealousy, I think’. He found that an application for legal aid and an injunction met with derision. The court would think it was stupid, the lawyer said.

‘At least I’ve got to the stage now where I can tell people’, Colin says with relief.

Adam, a 36-year-old, 6ft fireman, endured his wife’s violence for 13 years before doing anything about it. He is now trying to ‘find himself’ through philosophy and psychology. ‘I would certainly hit back if a man attacked me,’ he says, ‘but I let her chuck bottles and plates, boiling water and hot dinners at me. ‘

Yet he maintains that he thought this was normal. ‘I don’t consider it a violent marriage, I thought all marriages were like that. ‘

‘Lots of men don’t see it as violence’, says Jenni Manners, ‘because deep down they feel that if the need arises, they can defend themselves by holding the woman down’.

Things came to a head when he was at home, having contracted cancer. Violent episodes started to occur as often as three times a week.

‘In the process of that strained couple of years, we had a role reversal – I was very happy to look after the kids and she returned to her job as a lab technician. I think she felt threatened in her role as a woman – and that manifested itself in further violence. It was her way of getting what she needed. It became too much – and she said she was leaving. ‘ He agreed on condition that she left the children.

The tendency on dissolution is to award home and children to the wife. Jenni explains that many of the men she has counselled fear that if they leave home, the violence will then be transferred to the children. The majority of men she has advised have been awarded custody.

It wasn’t until Adam sought Jenni’s advice – at the suggestion of a close friend in the social services – that he realized all his rights and the true extent of the violence in his marriage.

The help Jenni gives is recognition and support, with some guidance on legal and housing rights. It’s what these victims of the opposite sex want. ‘The men want to know that they’re not alone in their problem. Accommodation isn’t such a consideration. It’s easier for them just to walk out. ‘

The way things are going, Jenni expects to get a lot more calls from men. The calls always start: ‘I don’t know if you’ll want to talk to me. I’ve got a very strange problem ..’