ON CHRISTMAS Day last year 10-year-old Elizabeth was sexually assaulted by a family friend. Her assailant, Barry, 50, was convicted after a week-long case which ended on 30 September. He’s now on bail, awaiting sentencing on 21 October. Elizabeth, meanwhile, cries inconsolably in her bedroom with the Phil Collins poster; often she won’t sleep in her own bed or close her eyes all night. She has an IQ of 168, but recently flunked her exams. She goes to the lavatory 50 times a day and, at night, walks along the corridor in her flannel pyjamas, clutching her soft toy rabbit, and spends three hours in the bathroom. Her father thinks she’s trying to wash away her dirty feelings.

Her father, Malcolm (all names have been changed), who lives on his invalidity pension, is sitting in their south London Cartlandesque sitting room – all turquoise and pink with shells on the shelves, a tea cup to mark his silver wedding anniversary to Constance, fluffy candyfloss carpet and fairy lights twinkling in the buds of the pink silk chrysanthemums. Any minute now you expect to see Father Christmas.

Instead, Malcolm, in jeans and T-shirt, with a face that betrays months of anguish, speaks in the clipped voice of restrained anger. He talks of the horror of the day his only child was molested. He’s angry and lashes out about the ‘awful’ counselling they’ve all received, the ‘terrible court ordeal’ for his child and the strain on his marriage.

ELIZABETH is special to her parents who thought they couldn’t conceive. She is also a gifted child. ‘By just 14 months she knew all her colours, not just red, white and blue, but aquamarine, turquoise and khaki. At 19 months she had learned the alphabet and, shortly afterwards, started reading newspapers. She’d say things like, ‘Oh look, Margaret Thatcher is on the front page’.’ Elizabeth was nationally acclaimed.

Last Christmas the family stayed with Barry’s family. They’d become friends after meeting in Spain when Elizabeth was a year old and Malcolm was recuperating from breaking his back. ‘Barry had two children by his first marriage and seemed funny and charming,” remembers Malcolm.

On Christmas Day, the families played party games. Then Elizabeth accompanied Barry to look at his computer. ‘When I went upstairs shortly afterwards,’ says Malcolm, ‘her mother said, ‘Tell Daddy what you’ve just told me’. Elizabeth told how Barry had played with her private parts. He’d pulled down her knickers and tights, kissed her on the neck and made her sit on his lap. He wasn’t drunk and it lasted a few minutes. All while we were in the next room.’ Malcolm’s voice rises.

Malcolm, in his confusion, decided he didn’t want to upset Barry’s family and would speak to him quietly next morning. In addition, Malcolm was mugged savagely five years ago and has difficulty driving at night. He rationalised that he couldn’t leave until daylight.

Next morning Constance confronted Barry. ‘She told him he’d sexually molested our child. He didn’t deny it and said, ‘Let’s talk about it after Christmas’.’ Malcolm and Constance then approached the Child Protection Unit (CPU). ‘They advised us, initially, to let Elizabeth get over it. She was taking exams. But she completely freaked, and did nothing but cry.’ On 14 January the CPU took statements. ‘The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) thought there wasn’t a case, because of lack of evidence (although the police fought for it). Then they saw the video that Elizabeth had made in the CPU. A St Mary’s Hospital paediatrician advised that a medical examination would create further trauma, so she didn’t have one.” Barry was arrested in March and bailed. The night before the court case, Elizabeth said: ‘It’s dark outside, Daddy, I want to go out there and tell you something.” She told him how she’d been digitally penetrated. ‘She didn’t say that on video in front of the police officers, a man and a woman. She was too scared and embarrassed.”

Elizabeth, once an outgoing child, has become disturbed and clingy. “But we can’t cuddle her now. She pushes us away.’

AND the events of the past few months have tested her parents’ marriage. ‘You scream at each other, have sleepless nights and can’t see justice being done. Your daughter is up every two minutes to the loo and your wife is blaming you for not smacking that man on the nose.’

On police advice the family had counselling. ‘Elizabeth wasn’t allowed to talk about the incident because then they could have said we’d manipulated her. It’s been useless for us too. One night Elizabeth was sobbing until 5am and we called Childline who suggested we give her a sedative. When we told the counsellor, she said, ‘Why on earth did you ring them?” In court, standard procedures were followed. ‘I never want it to happen to another family and, please God, not to us again. She was taken early in the morning so we couldn’t talk to her, and put in a separate room. What my child had to endure for a day under cross-examination and video evidence was horrendous. We were told the defence would be lenient, but it wasn’t. The woman barrister put Elizabeth through the ordeal of saying it had never happened.’

Malcolm complained to Sir Thomas Bingham, Master of the Rolls, who acknowledged the distress to which victims are subjected. ‘But it is essential,’ he wrote, ‘that a defendant should have a fair opportunity to advance any defence he may have, within the limits of propriety.’ On 30 September, Barry was convicted and bailed. ‘We feel dreadful,’ says Malcolm. ‘The police had told us the judge would almost certainly have passed a custodial sentence for reports and that Barry would be put in prison awaiting sentence.’

So what does Malcolm want to happen to Barry? ‘The judge,’ wrote Sir Thomas, ‘will face a difficult task in deciding on the correct sentence and you may feel that it is not as severe as you would wish.’

RANDOM drugs tests are to be carried out on about 12,000 prisoners a year to combat the growing narcotics problem in jails.

It’s estimated that nearly half the inmates of British prisons take self-prescribed medication (heroin, LSD, cannabis and the like) while detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. That’s a prison population of 49,000 in England and Wales alone. So the forthcoming tests should provide enough material and statistics for Prison Service paper shufflers to write off an entire rainforest.

But aren’t they locking the cell after the criminal has bolted? Isn’t this approach comparable to giving HIV tests and forgetting about condoms and safe-sex education? Can it really be effective to discipline a hopeless junkie whose test proves positive?

Many prisoners are inside due to their addiction, rather than because they are inherently criminal. Addicts deal in drugs or steal to support their habit, commit crimes of violence when drunk or stoned, and up to half of all property crime (the cost of which has soared to £4 billion a year) is drug-related.

The Addictive Diseases Trust, a pioneering charity, is fighting successfully against spiralling crime by treating prison inmates for substance abuse. The ADT programme – the first to establish itself full-time in a penal institution, Downview Prison, Surrey – has rehabilitated a third of those it has treated. Remove people from the cycle of addiction and prison and many will cease to reoffend.

The drug tests cost £12 each – which is partly why they haven’t been used before on a wide scale in prisons – and the number of notified addicts has risen fivefold since 1982.

By contrast, £1,500 is required to put an inmate through the ADT programme. So it wouldn’t be logical to press the Prison Service to provide statutory funding.

After all, it only costs £23,000 a year to keep someone in prison. I’M THE only journalist ever to have met Michael Jackson privately in over a decade, unless you count Oprah Winfrey. I spent several hours with him last year. Just after the beleaguered star cut short his world tour and admitted an addiction to pain killers. At the time, the world’s journalists were searching the globe for him and The Sun was offering £10,000 for a sighting or photograph.

Jackson arrived heavily disguised in a red satin face mask and was driven in a Toyota Previa with clear glass windows and children in it. I was prevented, both then and now, from writing about our meeting, professionally the hardest thing I’ve ever had to bear. A number of legal and personal constraints impeded me from so doing, and I awaited an interview which has not yet transpired. (In my memoirs he’ll appear in heavily camouflaged form, wearing a blue silk face mask.) He didn’t strike me as the marrying type. But last week it was reported that he wed Lisa Marie Presley. Surely the papers missed something out. That Elvis was there.

The exposure of my inflexible friend SINCE I was given a piggy, I’ve banked with National Westminster. Unquestioningly, I queued and phoned my branch and held the line for so long my mum could have baked a souffl. This year they improved and gave me a personal account manager, so I had someone dealing with my individual requirements. One to one service which concentrated the mind wonderfully on the cheque books that never arrived.

Recently, I received a customer service questionnaire asking about my experience of Nat West over the last six months. The bank sends 132,000 of these to a random selection every month, and 20 per cent respond. I’m not normally one to fill in holiday competitions, coupons and finish the ditties on the packet of Persil, but I did it.

I considered it at length. Mulled such options as “The branch has made no effort to provide enough staff to satisfy demand” and “More often than not they’ve made a mistake” and “Have you had to give all the details to more than one person before they found someone who could answer your question properly?”

Then I moved my account to The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Care but no attention HOSPITAL authorities were only alerted to the disappearance of a pensioner who had offered himself as a guinea pig for medical students in a Manchester hospital when his relatives became worried. He was discovered on 9 July in the hospital lavatory, dead. He’d been there for 19 hours, and his grief-stricken family are calling for an inquiry.

Equally tragic is the tale of a man who last year went to Bart’s for his heart-outpatients appointment. He signed in and was dispatched along the corridor to see his consultant. He never arrived, and nobody noticed. Two weeks later he was discovered, decomposing in the gents.

Fortunately, all is not gloomy. I have a friend who is a renal specialist in a major London hospital. Returning to work after a short holiday, he made a brisk walk round the wards. Then he discovered a cheerful chap in stripy pyjamas lying on a trolley in the corridor.

My friend asked him how he was. The gentleman pulled the blankets up under his chin, but said he felt all right. My friend, noticing something amiss, enquired whether he’d completed the admission procedure. The man replied that he thought so. ‘I have been here a week,’ he replied. Overpriced facilities Bargain hunter: Betty Boothroyd IMISSED the redoubtable Betty Boothroyd, who opened the Harrods sale, and I ended up standing mournfully outside what rank among the world’s most expensive lavatories. Or luxury ladies’ washrooms, in Fayedspeak. The lavatories cost £250,000: each cistern and bowl was over £10,000, the room is fitted with £40,000-worth of Italian marble and you wave your hand in front of an infra-red sensor at the basin to turn on the water. Entry costs £1. This buys a swipe card which operates the electronic sensor to the inner sanctum. (Harrods card? That’ll do nicely.) About 300,000 people went to the top people’s store on the first day of the sale. All the women I saw shrieked in disbelief and headed off for a free pee round the corner. Only 400 could afford to spend more than a penny.

Who said the recession was lifting?

IS TENNIS in terminal decline? At the goldfish bowl of the Stella Artois finals day at Queens Club, the smattering of rent-a-celebs watched the singles. Those with their eye on the ball were such notables as Roger Moore and his daughter Deborah, the ubiquitous Ivana Trump and on-off lover Riccardo Mazzuchelli, and Baroness Fiona Thyssen.

But then a funny thing happened. They repaired for tea with adman Frank Lowe, president of the Stella tournament, and many of them didn’t bother to go back to watch the doubles. Conspicuous by their presence were Stefanie Powers and her French husband Patrick de la Chenais, who returned to sit with his arm bleakly round her shoulder.

Here was hard as new ball evidence of the trouble with tennis. That the game is losing its audience, fans are bored, that its spectacle is being killed by champion introverts like Pete Sampras, PC Plod umpires and one-dimensional (the dimension is apathy) players who don’t rally and care about nothing but the upwardly mobile money prizes.

Gone are the days of controversial players like ‘Nasty’ Ilie Nastase who reduced umpires to stuttering wrecks and drew fans as much for his racquet as his racket. Who played a fine game and bought umbrellas on court, used his racquet as a cane, dropped his drawers and with today’s fines would have clocked about $10,000 a match.

LAST week he played a veterans’ tournament, The Hurlingham Seniors, at the eponymous club. He arrived exceedingly late, came in naked-eyed from the blazing sunshine, sat down in the dark club room and put on his Ray-Ban shades for the interview. He thinks today’s stars lack flash and panache. ‘I don’t want to take away from the players’ talent. But the way they play I don’t like,” he says, adjusting his sunglasses for optimum effect. The way the game is played by most of the players today has killed the spectators. The game is different and too physical. There are less rallies because they smash stronger, hit harder. And they play too much tennis. They get tired and can’t perform their best most of the time.

‘It’s also less fun. They have managers and sponsors which we didn’t – we just got on and played tennis and enjoyed it – and business pressures and sponsorship which mean they are not free to do what they want. Of course there are good tennis players, but they don’t have the personalities of champions. I hope in the future we’ll have more McEnroes and Connors. We have Agassi, but that’s not enough. But you can’t make personalities, they have to be born.’

Could he have beaten most of today’s stars with a wooden racquet? ‘I dunno. In my prime, I think yes.’

Some of Nasty’s thoughts are echoed by the ‘Rockhampton Rocket’, Rod Laver, the shy Australian who was a spectacularly aggressive player and one of the greatest in tennis history. ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ he says, laughing. ‘I just enjoyed the game, played hard and had a prolonged career. These days a lot of players find they can’t because of disinterest, injuries or family situations.’

He doesn’t hold that there’s a ‘whole lot wrong with tennis’ but thinks Wimbledon spectators should be politely presented with a questionnaire asking: ‘What do you think is wrong with tennis and what are your suggestions for what could be done?’

‘I suspect many would answer that tennis just takes too long for the modern world. You can watch a match for four hours and think, ‘Gee nice tennis, but it’s just too long.”

Sitting under the flight-path skies of Hurlingham, he blames the ‘transition’ in tennis partly on technology. ‘When we were around, you couldn’t blast the ball with a wooden racquet.’

He thinks the court should be slowed down, the ball changed less frequently (‘so it gets heavier and softer’), the timing between points changed (‘to go back and get a towel after every second or third point is wrong’), ends changed after three games and a couple of months a year where points are not awarded.

He’s mindful of what he dubs the changing of the guard. ‘The new players don’t have charisma and haven’t learned to relate to the public as spectators.’ Fans may prefer the extravagant dramas of Agassi or the agonies of an air-punching Boris Becker. But the exuberant era of crotch-plucking Jimmy Connors and bad-mouthing superbrat John McEnroe has passed. ‘There’s huge prize money out there,’ says Laver. ‘So you can’t say, ‘I’m going to be the clown, the court jester and lose matches.’ That’s not going to get you into the draw next week.’

Indeed Laver is in awe of Sampras, despite his winning matches but not hearts. ‘People should be bowing at his feet. He’s such a great talent, so dedicated to the sport and playing his best tennis under pressure.’ COLUMNIST, tennis player and erstwhile match spectator Taki Theodoracopulos demurs. Now a veteran, Taki has played with ‘Emo’ Roy Emerson and Ken Rosewall, who was known as one of the greatest little men ever to play the game. ‘I make a point of not watching modern tennis or going anywhere near any tournaments,’ he retorts, from New York after a rough night on the town.

‘Life consists of trying not to watch the horror and behaviour of these complaining, whining humanoids. Everyone wants to see his fellow man make money. But this is too much. They make too much and try too little with tie breaks and the best of three. It’s bullshit compared with what it was.’ Larry Adler, mouth organist cum tennis opponent of Victor Lownes and Martin Amis, is equally scathing. ‘Players aren’t what they used to be. Jim Courier could walk through Piccadilly Circus without his baseball cap on and nobody would recognise him.’

Adler plays every day – ‘Cinderella tennis. I never get to the ball’ – except when he’s snowed off. Ten days ago he had an angioplasty heart operation, but was back on court two days later. And he was a fanatically keen spectator for a decade.

‘I used to sit just where the players walk on centre court at Wimbledon. They had practically to climb over me.’

LIONA is 12 and has never smiled. She is physically handicapped, doesn’t speak and doesn’t play. Then she was taken to Thorpe Park on an outing. Suddenly her classmates gathered round her excitedly. Liona was smiling. This was Kids Out, an event involving thousands of boys and girls, including 2,300 from London. As Liona gave her first smile, other disabled and deprived children elsewhere were at 100 similar events.

This was an annual day out for children with special needs, started in 1990, organised by Rotary clubs and Littlewoods and funded with money from race nights, raffles and bands to sponsorship.

Putney Rotary Club President Alan Davies talked 150 businessmen into taking the day off work to drive 300 local children, with police escorts and orange balloons, to Thorpe Park. And the Metropolitan Police provided the lunch boxes they have when they go on uptown demonstrations: egg or corned beef sandwich, juice, Twix and apple.

I meet Alan at 9am at Paddock School, Roehampton. A girl sits in a wheelchair, head dropped backwards. ‘You are a pretty girl,’ says headmistress Nora Evans, affectionately. Another child stops and hugs Nora and strokes her hair. ‘Smooth hair,’ she intones. ‘Yes, very smooth,’ replies Nora. The child is autistic and suffers obsessions, the latest for smooth hair.

‘Where’s your hearing aid? We’re going on a picnic today,’ a teacher tells a youngster, in sign language. The child jumps, exuberantly. Nearby another is strapped into a wheelchair, his tongue lolling and his wrists bound loosely together. His face lights up with pleasure at the news. Four classes, ages 7 to 16, with severe learning difficulties and profound and multiple disabilities are coming on Kids Out.

In the car park by the windmill on Wimbledon Common we meet the others. Hundreds of youngsters, blind children from Linden Lodge, and disadvantaged ones chattering animatedly. A Rotarian clown squawks amid the parked cars and the mayor of Wandsworth looks on with her chain of office over her raincoat.

Eleven-year-olds Paul and Cally are in our black Audi coupe when I return. ‘This yours?’ demands Paul, cheerfully. ‘Well I gotta tell yer, you’re sitting in the back.’ Then he plays happily with the electric windows. ‘Put your head in the window. I promise I won’t chop it off.’ Paul looks at my fiance, Adrian. ‘So who’s this Adrian? You love him? You been to bed with him?’

These boys are from Chartfield School, Putney, a school for maladjusted children. (A ‘delicate’ school, says one teacher.) Cally is sensitive, gentle featured and reticent about his illness. But Paul is bullish about being dyslexic and asthmatic.

Three schoolmates in another car chip in. One has cystic fibrosis, another severe learning difficulties. ‘I was bullied at school,’ says the third, dolefully.

PAUL sings ‘Hit the road, Jack,’ as we set off. I say he is a groovy guy. ‘I ain’t gay,’ he responds, heatedly. Do they want crisps and chocolate? ‘I don’t have colourings, I’m allergic,’ he says. For miles up the A3 we can see nothing but cars with purple streamers and Kids Out balloons. Cally says that he wants to be a doctor, to save people’s lives. ‘Don’t,’ implores Paul. ‘You’re too short and won’t be able to reach the bed.’ They discover Adrian works in a bank. ‘Why don’t you rob it? I won’t tell anyone,’ says Paul, waggishly. ‘That’s bad,’ says Cally.

All the children are let into Thorpe Park for free. Their £10 ticket charge is waived and adult helpers pay less than half price. Thorpe Park is buzzing with children in wheelchairs, walking unsteadily, running chaotically and beaming genially. We go rowing, sit in a spinning tea cup, hazard a dinghy on the Depth Charge daredevil water slide, eat from the Sweet Palace and watch virtual reality. They scream with the thrill and the fear. Then they stand mesmerised by two ducklings. The Rotarians began in Britain in 1911, solid citizens and prominent businessmen dedicated to worthy causes. Normally straight laced, they have a fuddy-duddy image. The battle over female membership lasted seven years in the States. But they raised £67 million to immunise children worldwide against polio. And now Paul and Cally are standing joshing in front of me. Paul says he wants to drive home in a BMW or Mercedes. A jolly Rotarian offers his, ‘clapped out Peugeot with bank burgling equipment in it.’ The children look gleeful.

THIS attractive woman spends much of her time with 30 cavorting naked men. She goes out on special occasions with blood and mud on her clothes. She rubs hot stuff on men’s thighs and keeps a bed in the middle of her drawing room. And she enjoys standing in front of 60,000 chaps, some jeering and asking her to strap them up. Sounds odd? She’s Fiona Phillips, physiotherapist to Bath Rugby Football Club and one of the club’s four Deep Heat-wielding dames.

Fiona, 33, had her most recent big break during Bath’s win in the Pilkington Cup at Twickenham. The 1st XV’s chief physio was off with a broken leg, so Fiona was the one ogled by thousands of male spectators and starring on television bandaging sinewy legs and sponging steaming physiques. ‘Hardly a break,’ she quips, smiling sunnily in her egg-yolk kitchen in her converted West Country old school house where there are Gladiator pin-ups on the fridge and a clock reading ‘time flies’, with a fly stuck to its hands.

She’s been with Bath RFC for three seasons and rubs down some of the most fancied men in Britain. There’s Ben Clarke, 24-year-old Mercedes-driving son of a stud farmer who’s known as The Prince of Darkness because when he goes out at night girls disappear with him. (‘I don’t know anything about that,’ laughs Fiona.) Philip de Glanville, the 25-year-old who claims heart-throbbingly that he has no agent because he’s too ugly to market. Plus Jeremy Guscott, 28-year-old part-time catwalk model, glitzy London Fashion Show guest and star of glossy magazine covers.

Fiona, 33, wearing navy cardigan and tracksuit work clothes, is a good egg with blonde hair, fresh-faced boarding-schoolgirl’s looks and a body sportif. Which brings me to the stories of panting sportsmen falling in love with their physios. Of broken hearts and awkward situations. ‘All rubbish,’ Fiona answers gaily, although it’s clear to the untrained eye that there’s far more romantic potential in her, this physio fatale, than in a man with a bucket and sponge.

She’s often in the changing room when it’s full of men with no clothes on. ‘Oh yes, they’re totally naked.’ Is being with 30 nude men en masse amusing? ‘Well, different from being with women getting ready for hockey.’ Does she feel abashed or find it daunting or difficult? ‘No, no, no. But they try their best to embarrass you sometimes. Particularly when you arrive first at the club.’ She giggles. ‘They like the shock value of striding around naked and walking up to you with no clothes on to ask you to strap them. It happens all the time.’

Naturally, it behoves me then to ask her who has the best body. ‘They’re all a bit different. But Ben Clarke is quite well proportioned.’ Huge laugh. Does she mean well endowed? Another laugh. No, she means what she says. ‘But some of the black players are the best…’ Our following discourse is unprintable.

WHO is the sexiest? ‘Nigel Redmond is one of the nicest and kindest, always very courteous. Ben Clarke is good-looking. Stuart Barnes is the sexiest and best fun. I don’t think of Jeremy Guscott as a sex symbol although lots of people say he is.’ And Philip de Glanville? ‘He’s just very nice, courteous and quiet.’

So what’s it like for her, when she thinks a man is sexy and then has to rub him professionally? ‘I think I’m probably very lucky,’ she laughs. But Fiona says she doesn’t really think about the men in those terms. ‘They don’t see you as a woman. You’re a physio. You just get on with your job and let them get on with theirs.’

She has had in-depth training for such naked forays. In anatomy lessons, she practised on unclothed students. ‘We were always stripping down to underwear on courses.’ And she recognises that players probably aren’t really trying to unsettle their physios fatales. ‘If Victor Ubogu comes up to you with no clothes on, he’s not doing it to embarrass you. It’s just that you’re in their environment, in their changing roomIf Victor Ubogu comes up to you with no clothes on, he’s not doing it to embarrass you. It’s just that you’re in their environment, in their changing room. It would be totally inappropriate to start laughing or giggling.’

Fiona keeps confidences and maintains a professional distance. ‘You have supper with them, then leave them to play cards and drink. You don’t overstep the mark.’ But there isn’t an unwritten rule that physios don’t step out with players. And there’s a story, on the rugby vine, that one physio fatale at a leading London club is dating the team captain or somebody. But we are in the business of facts.

Surprisingly, she says sexism is not an issue. It was something she noticed at Liverpool last year. ‘The changing room was at the back of the members’ bar and they didn’t allow women there. The president of the club had to come over and give me special permission to walk through the bar to the changing room.’ And of course the physios fatales don’t have special changing or showering facilities. ‘We just go to the men’s loos then go home covered with blood, mud and hot rub.’

During the game, the players can mete out abuse. ‘They’re psyched up, often don’t want to come off when they’re injured and swear at you madly.’ She’s also in line for spectators’ scurrilous remarks. ‘At Twickenham, you feel as if 60,000 men are looking at you. You get a lot of wolf whistles, men saying ‘rub me down love’ and spectators limping saying they’ve got bad backs.’

Fiona takes it all with a pinch of Deep Heat. Fiona, you see, isn’t really a physio fatale. She’s a professional and a dab hand at her job. A middle-class daughter of a naval officer, she’s a gel who’s keen on tennis, riding and windsurfing. She feels overwhelmed when she’s in a coach with 30 men with police outriders and chaps waving to them from the other coaches. She never wears make-up or jewellery. The bed in her drawing room is for treating her patients. And she’s dedicatedly and happily married. Oh, and in case I misled you, the Gladiator pin-ups on her fridge are her children’s.

Fiona Phillips has the sort of job that most women can only dream of – looking after the bodies of a top rugby team Walking wounded: Fiona escorts Andy Robinson from the fray THIS attractive woman spends much of her time with 30 cavorting naked men. She goes out on special occasions with blood and mud on her clothes. She rubs hot stuff on men’s thighs and keeps a bed in the middle of her drawing room. And she enjoys standing in front of 60,000 chaps, some jeering and asking her to strap them up. Sounds odd? She’s Fiona Phillips, physiotherapist to Bath Rugby Football Club and one of the club’s four Deep Heat-wielding dames.

Fiona, 33, had her most recent big break during Bath’s win in the Pilkington Cup at Twickenham. The 1st XV’s chief physio was off with a broken leg, so Fiona was the one ogled by thousands of male spectators and starring on television bandaging sinewy legs and sponging steaming physiques. ‘Hardly a break,’ she quips, smiling sunnily in her egg-yolk kitchen in her converted West Country old school house where there are Gladiator pin-ups on the fridge and a clock reading ‘time flies’, with a fly stuck to its hands.

She’s been with Bath RFC for three seasons and rubs down some of the most fancied men in Britain. There’s Ben Clarke, 24-year-old Mercedes-driving son of a stud farmer who’s known as The Prince of Darkness because when he goes out at night girls disappear with him. (‘I don’t know anything about that,’ laughs Fiona.) Philip de Glanville, the 25-year-old who claims heart-throbbingly that he has no agent because he’s too ugly to market. Plus Jeremy Guscott, 28-year-old part-time catwalk model, glitzy London Fashion Show guest and star of glossy magazine covers.

Fiona, 33, wearing navy cardigan and tracksuit work clothes, is a good egg with blonde hair, fresh-faced boarding-schoolgirl’s looks and a body sportif. Which brings me to the stories of panting sportsmen falling in love with their physios. Of broken hearts and awkward situations. ‘All rubbish,’ Fiona answers gaily, although it’s clear to the untrained eye that there’s far more romantic potential in her, this physio fatale, than in a man with a bucket and sponge.

She’s often in the changing room when it’s full of men with no clothes on. ‘Oh yes, they’re totally naked.’ Is being with 30 nude men en masse amusing? ‘Well, different from being with women getting ready for hockey.’ Does she feel abashed or find it daunting or difficult? ‘No, no, no. But they try their best to embarrass you sometimes. Particularly when you arrive first at the club.’ She giggles. ‘They like the shock value of striding around naked and walking up to you with no clothes on to ask you to strap them. It happens all the time.’

Naturally, it behoves me then to ask her who has the best body. ‘They’re all a bit different. But Ben Clarke is quite well proportioned.’ Huge laugh. Does she mean well endowed? Another laugh. No, she means what she says. ‘But some of the black players are the best…’ Our following discourse is unprintable.

WHO is the sexiest? ‘Nigel Redmond is one of the nicest and kindest, always very courteous. Ben Clarke is good-looking. Stuart Barnes is the sexiest and best fun. I don’t think of Jeremy Guscott as a sex symbol although lots of people say he is.’ And Philip de Glanville? ‘He’s just very nice, courteous and quiet.’

So what’s it like for her, when she thinks a man is sexy and then has to rub him professionally? ‘I think I’m probably very lucky,’ she laughs. But Fiona says she doesn’t really think about the men in those terms. ‘They don’t see you as a woman. You’re a physio. You just get on with your job and let them get on with theirs.’

She has had in-depth training for such naked forays. In anatomy lessons, she practised on unclothed students. ‘We were always stripping down to underwear on courses.’ And she recognises that players probably aren’t really trying to unsettle their physios fatales. ‘If Victor Ubogu comes up to you with no clothes on, he’s not doing it to embarrass you. It’s just that you’re in their environment, in their changing room. It would be totally inappropriate to start laughing or giggling.’

Fiona keeps confidences and maintains a professional distance. ‘You have supper with them, then leave them to play cards and drink. You don’t overstep the mark.’ But there isn’t an unwritten rule that physios don’t step out with players. And there’s a story, on the rugby vine, that one physio fatale at a leading London club is dating the team captain or somebody. But we are in the business of facts.

Surprisingly, she says sexism is not an issue. It was something she noticed at Liverpool last year. ‘The changing room was at the back of the members’ bar and they didn’t allow women there. The president of the club had to come over and give me special permission to walk through the bar to the changing room.’ And of course the physios fatales don’t have special changing or showering facilities. ‘We just go to the men’s loos then go home covered with blood, mud and hot rub.’

During the game, the players can mete out abuse. ‘They’re psyched up, often don’t want to come off when they’re injured and swear at you madly.’ She’s also in line for spectators’ scurrilous remarks. ‘At Twickenham, you feel as if 60,000 men are looking at you. You get a lot of wolf whistles, men saying ‘rub me down love’ and spectators limping saying they’ve got bad backs.’

IT WAS one of the most bizarre trials ever heard at the Old Bailey. Susan Whybrow and her lover Dennis Saunders were sent to prison for plotting to murder her husband by tying him to a sit-on lawnmower and aiming it towards the garden lake. This week, after serving three years, a retrial at the Old Bailey found them not guilty of conspiracy to murder and they were freed. Today, for the first time, Saunders talks about that extraordinary affair and why he has returned home and not to his lover.

DENNIS SAUNDERS is, he says, bitter, vindictive and full of revenge towards his ex-lover.

It is a tale of sex, passion, betrayal and near tragedy between the rural affluent and the man they considered a bit of rough.

Saunders, 57, a former flying instructor, and his ex-lover, Susan Whybrow, were convicted three years ago of conspiring to murder her barrister husband, Christopher Whybrow.

They were sentenced to 10 years and eight years respectively. On Monday, they were cleared of the same charge at a retrial at the Old Bailey. The prosecution alleged the couple planned to kill Whybrow after luring him into a sex trap. She backed her husband into Saunders’ arms; he trussed, gagged and blindfolded him, then frogmarched him to the garden where Whybrow broke free and fought with Saunders. The couple, who are no longer lovers, have always admitted conspiracy to cause Whybrow actual bodily harm. But they insisted the plan was to beat him up to teach him a lesson for hitting her. Murder was never in their minds, they said.

The sitting room in Saunders’ modern detached Colchester house is gleamingly clean with a painting of sword-wielding soldiers and four guns on the wall.

He asks whether I’ve bought a minder, then says I should have bought him some gin. He is spruce, full lipped with a beer tummy, steel-rimmed specs and the back of his tie tucked into his pink shirt.

He fancies himself and is wily and talks self protectively. His eyes look glazed and when he talks, he moves his feet shiftily.

What was it like on that fateful day pretending to be a burglar and beating up Whybrow?

‘The adrenaline … it was like being on a drug. It was bravado on my part. I didn’t want to go too far.’

How do you cope with people who don’t believe you didn’t intend to murder Whybrow? ‘To begin with it was hard, now it doesn’t bother me,’ he says, unconsciously rolling up his sleeves. Do you hate Susan? ‘I’m very bitter towards her.’

Saunders left prison two months ago, having served three years. He’ll do voluntary work and plans to market a device he invented. ‘Prison was sheer hell to begin with. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I’d only been in Parkhurst six months when the governor let me out unaccompanied to see Maria – his wife. The first man to go down for 10 years and go out alone after six months.’

He ended up in a ‘semi open’ prison. ‘At weekends I used to ride round Kent on my bike. Just like a health farm. I used to go into the pub at lunch time.’

Originally from Walthamstow, Saunders had three siblings. He can’t remember his father, a roof tiler, who died in the war. There was never a man at home.

‘There wasn’t much money and never much to eat,’ he said. ‘My sister looked after us because mother worked as a tailoress.’

Saunders was the leader of a school gang – ‘We used to nick things to eat’ – but has no recollection of ever fighting,’ he said. He left grammar school, aged 15, with no qualifications and became a lorry driver. At 22, he married Italian-born Maria by whom he has four grown-up sons and is keen now to repair his marriage.

They are together, working at reconciliation, but she does not appear during our talk.

His relationship with Susan started after he gave her 10 flying lessons. He seems reluctant to talk about her. She was ‘bubbly’ and they talked about their ‘rocky’ marriages and were ‘mutually obsessed. I’d never felt like that about anybody.’ He is macho, half Italian and the sort of man who’d like to brag about his conquests. He was dubbed a Romeo, accused of other affairs.

Tales of their making wild love in the car and on his flying club bar are also untrue. But he boasted to Maria of the affair. ‘I was just being nasty at the time,’ he said.

He last saw Susan at the retrial and wants no further contact and only met Whybrow only once.

MERLYN Nuttall, 29, today uses her real name and has her picture printed for the first time. Formerly known only as Miss X, she was snatched off a Brixton street in February 1992 by Anthony Ferrira, a convicted killer, viciously raped, brutally attacked, set on fire and left for dead. ‘I’m going public because I want to help people who’ve had similar experiences,’ she says. ‘I want them to have someone to relate to who looks well and is getting on with her life.’

She gave up her work as a fashion designer a year ago to write a book about her rape and fight for reform to help victims. She wants women doctors to attend rape victims, guidance on the Crown Prosecution Service and advice on criminal injuries compensation. In February, she addressed the Home Affairs Committee at the House of Commons, ‘lobbying for changes so the victim isn’t victimised by the system’.

She’s motivated by rising statistics on violence against women and by a need to find answers. ‘My work seemed so trivial compared with the issues which now dominate my life. Nobody tells you how to rehabilitate your life.’ She’s one of the campaigners de nos jours: the women who have turned adversity to advantage, transformed personal tragedy into something positive and found in their own catastrophe a cause. Open any newspaper and there they are – raising funds and awareness, presenting cheques, lobbying politicians and plugging away at injustices and anomalies in the law. These past few days have been typical for this high-profile, admirable band of tirelessly campaigning female fighters. Jill Saward, victim of the Ealing vicarage rape eight years ago, launched a £150,000 appeal for her brainchild HURT (Help Untwist Rape Trauma charity). Jayne Zito, whose husband Jonathan was murdered 14 months ago by a schizophrenic, appeared on television campaigning for improvements in mental health care on behalf of MIND and ‘holding Mrs Bottomley accountable for Jonathan’s murder’. Fran Davies, whose five-year-old daughter Laura died last year after a series of transplant operations, accepted a £200,000 cheque for the World Transplant Games.

Such behaviour is a predominantly female phenomenon. Fran Davies, although distressed, was determined to appear in public this week and did so with composure; but her husband Les left her five weeks ago, unable to cope any longer. Equally it was Diana Lamplugh, not her husband, who launched the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, named after their daughter who was abducted in 1986. From the moment Suzy disappeared and Diana stepped dramatically on to centre stage at the press conference, she has toiled hard to prevent further abductions.

The late Baroness Ewart-Biggs became an indefatigable proponent of reconciliation in Ireland and a staunch defender of the downtrodden after her husband was murdered by the IRA in 1976, and there are women like the three members of Women Against Pit Closures who did a sit-in at Parkside Colliery with Anne Scargill. But most recent campaigning women are middle class, with concomitant education.

Men playing a similar role are a strange breed: sometimes hysteria-led, other times obsessed by their grief. Consider the odd behaviour of so-called ‘tug-of-love father’ Peter Malkin who dealt with his sense of personal loss by abducting his 12-year-old son Oliver from his ex-wife’s home in France and leading him on a merry Egyptian dance. Or Ron Smith, father of Helen who died at an illegal drinks party in Jedda in 1979; still he pursues an obsessive quest to find out how she died and keeps her much forensically examined body, vital evidence to him that she was murdered, in a cask in a Leeds mortuary.

THEN there’s Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed at Lockerbie and who, motivated by outrage, has worked – again obsessively – to represent the victims. Or hotelier Peter Ward – father of Julie who was brutally murdered in the Masai Mara game reserve – who has been driven by a rankling sense of injustice and spent five years and £400,000 trying to prove misconduct. There are, of course, male campaigners who prove the exception. Take Colin Parry, father of the Warrington bomb victim Tim, who became an articulate spokesman about the unconscionable act. Or Senator Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie was killed by an IRA bomb in Eniskillen on Remembrance Sunday 1987, who met members of the IRA to try to persuade them to lay down their arms.

Dr Dorothy Rowe, psychologist and writer, says: ‘People behave like this because if you can put your experience to some good, then you can comfort yourself that it hasn’t been wasted. It’s easier for women, many of whom have worked in some voluntary capacity, to turn such experiences around and put them into a caring context.’

One can posit that women want conclusions and refuse to fade into obscurity or grieving despair; that they know that out of pain comes strength; realise such campaigning lends an enviable power and purpose to their lives; and find sweetness in the uses of adversity.

Jayne Zito, who works tirelessly to ensure her tragedy was not in vain, analyses her behaviour thus: ‘When Jon died, my life stopped. It’s about trying to take control of something you have no control over.’ She’s driven primarily by love for Jon but her media profile has been a way of dealing with grief. ‘Every time I go on television, I think Christ, they’re analysing me and saying, ‘Here’s Jayne Zito dealing with her grief.’ Taking control is a way of dealing with grief. But it’s just avoiding the inevitable – I’m never going to be satisfied because Jon’s not going to come home.’

Merlyn Nuttall recognises gender differences in campaigning behaviour: ‘Men get angry and want to hit out,’ she concludes. ‘Women are carers, and more logical about rebuilding things to make them better.’

A BRIDE GROOM who killed himself 19 days after his wedding attempted suicide with his former lover hours before he ended his life. An inquest on 16 February heard how Stephen Hartwell, 46, had an emotional reunion with his ex-lover Nicola Cordrey, 22, when she discovered he’d remarried. In a bizarre suicide pact, they put a hose from the exhaust into his car. Nicola said she’d never intended them to die and pulled him, semi-conscious, on to the passenger seat. Shortly after, he drove her home. Then Stephen, a divorced father of two with a printing business, drove off, re-attached the hosepipe and killed himself. The inquest, attended by his first and second wives and ex-lover, heard how he’d split up with Nicola last year just a month before meeting Rosemary King, 45, whom he married three months later.

Rosemary, a nurse, has a drawn face, dead eyes and a smoker’s voice. Sometimes she wenches her fingers when she talks, other times her voice cracks and she breaks down crying. She tortures herself with questions. Was Stephen still in love with Nicola? Did he regret his marriage to her? If he wanted to be with Nicola, why did he kill himself?

Rosemary went on a blind date with Stephen last June. They had both divorced after long marriages and she found him attractive. ‘He was clever, liked classical music and wore odd socks.’ Stephen told her then how his brother had shot a man and then killed himself.

Next date, he said his old girlfriend, Nicola, lived with him and his sons. ‘He slept in his son’s room. He said she was living with him because she had nowhere else to go.’ Two months later, he moved into a new flat with just his son.

In September, Stephen proposed. They wanted to marry immediately, but had to wait six weeks for his decree absolute. Why the rush? ‘After his divorce he felt, ‘Do you ever really know anybody?’ We decided to grow together.’ THEY married in a register office, Rosemary wearing a lace wedding dress. ‘I put it in with him in his coffin,’ she says, crying. ‘It didn’t make sense to keep it.’ With chilling prescience, the couple aren’t smiling in their wedding photos.

They made love for the first time that night. ‘He’d kept saying, ‘I don’t want to sleep with you until I marry you.” She laughs. They didn’t have a honeymoon: business, which had been patchy, was now brisk.

Their 19-day marriage was blissful. ‘We looked at Anglo-Saxon architecture, had all-day breakfasts and talked and talked.’ His family had never seen him so happy, says Rosemary, crying, and she didn’t notice in him any sign of anxiety.

On the day of his death, she drove him to work. ‘I phoned, as usual, to say, ‘I love you.’ He wasn’t there.’

His mother, who phoned Stephen twice daily, immediately rang his brothers. ‘Only his family knew he’d been suicidal over the years.’ They opened his office and found a note saying, ‘To all those who love me, thank you.’

‘The bloody bastrd’s left me,’ Rosemary screamed. ‘He’s run off with another woman.’ It didn’t make sense; he’d been desperate to marry her. That night the police searched her house then sat in the kitchen with the wedding cake. ‘We hadn’t yet posted it to people.’ At 9.30am, six police cars arrived… there was a bomb scare. Then two policemen approached her, unsmiling.

‘An emotional bomb exploded inside me. ‘You’ve found Stephen. Has he robbed a bank?’ I joked. I thought, ‘Has he murdered somebody?” They told her, they’d found a man answering Stephen’s description. His children identified him.

‘I went to see him three times before I could believe he was dead.’ Rosemary screws her face in anguish. ‘‘What have you been doing to yourself?’ I asked. Here was this wonderful man I’d just married, lying dead.

‘I wanted to scream but there were no screams inside me. Just this terrible vacuum.’ She lost her voice for days and wept for three weeks until she became dehydrated. She left her job of eight years.

A policeman then told her Stephen had left a note for her. ‘Well love, I haven’t done very well,’ it read. ‘I’m sorry I’m taking the easy way. I’m going for peace (or not, who knows?) I love you, Stephen.’ Then the policeman told her about Nicola. How she’d gone to the police after Stephen died and said they’d spent the day together and had a suicide pact. The police, Rosemary felt, treated her like a murder suspect. They thought Stephen had been deceiving her; but Stephen’s mother said he only saw Nicola, an anorexic who worked at Tesco, because she had nobody else to confide in.

Things became daily more complicated. Stephen’s first wife claimed his watch. ‘I took my marriage certificate to the police station and said, ‘I’m the authentic Mrs Hartwell,” says Rosemary, laughing absurdly. ‘But I didn’t want anything. It was such a mess.’ His relations got everything. Rosemary saw Nicola for the first time at the inquest. ‘This kid recited how they chose the tubes together as if describing making a cake.’ Th emotion in the room was palpable. ‘His mother kept calling out, ‘You bitch,’ to her.’ For Rosemary, the facts didn’t act up. But the police told her they had no proof to charge Nicola with aiding and abetting.

After Stephen’s death, one of his brothers slit his wrists unsuccessfully. Stephen’s first wife told Rosemary how Stephen would sulk for months, had a vile temper and could never be faithful. And his family told her that Nicola threatened suicide each time he attempted to give her up.

Was Rosemary’s life with Stephen a lie? Was Stephen such a good actor? Did she overlook things?

Now Rosemary is picking up the pieces with help from counsellors, friends, her priest and the Samaritans. ‘I just don’t know who the hell I am,” she says. “I have to ask people.’

THESE are true stories of everyday happenings in the genteel suburbs. An obsessive woman looked after a multiple sclerosis sufferer for years and every day scrubbed him in the bath with a Brillo pad. A bearded man attacked his wife brutally and then confided to the police he was a practising transvestite. ‘I’m trying to give it up,’ he explained. ‘As you may appreciate, a beard and dress don’t go well together.’

A woman was put in a stranglehold by her ex-husband and raped each time he visited their child. Another wouldn’t scream for fear of causing her handicapped child distress each time her partner beat her. And an 84-year-old endured emotional abuse and intimidation from her husband – he’d urinate on her washing and let down the tyres on her car – for 50 years. This last woman now has an injunction and an ouster order and is happy. For some of the others, the horror continues.

These are the tales one hears as Zero Tolerance, the campaign launched to publicise the prevalence of domestic violenc, continues (you’ve probably seen the posters: ‘He gave her flowers, chocolates and multiple bruising’). The aim is to emphasise that violence in the home is a crime, is grave, should be reported and that early intervention can prevent further abuse. It hopes also to heighten awareness that broken bones mend and bruises heal, but emotional damage can blight a victim for ever.

The figures are shocking, and the more harrowing since they may simply represent the rumblings of a volcano. On average a woman has been attacked 35 times before she calls the police. In London alone, 100,000 women a year seek treatment for violent injuries received in the home and a quarter of all murders in the capital are domestic.

ABUSERS and victims come from all classes, ethnic groups and ages. ‘Abusers are monsters behind closed doors. Everyone from judges and policemen to refuse collectors,’ says Inspector Shirley Tulloch, who co-ordinates the 62 Metropolitan Police Domestic Violence Units set up to inform and support victims.

The first Domestic Violence Unit began in 1987 in north London. DVUs now employ 126 officers – all with at least two years of police experience and a week of specialist training – two-thirds of whom are women. ‘We choose the best person for the job,’ she says. ‘Some women may actually be less sympathetic than men, finding it hard to understand why the victim doesn’t leave the situation.’

After emergency measures – sometimes an arrest or removal of the abuser – have been taken, the DVUs follow up cases. They inform the victim of her options, offer legal protection, get her medical attention, assist with court appearances and offer advice and support: everything from finding her a solicitor to a space in a refuge.

Sgt Sue Reed, 34, and Pc Ann Snowden-Thomas, 33, run the Cheshunt Domestic Violence Unit. Started in March 1992, they cover 40 square miles and have seen 1,628 victims. All the case histories mentioned are their clients. To date, one of their victims and two aggressors have committed suiide.

Their police station room is filled with office paraphernalia, a poster saying ‘Scars of domestic violence aren’t always visible’, a fish tank, soft toys and nappies. Victims often come here with their babies. But the officers – who wear their own smart office clothes and are warm and energetic – also meet their clients everywhere from Wimpy bars to car parks. The latter was the meeting place for one victim who was forced to tell her husband exactly where she was going each time she left the house and was then timed on every occasion.

It can be difficult for victims to speak out. Eight per cent of (reported) victims are male – not necessarily the victims of female violence – and it may be harder for men to admit their problem. Men or women with professional partners may also face particular difficulties – the fear of social stigma and the loss of her husband’s job and company flat, for example. And so too ethnic women, who may have a language barrier, arranged marriage or immigration difficulties.

‘Hundreds of my clients tell their parents first and are admonished with ‘I told you you shouldn’t have married him’,’ says Reed. ‘If they tell their friends, their friends may just say ‘Get rid of him’.’ In addition, lawyers, policemen and journalists have exacerbated the difficulty by sometimes treating domestic crime dismissively.

Reed and Snowden-Thomas do not sit in judgment of their clients. ‘We’re supportive and validate their feelings,’ says Reed. ‘I say, ‘I know you still have feelings for this person.’ You can’t be sexually intimate with a partner, have a history and children and then not have feelings.’ Many people (including some colleagues and social workers, notes Reed) fail to understand why a victim doesn’t leave a worsening violent situation. The current sluggish property market means that divorced couples can be stuck under the same roof, with horrendous results. But the majority of women being battered want the violence to stop and to be able to stay in the relationship.

An abser uses physical and emotional strategies to control his victim. After years of criticism (of her as a mother, her looks, her performance in bed) a victim feels useless. ‘The abuser may then control her by not allowing her money and with the threat of physical violence,’ says Reed. ‘At other times the relationship is good. Then there’s another build-up of tension and another explosion of violence after which the abuser is remorseful, begs forgiveness and promises he’ll never do it again. It’s what the victim knows and is comfortable with and it may be someone she loves.’ But then the cycle of violence repeats itself. ‘The time between incidents becomes shorter and the abuse gets worse. Frequently when a woman believes she’s going to be killed, she tries to escape – which is often the most dangerous time.’ Reed doesn’t find it dispiriting that women may leave a violent relationship and end up in another. ‘People are human. Just as an alcoholic is always an alcoholic, you can always be a potential victim.’ She believes the law should be changed. ‘The legislation doesn’t take into account the circumstances of a woman who has been battered for 10 or 20 years and ends up killing her partner. She’s nearly always charged with murder rather than manslaughter.’

A PIONEERING charity is claiming success against the spiralling problem of drug crime by treating prison inmates for drug and alcohol abuse. The Addictive Diseases Trust rehabilitation programme is the first to establish itself full-time in a British penal institution, Downview Prison, Surrey, and has rehabilitated a third of the people it has treated. The work comes at a time of growing public concern about the links between crime and drugs. Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair said drug-related crime cost £2 billion a year, half of all property crime was drug related and the number of notified addicts had risen five fold since 1982. The ADT programme began in 1991. It is modelled on 200 such programmes in American prisons, most of which now have drugs-free wings. The reoffending rate among ‘graduates’ of one course in Arkansas is down from 65 per cent to 20 per cent.

The ADT programme, which has been followed by 127 people, involves complete abstention from mood-altering substances plus group and individual therapy. ‘Over a third of those who have completed our 72-day treatment programme are clean and sober today,’ says Jonathan Wallace, its director. In England and Wales there are more than 45,000 people in prison, of whom over half have addiction problems. There are only 14 places on the ADT course, which receives no statutory funding and is struggling for financial survival. I sat in an ADT therapy group in Downview Prison with 14 men – from murderers to thieves.

Their crimes, committed in the grips of addiction, were harrowing. To send a man on an ADT course costs £1,000; to keep him in prison costs over £19,000 annually.

The men talked about how one landing shared a needle for a couple of months; how they maintained drug habits of up to £100 a day (people get hurt when debts are unpaid); and how a desperate addict will go to any lengths – including stabbing an inmate – for his drugs.

Johnny, 31, pimp, burglar, drug dealer and addict completed the ADT programme. He has spent a third of his life in prison and this month was released for the 12th time. Now he intends, sincerely, never to reoffend. He started smoking marijuana at the age of nine, did 30 burglaries when he was 13, lived off immoral earnings at 16 and carried guns for protection when dealing in drugs.

His cousin was a prostitute. ‘She told me to take money off the hookers and have sex with them. I didn’t know what to do with all the money. I didn’t have any hopes or aims. ‘

Today things are very different. He has lost contact with his two children from different women but intends to settle down, have a family and become a counsellor. ‘I want to be honest.’

His mother was 17 when he was born and he was sent to live with his grandmother. His mother was a prostitute, which brutalised him. ‘When I was seven I saw her having sex with her clients.’ He played truant from school from 13 and was then sent to approved school. Johnny started taking drugs when he was nine and his habit eventually cost him £300 a day. ‘For several years I did four burglaries a day to feed my habit.’ Each time he was released from prison, he would reoffend within two weeks. ‘I’d even go on home leave and commit burglaries, sometimes taking stolen property back to prison.’

Prison made him feel resentful towards authority and the criminal justice system. ‘There’s nothing to do apart from listening to music or taking drugs. I saw myself as a lost cause.’

He decided to change last year when, hallucinating on Ecstasy and running from the police, he fell from a roof and broke his neck. ‘I wanted to do something constructive while I was locked up. The programme taught me to accept the things I didn’t like about myself and confront my past. It made me want a drugs-free lifestyle. It wasn’t prison that changed me. It was the ADT programme.’

TODAY, Valentine’s Day, divorcée Richard Fleet will propose to divorcée Gina, just as he has every day for the last six months. He’ll arrive from work a say: ‘Hullo love, marry me.’ If she says no and starts arguing, he’ll call and propose later. Sometimes he proposes on one knee, often he begs her, and other times tears of supplication splash down his cheeks.

Some men might hesitate to marry a woman who divorced just 18 months ago. A woman on the rebound from an acrimonious break-up. One that was horrific for Gina, who cried incessantly and was really nervous and ill. But Richard knows the score… because Gina divorced him. They were married for 25 years and have three grown-up children.

After one row, early in the marriage, Gina went to stay with her mother. Gina remembers the day, 9 February 1969. She was pregnant and was driven through the night and thick snow by her Uncle Jo in his Consul. Suddenly she gave birth in the car to Kim, her second daughter, delivered by Nigel, a friendly policeman outside the Co-op in Rye Lane, Peckham.

Gina, 44, was born on Friday the 13th, which ‘explains everything’. Richard, 46, believes God put him on earth to see how much Man could handle: big ears, nohair and putting up with Gina, he says, for starters. We’re sitting in the marital home in south London, a compact semi which they share with a giant poodle clipped like a topiary bush. Gina, who looks timid, wears leggings and baggy shirt. Richard, a scaffolder, is in jeans and ear stud.

They met first when Gina was 13 years old, in the block of Peckham flats where she lived. He used to hang around there with his friends. Was it love at first sight? ‘I fancied her from the off, but didn’t think I had much chance. I wasn’t the best looking of people,’ says Richard. He dated other girls and they didn’t see each other again until she was 16. Then he asked her repeatedly to go out with him. Finally they went to see Dr Zhivago and held hands. Did they kiss? ‘No, she was prudish and my hands were sweating.’ That night Gina asked her mother: ‘How will I know when I’ve met the right person?’ Her mother said: ‘You’ll know.’ And Gina replied: ‘I’ve met the right person.’

In fact, Richard proposed to her after Dr Zhivago. On their very first date. Did he kneel? ‘Nah,’ he replies. ‘I was a bit embarrassed. I just said, ‘Can we get married? I love you and all that.” Gina said she was too young but he asked her (‘loads of times’) over the following months. ‘She kept knocking me back. I don’t think she fancied me.’ ‘No, not at first,’ she agrees.

Gina was a virgin when she met Richard and had only ever dated one other boy. ‘Richard was different,’ she says, firmly. ‘He could drive.’ Six months after Dr Zhivago, she accepted his proposal. They became engaged on her birthday.

They married in 1966 at St John’s, Peckham. Did they believe in the vows? ‘Oh yes,’ says Richard.

‘Come on,’ remonstrates Gina.

‘Well, I believe in the vows but when you go through a sticky bit you think,‘Oh well, it’s only a bit of paper.”

They didn’t have a honeymoon because they were broke. They spent their wedding night at Gina’s mother’s.

‘That night I went to bed and mother told Richard he couldn’t. She told him when he was allowed to go. It all went wrong from the beginning,’ says Gina.

They then lived in a house furnished with only one chair. Thereafter they argued frequently and sometimes Gina didn’t talk to him for weeks. ‘She used to tell the kids, ‘Tell him his dinner’s here.”

Was the sex good? ‘No, because I married too young and had been too sheltered. I’d missed out,’ says Gina.

‘She’s not experimental,’ adds Richard. ‘She’s very prudish and even refuses to undress in front of me. That bugs me rotten. But our sex life was good.

‘Well you said it wasn’t and I didn’t know any different.’

EIGHTEEN years after they married, Richard started an affair. ‘She was a mistress,’ hisses Gina. It took a while before Gina became suspicious. Her friends disagreed, saying Richard was too nice.

One evening, Richard didn’t come home and Gina discovered his car outside the Other Woman’s flat. ‘I stood outside in the pouring rain. He was my world.’ Later, Gina went to the pub where Richard’s mistress worked. ‘I was so naive I asked the Other Woman, ‘Do you have sex with my hsband?’ and she said, ‘Well of course I do. Hasn’t he told you?” Another time Gina went to the pub and hit her rival. Richard adds that the relationship was based on nothing more than sex. ‘He thinks he’s a conservative,’ says Gina.

Gina filed for divorce on legal aid and cited the Other Woman (who admitted adultery) as co-respondent. Gina lost two stone, sobbed incessantly, went to marriage guidance counselling (‘rubbish,’ she says) and lost confidence. Was the divorce painful for Richard? ‘No, because I never even read what I signed.’

‘Twice since, I’ve caught him trying to burn the paper.’

Gina dealt with divorce by finding a job in a canteen on a building site of 300 men. She started an affair with a 27-year-old bricklayer. When Richard found out, he thought: ‘I’m not having that.’ He looks at his hands. ‘She was my Gina, my little virgin waiting for me to come home every day.’ So he knocked at her door with his suitcase in hand and said he was back. They’d been apart nearly a year. ‘I lost a stone when I found out he was younger than me,’ explains Richard.

THIS week it was Jacqueline Bodger’s 40th birthday and she attended the inquest to hear why her five year-old son Terry died after going to have six baby teeth extracted, visited the stone which covers the ashes of her eight- year-old child Martin, killed by a car just six years ago, said ‘goodnight’ in her head to her dead children as she does every night, and sat on the sofa in her sitting-room with her husband Philip just wondering why. We’re talking in their council flat in Hendon. They moved there to start afresh, away from the painful memories of the home outside which Martin was run over. Now Terry’s bicycles stand in the hallway by the front door and and toys lie untouched in his bedroom. There are framed photographs of two smiling, healthy boys on the walls, and 70 sympathy cards line the sitting- room shelves.

Philip, 41, is a refuse collector and Jacqueline worked as a clerk in Edgware General Hospital after Martin died there. They have both been off sick since Terry died. They are a sweet and gentle couple, honest and unblaming, and were clearly doting parents.

One day Terry had toothache and Jacqueline took him to the local dentist, who said his tooth would have to come out. He was terrified of needles, so was refered to Eastman Dental Hospital for a general anaesthetic. ‘I told them about Terry’s asthma because I was concerned about gas, but they said not to worry,’ says Jacqueline.

Terry had a bad reaction to the gas. ‘Having lost one child, I went into complete panic. I thought ‘Oh no, not again. We can’t lose another child.” Then Terry’s heart stopped. So they transferred him to University College Hospital. ‘Someone, I don’t know who, said, ‘Mum can’t come in the ambulance.” (The hospital blame the ambulancemen for the decision, and vice versa.) Jacqueline went by taxi and got stuck in traffic.

At UCH, she waited two hours to see her son in intensive care. ‘He looked the same as Martin when he died. I couldn’t cope.’ Suffering further complications, Terry was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital by ambulance. Jacqueline wasn’t allowed with him and again took a cab, which got lost.

When she arrived, Terry had had another heart attack and the consultant told Jacqueline he was brain damaged. Next day there was further trouble with his heart. ‘We went and put our arms round Terry and he died,’ she says, fighting back tears.

‘I went mad,’ says Philip. ‘I was screaming that we’d already lost Martin. I wanted to smash the place up.’

Martin’s death had been more rapid. He was run over crossing the road, picked up by a passing ambulance and died an hour later. Jacqueline only knew about the accident when a neighbour knocked on her window, minutes after it happened. When she and Philip got to the hospital, the consultant said Martin had died. ‘It happened so quickly,’ she says. ‘I was confused with shock.’

Martin was cremated. ‘I always felt upset wondering what they did with Martin after I left the chapel,’ she explains. She can’t remember much about his funeral. ‘It felt like watching a play. I felt I was going through the motions, watching myself doing these things.’ They put his ashes in the chapel under a stone inscribed with a poem Jacqueline wrote. ‘We felt unhappy, because you couldn’t put flowers on it. So we bought a grave plot, had a headstone made for Martin and put plants on the spot. We knew Martin wasn’t there, but it was in memory of him. We went there every week, rain or shine.’ She pauses. ‘Then we buried Terry in the plot we’d made for Martin.’

Jacqueline’s face lights up when she recalls happier days. Martin, she says, was lively, outgoing and friendly. He loved walking with his parents, adored collecting worms and snails in the garden when his father was digging and enjoyed school.

Terry, a Thundercats fan, was at nursery school and was shy, generous, artistic, bright and loving. ‘He was always saying, ‘I love you Mummy and Daddy.’ But he was a real Mummy’s boy.’

When Martin died, it was very difficult for them to cope with Terry who was just nine months old. ‘But then he’s what kept us going. When you’ve lost one child, the one left becomes extra precious.’ (They keep saying they ‘lost’ him, as if that’s less final than his being dead.) When they first returned home after Terry died, they couldn’t sleep upstairs. ‘Every night Terry used to wake and I’d hear his thud, thud along the corridor. After losing him I expected to hear that noise for ages. We just couldn’t face him not being in his bedroom so we slept in the sitting-room for a week.’

With Terry’s death, it was the wait for his inquest which kept them going. ‘We hoped to find out a reason why a healthy child should have his teeth out and die. We still haven’t got that answer.’ Anaesthetics carry a rare risk and the inquest recorded a verdict of misadventure: there was no question of a lack of care.

Now Eastman Dental Hospital has set up an independent inquiry. ‘If there’s a machine or procedure that’s wrong, it should be altered. We didn’t want to find someone to blame. But we don’t want other children to suffer. No, no, we’re not interested in compensation at all.’

The Bodgers get up every morning, aimlessly. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any future,’ says Jacqueline. ‘We don’t do anything. We just sit at home. It feels like one long day since we lost him. We just don’t accept that he’s gone. It makes you feel empty all the time. Like there’s a big blank space inside and you don’t know how to fill it. We go to bed at night and hope we won’t wake up the next day. All the time I say ‘why me?’ and then why twice.’ She doesn’t get an answer. ‘You just think they were fit and well, so why were they taken away?’ Does she believe in God? ‘No.’ ‘Definitely not after we lost Martin,’ adds Philip.

They don’t want to move house or pack all Terry’s things away. They learnt ‘the first time’ that that didn’t work. Now Philip is prepared to return to work. But not Jacqueline. ‘I can hardly bring myself to go out of the door at the moment. If I go out in the car it has to be somewhere I hadn’t been with Terry. I can’t face it. It’s too painful.’

They are a close couple, married for 19 years, and the trauma has made them closer. ‘We’re just hanging on for each other. We haven’t been apart since we lost Terry.’

Emotionally, they’ve reacted very differently. ‘Phil’s been able to get a lot out by getting upset and angry,’ says Jacqueline. ‘I just don’t seem able, it won’t come out, though I’m very, very angry that I’ve lost Terry this way.’ They saw a psychiatrist for the first time last week. They’ll continue if it helps.