As an infant, Anna Rose O’Sullivan had pigeon toes – now she is a pirouetting princess. Caroline Phillips reports

When Anna Rose O’Sullivan was 10 months old, her mother, Jacinta, feared that her daughter might never walk properly. The infant’s feet turned inwards and she walked on her ankles. Jacinta’s mind was filled with visions of splints, braces and corrective shoes. In severe cases of pigeon toes, she discovered later, remedial surgery is required.

This weekend, Anna Rose, now aged 10, will dance the lead role in the London Children’s Ballet revival of A Little Princess – standing on her tip-toes and turning out her feet perfectly for the demanding part of Sara Crewe, a little girl left orphaned, penniless and at the mercy of the wicked Miss Minchin. She dances for most of the 90-minute performance.

“One week, we rehearsed for five hours every day,” says Anna Rose. She has also just taken over as Cosette in the long-running musical Les Miserables.

“It’s quite a big part,” says Anna Rose, proudly.

The sitting room of the O’Sullivans’ modern Uxbridge home is filled with silver ballet trophies.

“Upstairs,” says Anna Rose, “I have 24 ballet medals.”

Pigeon toes – also called in-toeing – occurs when the front of the foot is turned to face the other foot, and – like bowlegs, flat feet or knock-knees – is a common condition in children.

“Pigeon toes is a general term. It’s nearly as unspecific as `backache’,” explains John Strachan, who worked as orthopaedic surgeon to the Royal Ballet for 31 years. “It usually has postural or anatomical roots. For example, if the hip isn’t positioned correctly, the foot will turn in to compensate. The toes themselves aren’t usually deformed. It’s just a description of gait and the position of the feet.”

Rarely, the condition is caused by a twist in the thigh or shin bone, or an abnormal curvature of the foot (metatarsus adductus). In most cases of in-toeing, the problem corrects itself naturally by the time the child reaches school age – which was the case with Anna Rose. As muscles strengthen and the bones grow, they straighten out.

Nobody knows for sure why the condition occurs. One theory is that it is the result of crowding in the uterus. When a baby’s hips, shins or feet are squashed in utero, they may turn in as they develop. This is more likely if the mother is carrying her first child or twins, or has reduced amniotic fluid.

“Anna Rose was a big baby – nine and a half pounds,” says Jacinta.

Generally, in-toeing doesn’t affect athletic ability. But, in serious cases, it can cause a child to trip and fall. In the past, special shoes, splints and leg braces were used, but they are rarely prescribed now, as they have had little effect in speeding up the natural, slow improvement.

Typically, in-toeing appears between the age of a year and 18 months, when the infant begins to stand. Jacinta noticed the problem when Anna Rose started to walk.

“Two of her adult relations suffer from it, on both sides of the family,” she says. “So I was terrified it was going to be a permanent condition.”

“If there’s an anatomical problem, it could be genetically linked, but this is rare,” says Strachan. “For Anna Rose, it sounds more like a coincidence.”

Jacinta took her daughter to the family doctor. There, her fears were dispelled. Anna Rose’s in-toeing wasn’t severe.

“The doctor thought her knee turned in, making her walk like that,” says Jacinta. “He said it might correct itself when she came out of nappies – because wearing them distorts the way you stand. Then, I worried about it cosmetically. It was very unsightly.”

The GP suggested that Anna Rose should wear sturdy boots with ankle support and an arch to strengthen her insteps. He also recommended regular foot massages and advised Jacinta to take her to ballet classes as soon as possible.

“Every time I changed her nappies, I’d massage her feet from inside ankle to toe for a few minutes,” says Jacinta.

Just before Anna Rose’s third birthday, Jacinta started taking her to ballet twice a week.

“Standing in an out position helps strengthen the muscles and makes your feet and legs strong,” says Strachan. “Ballet helps as long as there’s no underlying anatomical problem – which is generally the case. It’s important because the child is doing something enjoyable, but learning to walk with the feet facing out.”

Earlier this year, Jacinta took Anna Rose to a ballet physiotherapist. Ever greater dancing demands are being made of her and Jacinta wanted reassurance that her daughter had no anatomical problems that might one day prevent her from dancing.

The physiotherapist stretched and manipulated her feet at length, then declared her body to be perfect for ballet.

“More than anything,” says Anna Rose, “I want to be a prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet when I grow up.”

A Little Princess is at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells from tonight until Sunday.

This is the story of three Londoners who have decided to take on the West End musical mafia to prove there are living alternatives to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber; to fight the recession with one of the great palliatives, escapist entertainment; and to spend the money of one of them in so doing. The unlikely trio are Alan Davies, ex-docker turned auctioneer, John Asquith, spiritual healer and breathing teacher, and Jesse Carr-Martindale, former infantry officer and erstwhile owner of London’s first floating nightclub.

It all started in 1989 with John and Jesse writing a musical called Convention and peforming it a deux in the sitting room of Richard Branson’s former house in Spain. John then performed it in its entirety to Alan in the back of his car on the way back from Maidstone, and Alan decided he had a hit on his backseat. So Alan, who had never done anything like this before and cannot afford to indulge in a spot of financial ruin, emptied his pockets in the pursuit of fame, fortune and a West End transfer. It will cost £2 million to put on the full musical, and he’s met all the costs of his dream to date. ‘How much have I put into it?’ says Alan. ‘‘There’s ‘no stopping. It’s all ‘going now.’

Extraordinarily, he has paid £30,000 to hire The Bloomsbury Theatre tonight and tomorrow to do a showcase when they look for angels. (It has capacity for 600 people which he’s nearly filled.) But he has met other costs inventively. Having received a quote of £19,000 for scenery, they decided to make their own. ‘It’s all hands ‘to the pump,’ says Alan. ‘Before you go can you help us paint a car for the stage?’ Meanwhile John has enticed a cast of 35 ‘mostly West End’ professionals (including P.P Arnold, who sang formerly with Tina Turner) and 15 helpers to offer their skills free for a month. And they have been rehearsing small scenes in the flats of the cast, scattered round London. ‘Mobile rehearsals, a moving studio,’ says Jesse, pucker voiced.

What’s it about? Convention is a love story which takes place during the sales meeting convention for a multi-national life assurance company. ‘A romance with complications,’ adds Jesse, who wrote Dempsey and Makepeace and much of The Bill, and created the story.

John, who breathlessly describes himself as a dancer, stage technician and voice trainer who has written 19 pieces for the stage, produced, choreographed, directed shows and worked in cabaret, wrote the music and lyrics.

He is also a chairman of the National Federation of Spiritual Healers. ‘The healer becomes attuned to a higher energy source. You can call it white light, healing energy or God’s love,’ he says. ‘It’s like putting a jump lead on a car so that the patient gets a boost.’

Still, it’s a tricky business producing a hit musical. Why do they think they are in with a big chance? ‘Because it’s better than anything I’ve seen in the West End,’ says Alan. The others nod vigorously.

The philosopher proposes marriage publicly to the masseuse he met 24 hours previously. Amanda, a creative soul on the dole, cries with anguish in front of near-strangers then recites John Donne. And Adrian, a venture capitalist and closet harmonica player, sings a sentimental Swedish song. The course leader says you can have whatever you can imagine. So we scream, sing and improvise.

This is The Mastery, an Actors’ Institute weekend course where you learn to express your creativity. Most of the aspiring poets and musicians (chartered accountants to travel agents) haven’t performed before. But we’ve all learned a two-minute piece.

We wear name laqels in true self-development seminar style and go into the hall where fruit and fruit teas are laid out next to the notice board with a card saying: ‘Wanted. New home for 2 terrapins.’

Veronica ‘Ronnie’ Roberts, actress and management trainer, is the course leader and turns out to be insightful and brave. (The course is confidential, so the other names have been changed.) This is not the National Theatre, she says, but a place to take risks.

Seventeen participants and 10 helpers listen attentively, with recycled notebooks on their knees. Why are we here? One person is ‘here to change’, another to ‘gain confidence’ and another to ‘be a better performer’. The helpers introduce themselves. Marco, an actor and Buddhist; Cynthia, who interprets sign language . . .

Now it’s our turn to tell the group about ourselves. Fear of humiliation rears its head. ‘Breathe and dare to make eye contact,’ Ronnie implores, for the first of five million times. The atmosphere becomes confessional. Andrew, a former surveyor, reveals that he had an affair while he was married. When he’s through, the audience claps acknowledgement. Clarissa is shy and a senior civil servant. She recently did a leadership course – potholing, climbing rocks – and feels born again. More clapping. Clive, the philosopher, doesn’t like telling the truth and is a compulsive smiler and yawner. Clap, clap. There are tears and laughter until 1.30am. Homework is to write three goals for the weekend and spend five minutes looking in the mirror. Next morning, participants say they haven’t slept. Too excited. Up drinking tea and coffee and chatting. They feel energised, I feel tired.

Now it’s time to relate what happened while looking in the mirror. ‘I looked in my eyes and saw all the pain,’ says one. ‘I looked at my mouth and saw a hard line.’

‘The first thing I noticed,’ says another, ‘was that I assumed I was going to look very ugly.’

A management consultant says her goal is to make a speech in front of 400 people. A girl in apres-ski boots and flowery shirt says she’d like to learn to cope with her emotions. And John is ‘up for a row with anyone who wants one’.

Next we take one corner and call it Love, another Anger and another Need. Participants stand in each and express the feeling of that corner to participants in the other two. In the Anger corner you see contorted faces, screaming and stomping. ‘I L-O-V-E you,’ responds the man, down on his knee in the Love corner, crying. ‘I need more love in my life.’

‘Why don’t you listen to me. I neeeeeed you,’ a woman shrieks to him from the Need corner. Ronnie encourages and motivates. Which results in more happy-clappy people. More tears. And more recycled Kleenex.

‘Keith, I feel you’re dead inside,’ says Ronnie, kindly. He agrees. Ronnie works with him, coaxing and challenging like a shrink on holiday. Later Keith, a Jesus Christ lookalike, looks as if he’s been born again. ‘A minor miracle,’ he says.

Now what do we want to communicate in the two-minute pieces we have prepared? Someone wants to express her sensuality; another her lovability. What does Adam want to do? ‘Two poems. One God one. Another lust and gutter job.’ He farts creatively.

A girl in purple leggings and political T-shirt recites Jack Kerouac. ‘Doing this is very scary,’ she says, trembling. Next Susie, resonant and powerful and in platform shoes and green jeans, sings an aria from La Boheme, in Italian.

The venture capitalist is on the floor expressing the defiance of someone on skid row. Carl recites Louis MacNeice: ‘I’m not yet born . . .’ And the gay guy curtsies after his performance. The pieces these amateurs produce are heartfelt and inspiring.

On Sunday, the room is filled with beaming faces. Ronnie has drawn out of people what didn’t seem possible. Strangers have gelled and there is a feeling of possibilities.

So it’s time to get physical with Gary . . . with Marilyn Monroe exercises, Bette Davis muscular stretches and exercises other classes don’t reach – including a crotch exercise. They once had a nun in a tracksuit on the course who laughed so much that she wet herself.

Then we do improvisations: one group enacts being a pizza, others act out their goals. Someone says he loves shouting. Another enjoys being a fool. The participants agree to meet again in three weeks, stating what they want to achieve before then. Andrew holds a magic wand and says he wants to book a flight to Swaziland to see his aunt. Sebastian wants to become a garden designer and recite his poems publicly: ‘Thank you for helping me believe in myself.’

It’s an intensive, personal workshop. Participants talk about having changed their lives. Faces show relief. It’s emotionally draining, moving, poignant and supportive. Like a marathon therapy session crossed with an improvisation workshop. Very Me Generation. Very New York. Very good. Oh, and I sang Blue Moon to 30 people. Next stop the Royal Albert Hall. * The Mastery takes place approximately every three weeks and costs £195. Telephone 071 251 8178.

Whether you want to improve your improvisation techniques or unleash the exhibitionist within, The Mastery encourages shameless self-expression. drops her inhibitions and opens her heart, lungs, mind and wallet.

It’s being billed as ‘the dance event of the century’, the first big arena ballet. The largest stage in Europe for leaping to music will be erected. For the Royal Albert Hall is to hold one of the most ambitious dance events when 160 Bolshoi artists pirouette into Kensington in January for a five-week £3 million season.

Behind it is the chief executive of the Royal Albert Hall, Patrick Deuchar. ‘It’s never been done before,’ he says. ‘But I’m convinced dance can be presented in arena format. As certain as Harvey Goldsmith was that it could be done for opera.’

He’s sitting in his office in the hall, a building that boasts five ghosts and a bedroom on the premises for him. ‘It’s the first ever ballet season hosted in the hall, choreographed specially,’ he resumes, peering through his arena-sized spectacles and pouring tea. He’s been wanting to do dance ever since he started at the hall three years ago. ‘It’ll be very accessible to people who don’t normally consider ballet.’

He’s been married twice, has two children by his first wife and a baby by his current girlfriend. She’s actress Liz Robertson, widow (eighth wife) of composer Alan Jay Lerner.

Deuchar came to the Albert Hall via school at Christ’s Hospital in Sussex, agricultural college, agricultural journalism, and promoting professional tennis tournaments around the world.

‘The Royal Opera House is the only place where ballet can be performed properly. Outrageously, it has to share its space with another art form.’ He doesn’t want to turn the RAH into London’s dance house. But he does want to see annual dance seasons there. Luckily he has another 895 years’ lease on the building.

Picture that over-sized meat abattoir, Wembley Arena. People are eating toffee popcorn instead of doing drugs.

White jean-beclad thirtysomethings are sipping beer out of plastic bottles. And nobody is smoking in the no smoking auditorium. The only sniff of something really way out here are the neon exit signs. This is the first night of sex queen Cher’s two-night stand in Wembley. Cher has 15 gold albums, has had 46 top-100 hits, and has received an Academy Award for her performance in Moonstruck.

She also has a tattoo on her left buttock and the sort of figure that could sell a Volvo to a rock star.

The arena is filled with around 8,000 fans. Tame heavy metal guys ‘with long hair and Cher clones on their arms. And corporate businessmen. Waiting for the woman who became a household name a quarter of a century ago and hasn’t been with a man of her own age or older for almost as long. The half Armenian and Cherokee Indian, born Cherilyn Sarkisian, who has recreated herself so many times.

As the star comes in at 9.10, the crowd in the centre of the amphitheatre stands up with screams and claps. Wearing Tina Turner-esque red hair, black thigh-length jacket and black drainpipes, she belts out: ‘I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.’

The woman who sometimes bares her bottom in fishnet stands in an enchanted gothic forest with a wind machine blowing her wig. ‘I’m glad to be back. Who’d have thought I’d have been back and grown lovely red hair?’ says the 46-year-old who has had surgery on her nose and breasts and looks younger every year.

The under-dressed rock siren with the wig stylist reappears for the next item in high black-leather boots, a cobweb body – another minimal creation of costumier Bob Mackie – and black leather jacket to match her now black hair.

Now it’s 9.40 and she’s in sprayed-on lace hot pants and bodice. A handful of people are standing, waggling their bodies and clapping. One Cher clone in a stars and stripes shirt dances, as if to a mirror. Cher and cher alike.

She goes for a break.

Downstairs ‘official franchise vendors’ sell £22 Love Hurts (the name of her current album) tracksuit pants and £4 Cher (in lace camisole) posters. Upstairs the audience is treated to her more celluloid version. Tearful extracts from Mask, then the Witches of Eastwick.

Now she’s in Moonstruck, and a yelp goes up.

She reappears in front of her screen persona in white Snow Queen outfit. Her mostly white audience tap their feet. Minutes later she’s in a harem outfit. The crowd behave like nuns in a brothel.

Madonna or Prince would create an atmosphere. But Cher singing this sort of motorway music to middle-of-the-road types doesn’t even get a traffic jam.

Her fans stand up towards the end. They even clap, the closest she gets to audience participation, when she sings: ‘If I could turn back time’. There are cries, whistles and screams of encore.

But you can count the people who are really jiving on one hand. And they all look like Cher.

It’s very brutal and violent with executions and torture. ‘But kids love that. It’s a family show,’ says Jeremy Isaacs, director general of the Royal Opera House and former chief executive of Channel 4. He’s talking about Puccini’s opera, Turandot. The first time ever that the Royal Opera House is staging an opera at Wembley Arena.

‘It’ll bring opera to people who don’t normally go, many of whom have heard the tune the BBC plastered all over their World Cup coverage,’ he says. ‘They can have popcorn and a terrific time.’

During the course of our interview, Isaacs spoke of his impressive artistic achievements and the problems that have beset him at the Opera House. Revealingly, he also talked for the first time of his brother’s assassination at the hands of terrorists, the painful death of his first wife, his remarkable parents and his childhood. This from a man who is notoriously private about his family.

He is sitting in his voluminous office wearing a jazzy tie and socks that don’t match. Nearby is his bright plastic dispenser of chocolate Smarties (all eaten) – at Channel 4 he kept a bowl of jelly beans – and a John Glashan Spectator cartoon of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel. ‘I don’t like it either,’ the Pope is saying to some religious chappie. ‘But it’s too late to get someone else.’

Isaacs is not tall, and has a strong face with a prominent nose, wavy grey hair and small brown eyes, with the aura of somebody powerful in an understated way. He takes himself seriously for the purposes of the interview – which he doesn’t like doing – but off tape there are flashes of humour and geniality. One imagines a kindly, sensitive, quiet and gentle soul, but also one who wants his own way, doesn’t suffer fools, finds criticism hard to bear and has a bruised self-esteem. Known as someone who likes a drink, one can also imagine him eating emotionally.

The first of the two tragedies in his life came on 4 July 1975, when his brother Michael and sister-in-law were killed by a PLO bomb in Jerusalem. ‘I saw the television news at Thames and thought ‘hmm’, and went home after work. At about six o’clock a relative came to tell me that they’d heard on the phone that among the dead were my brother and his wife. My brother was unhappy in this country and had emigrated to Israel where he was very fulfilled and content. They had two children.

‘They left the children with her mother on a Friday morning to go and do some shopping, and 20 minutes later there was a loud bang and they were both dead from a bomb that had been put behind a refrigerator at a traffic light.’

Isaacs went to Hove that evening to tell his parents what had happened. ‘I caught the train with Tamara (his first wife), and I rang the bell and they opened the door. Of course, they always knew when I was coming to see them. On this occasion they were aghast to see me. They knew something was wrong. They went into the sitting-room and sat down and I told them what had happened.

‘My father gave a howl of pain and grief like a wounded animal. I’ll never forget the noise that he made, and my mother clutched the arms of her chair. With tears streaming down her face, she said, ‘Isidore, we must go on’. I thought that was staggering and wonderful. Really she was saying to him, ‘Don’t let this crack you’. It didn’t mean she wasn’t distraught with grief, but she knew she had to find the strength to go on.’

Isaacs grips his hand in a fighting fist, choking back emotion. ‘That’s what I get from my parents,’ he says, punching the air.

The second tragedy to befall him was the death of his South African-born wife Tamara, whom he met after studying at Oxford. ‘I was very happily married for 28 years. Then in 1986, Tamara died of cancer. I coped by hurling myself the more into this and other things. I think one of the reasons that I left broadcasting was that Tamara’s death was the end of a great chapter in my life.’ He sounds choked and his sadness is palpable. ‘I partly put in for the job of director general at the BBC because I think she would have wanted me to.’

What of his relationship with his parents? His father – ‘quiet, courteous, scholarly, self-fulfilled’, in his words – was a jeweller who left school at 14. His mother, a formidable woman, was a doctor to the tenement tenants in the Gorbals and helped sustain the family during the 1930s slump. This helps one understand the radical, slightly Leftish and pugnacious tendencies for which Isaacs was renowned in broadcasting. >From his parents, he says he inherited enjoying being at home, and a liking for paintings, travel, celebrations and small parties.

Isaacs recalls a happy childhood. But, aged seven, along with his two younger brothers, he became a wartime evacuee, sent to the country for five years. ‘That was pretty traumatic. There was a sense of loss and being cut off from our parents. It severed bonds at an early age that took some repairing later.’

He was an achiever who did well at school and then won an exhibition to Oxford, where he got a second in Greats. He played cricket, football, joined the Labour Club and was president of the Oxford Union. ‘Maybe it had something to do with being Jewish in Scotland. One felt one had something to prove,’ he has said.

Director generalship of the BBC, to his mind the heights of broadcasting, would have been such validation. When he didn’t get the job, he sold the family home, left broadcasting and married Gillian Widdicombe, now arts editor of the Observer. ‘I began again, in a way.’

Both Isaacs’s children have now left home. ‘I don’t see a great deal of them. Yeah, I get on pretty well with them.’ He is also happily remarried. ‘I’m the marrying type, really. If you’re with someone you love, it’s bound to help both of you. Gillian is pretty tough, you know. She has her very sound and strong critical opinions. I don’t want to hear too many of her home truths at 11.30 at night.’

He must mentally compare his wives and still feel grief. ‘Wounds heal, wounds heal,’ he says, sadly. ‘I’m grateful for it rather than mourning it. Of course I still think of my first wife. But ‘the past is a different country’ . . .’

The country in which he now resides is the Opera House. Isaacs, appointed there in 1985, has been assailed on all sides. ‘There hasn’t been never-ending criticism,’ he says. ‘There has been lots of lovely praise, though the newspapers don’t remember it. This season has had a terrific critical response.’ He fidgets and fiddles and coughs, and sometimes stutters ever so slightly.

Isaacs has been attacked for his policies, financial strategies and productions, and has suffered ongoing financial difficulties, dissent and problems of morale. He has alternately been accused of alienating Government, Arts Council, sponsors, the Press and even the opera-going public.

Most recently, there was a debilitating industrial dispute, just settled, which lost £580,000 at the box office. Meanwhile, the Covent Garden deficit approaches a projected £3 million and prices for seats have become astronomical. Publicly, Isaacs’s response to criticism has been to emphasise the artistic quality of the productions.

‘I don’t feel we have cracked it here (cough) but I feel pretty pleased with what has happened since I have been here (cough),’ he says. He then talks seamlessly, bemoaning his ‘wholly inadequate public funding’ and defending himself artistically against critics of his three companies. ‘I can never say, ‘I’m going to spend the next three months or even three weeks or even three days going into rehearsal, watching what we do, seeing if my ear or eye can help improve things’. Because every single day one is wrestling with accounts. People shouldn’t be in that hand-to-mouth situation. One’s colleagues abroad can’t understand how we stick it or achieve what we do.’

And the personal toll of such unremitting pressure? ‘If you ask why the job sometimes threatens to get me down, it’s because the financial problems never go away, never let up. I don’t think I’m tetchy or aggressive. I’m my old ebullient self. But the problems here are very wearing and unceasing. I grit my teeth, but it’s difficult to see an end to them.’

Would he rather do something else? ‘No, this is a wonderful job,’ he says, with broadcasterly exuberance. ‘It is hugely demanding, taxing and very difficult. I enjoy it. But I don’t want to do it forever – and they may not want to keep me.’

He’s 59 years old. ‘I think I’ll retire at 65, if I last that long. I enjoy being busy. But already I dream about reading (political biographies and history), walking and seeing the world. Of doing different things, daft ideas which won’t happen.’

He has worked seven-day weeks at various stages during his career. A perfectionist, wanting to make sure that every single frame in his film was exactly as it should be. (He spent 30 years in broadcasting and misses being engaged in the world on a broader front.) He might make television programmes again, but he doesn’t want another job in television. (He claims to have got over his upset at Michael Grade being appointed to succeed him at Channel 4.) ‘I had lunch the other day with Michael Checkland, director general of the BBC. I told him this has been the hardest grind I’ve ever encountered. But I’m glad I came here and didn’t get his job. I think that may have been too much for me. It’s a hell of a job.’

One suspects Isaacs would have punched his fist in the air, and had a jolly good go.