The release of John McCarthy may signal a sea change in the Middle East hostage saga but the kidnappers’ bottom line demand is still as intractable as ever.

The twisted logic for hostage-taking by pro-Iranian militants in Beirut has always been demands for the release of Moslems in Israeli captivity including Sheikh Obeid who was abducted by Israeli commandos from the Lebanon in July 1989.

Although the Israelis are willing to make a deal, they want the seven Israeli servicemen missing in Lebanon, or their bodies if any have died in captivity, returned.

The clear drawback is that the Israelis were seized by different groups, some with no connections with pro-Iranian Hizbollah (Party of God). Iran’s original support for hostage-taking – to prove to the United States and the West that however powerful it could do nothing to save its citizens in the Lebanon, and also to pressurise the US to return billions of dollars of Iranian assets frozen in American banks since 1979 – has been dropped.

The release of Mr McCarthy indicates that Syria and Iran now recognise that the hostage issue remains a barrier to normal relations with the Western powers and see the United Nations, acting as an honest broker, as the only hope.

But with the crucial Middle Eastern conference expected to start in October new momentum has been given to efforts to remove any obstacle by releasing all the hostages.

Mr McCarthy, with a message for UN general-secretary Perez de Cuellar, will be used as another means to pressurise Israel.

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said today that Mr McCarthy’s release was a test to see whether the West would now bring pressure on Israel.

He said the release by the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad (Holy War) group was ‘good news’ and claimed Syria had exerted tremendous pressure to try to prevent the kidnappers linking the release of Western hostages with that of Lebanese and Palestinians held in Israel.

However, he said the kidnappers were insisting on ‘the release of their relatives and friends (held) in prisons inside Israel’.

Islamic Jihad first surfaced in 1983 when it launched two suicide attacks on bases of US and French soldiers in Beirut, killing about 300 servicemen. It has claimed responsibility for a string of other bombings and several assassinations in Lebanon and the Middle East as well as the abduction of more than a dozen Westerners in Beirut.

Wife’s anguish after no news of Jackie WHILE John McCarthy had the rest of his life to look forward to today, the wife of one of the other hostages still held captive was dreading the next 24 hours.

Sunny Mann, wife of the eldest hostage Jackie, said she was pleased for Mr McCarthy but heartbroken that his release confirmed her husband’s continued captivity.

She said: ‘I don’t know how I will cope. I don’t know how I got through yesterday. ‘I can’t tell you how I will get through the rest of today.’ Mr Mann, 77, a retired airline pilot ,disappeared in West Beirut on 12 May, 1989.

Mrs Mann added: ‘I’m very, very happy for John and his family and friends, but I’m very upset naturally that it’s not my own husband.

‘Nobody has heard anything about Jackie at all. I’m at the end of my wits. ”I have spent two days with my bags packed waiting by the phone to go to Damascus – everyone thought it would be Jackie and it’s John.’

Redundancy, recession – the everyday words strike a menacing note as the meaning of unemployment strikes home on a personal basis for more and more of London’s white-collar middle-classes. Alistair Delves plunged from earnings of more than £100,000 a year to unemployment benefit of £50 a week. Jane Hill felt emotionally shattered and then filled with rage after being told she was no longer wanted. Bert Casey offered to go in the hope of saving a younger man. How did these three victims cope? And are there lessons in it for those still threatened by the recession?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next to the ‘door bell is a sticker bearing the legend: ‘Make his day. Break in.’ On it is a picture of a pit bull terrier, stocky and muscular with a steel-trap jaw.

So why would anyone want an American pit bull terrier-or APBT, as the new Sporting Dog periodical would have it?

There are an estimated 10,000 APBTs in England, of whom 1000 reside in Dave and Maria Britons’ borough of Waltham Forest, an area where youths walk in the park: one with an APBT, another with a rottweiler. With its killer instinct, the APBT is a loaded weapon.

Dave and Maria, 36 and 35, live in a terrace house in Walthamstow on a short stretch of road that houses no less than one dobermann, a Yorkshire terrier and 13 APBTs. Of these, 11, including nine puppies, are in the Britons’ 20-ish ft paved garden.

They have a one-bedroom flat on a heavy traffic road. They have lived in it for two years-with exposed plaster work and unfinished floor in the microwave-only kitchen. There’s a picture in the hall of a hand carrying a spearhead, blood trickling down-and in the sitting room, ones of fierce-looking tigers’ heads. In the bathroom, the Sunday article is open at The Hiss of Death. There is an uncomfortable atmosphere of violence restrained.

The dogs, Nash and Misty, don’t even bark when we arrive. They wag their tails. They show no sign of aggression. In fact, they are rather placid. And in the garden the five-week-old puppies frolic, squealing and squeaking. One chews my foot, another my handbag.

‘The vet’s always saying how gentle they are,’ says Maria, in black leggings, wine T-shirt and long brown hair. She has a face that looks as if it has experienced the rougher side of life and a character that fluctuates between being meek and showing a very hard edge. ‘It’s sad people are so nasty about them. They’re such lovable things,’ she says, passing them a tray of rice, egg and biscuit.

Maria is a housewife who says she doesn’t do a lot. Like her husband, she left school at 16. ‘I generally take the dogs out for a couple of hours a day.’ She says she only bred so her bitch would put on weight. But she hopes to sell them for upwards of £300 each.

‘They’re good with everyone, particularly children, very good guards, obedient, very affectionate,’ says Dave, showing me bookplates of one with a parrot and one pulling a baby in a cart.

He’s rough-spoken, bullish and thickset, wearing a tracksuit that he has worn to mend a friend’s car, and long hair. He’s clearly very strong. ‘Currently unemployed, and looking for business premises,’ he says, adding that he’s a motor mechanic when ‘working. They live on the dole, claiming (between them) £124 every two weeks.

They don’t have any children. ‘I have no intention of having any, either,’ says Maria. ‘The dogs are my kids.’ He, too, is mad on the creatures. Ask him to describe his lifestyle, and he says: ‘My dogs . . . when I get home I’ll walk them or play with them in the yard.’ He goes to the club for APBTs and other sporting dogs which started in Basildon six weeks ago. Operating alternate Thursdays, it offers events like ‘flirt pole variations’ and ‘weight pulling’-in which a 70 lb dog pulled 5151 lb harnessed to it. They sell T-shirts which read PITBULL, where P is for protective, I for intelligent, then tasteful, boisterous, unspoilt, loving and lively.

When Dave’s ‘not with the dogs, he’ll ‘shoot off to see some mates or go down the betting shop’. He’ll bet on anything, he laughs-except dog fighting. Nor would he fight his dogs. ‘If they get hurt, I get hurt.’ He says they’re part of the family.

‘My dogs have never bitten anyone and they’re never likely to. Only about .001 per cent of the 9000 registered dogs have ever attacked people. And a dog will only attack if it feels threatened, annoyed, protecting its own territory or jealous.’

But what about the case of the mutilated six-year-old, Rucksana Khan? ‘Sad,’ says Maria.

‘But we don’t know the full circumstances,’ says Dave. ‘You never hear both sides of the story as to why the dog attacked.’

Maria thinks it’s untenable that the RSPCA should suggest treating the animals in law as wild. ‘It’s disgusting because they are our pets!’ And what do they think of the MP’s suggestion that the dogs should be neutered and imports banned? ‘Well,’ says Dave, ‘I think MPs should be neutered.’

Originally the Britons had a German shepherd-which didn’t stop them being burgled. So two years ago they decided on an APBT. ‘We’re living in a high risk area with lots of muggings. When my wife goes out in the evening with her friends, I don’t want her walking around the streets with nothing on her arm.’

When he goes walking, he carries a breaking stick-a long piece of wood ‘with which I can open their jaws in a flash’. So there must be just a hint of a thought in his head that the dogs could attack? ‘Oh no, no, no. It’s just a precaution we take.’ And one that he’s been taking for the last two years. As he says, these dogs do have five times more power in their jaws than rottweilers.

Dave decided to let his dog breed. ‘So it doesn’t get possessive about its owners. A nasty streak can come out in them otherwise. If a dog hasn’t had a litter, it’ll show a lot more aggression to people,’ he says, letting his bull defence down for a minute.

He shows me their leather harnesses. ‘No princess, no darling,’ says Maria, as she picks up the brass-decorated leather, £35. ‘You can get them with spikes all over. And you can pick the dog up with it,’ he says, lifting the creature in the air.

He also has a leather arm protector. ‘To play with them.’ Like a piece of leather armour, it also has sackcloth over the hand (£120). And then there’s the treadmill (£250), which is like something for a giant hamster. ‘For walking the dogs when it’s raining. They love it.’

Once he had a visit from the council’s animal wardens. ‘They said they’d seen us hanging the dogs from the first-floor window. I thought: ‘That’s a bit strange since we live on the ground floor!’ The thing is, the dog was tugging on a piece of rope-and all they could see was the top of the head and a rope.’

And has he ever been in fights? ‘Years ago.’ His voice goes quiet. ‘Three or four years ago.’ That was when he worked as a doorman in clubs. He did that after he ran a security service company.

And has he ever been the wrong side of the law? He’s standing up now, towering above my seated position. ‘Er, yes.’ For what? ‘Well, if you read a book by James Campbell there’s a chapter in there called The Professional-concerning a robbery case I was involved in. I got eight-and-a-half years. That was in 1978 when I was 23. I was tying up the chairman of the Walthamstow Building Society and took some jewels that were given to him by Mountbatten. I lost all my remission.

‘But that’s years ago. I’m not anti-police. The police have got a job to do. I’ve had no trouble from the police concerning my dogs.’

The first incident of sales promotion in action, according to lain Arthur, occurred in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. Adam ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and paid the price. In this case the snake was the salesman, the tree was superbly merchandised, with excellent display support material and the price was self doubt. ‘So what part of Eve have to play in this point-of-sale decision to purchase?’

Arthur is the managing director of Kingsland Lloyd Peterson, a sales promotion agency. He was speaking to more than 100 delegates (60 per cent of whom were women) at International Business Communications’ ‘Advertising and Marketing to Women’ two-day conference this week.

Women are important to advertisers; more than 70 per cent of advertising is now aimed at them. (Call it Pounds 350 million to the advertiser, if you will. ) ‘Women are more important than men’, in the laconic words of speaker Carol Reay, management planning director of Jenner Keating Becker Reay advertising agency. In 1987 women have more spending power than ever before. They may be 42 per cent of the labour force, but they account of 80 per cent of consumer expenditure. And research shows that their self-preceptions are changing. Their need for ‘self-identigty’ is growing.

Yet many speakers at the conference maintained that the attentions of advertisers are being misdirected. Kay Scorah, an advertising consultant, spoke particularly of the lost tribe of the post-war generation: the ‘greying’ population, in ad speak. ‘a lot of energy and attention is devoted to young people and yuppies,’ she said, ‘but perhaps because we all refuse to grow old, we have neglected the over-45s. ‘ By the year 2000, more than 23 per cent of the population will be aged between 45 and 64; they will have well in excess of Pounds 18.8 billion of disposable income, and make their own decisions about spending it. Scorah believes it is well worth learning how to, in her words, ‘seduce the older women’.

‘How can it be that there is such a vast amount of out-of-touch advertising around for women?’ asked Reay. She cited the advertisements for Timotei shampoo, with its image of a woman in a poppy field. ‘An ultra-romantic portrayal that stands out for its inappropriateness. ‘ The image-making business ‘had got the image wrong’.

‘To date, the marketeer and advertiser alike have treated women as uniform and as captive – usually at the kitchen sink,’ explained Ann-Marie Dyas, bvoard account director at Boase Massimi Pollitt advertising agency. ‘The minute you describe your target audience as ‘housewives’ or ‘mothers’ or ‘career women’, you are into repression and not expression. ‘ The advertisers repertoire of stereotypes, she said, consist of the glamorous woman (a model) with an ‘interesting’ job and probably a BMW or two in the garage; and the unglamorous woman (a mum) living life at the bottom in a spotless kitchen. ‘Women don’t mind being shown doing domestic things, as long as they are seen to be competent and have outside interests. Just as they don’t object to nudity as long as it is seen to be relevant to the product – like suncream or a shower. ‘

Raising the standards, more research, casting at script stage and generally taking more account of women’s views will help to break the moulds, Increasingly women are buying values rather than products. ‘Philosophy and imagery are the new USPs (unique selling propositions),’ explained Dyas. Equality is what is desired; and equality for women is not about a woman in a bowler hat.

It is about changing fan belts rather than hitching lifts, as the Pretty Polly television commercial. Competent yet retaining her feminity: she wears stockings, but she also knows hwo to use them to replace the fan-belt.

In the world of advertising fantasy, women’s aspiratins rarely match the advertisers conceptions. ‘Women resent our obsession with the young and beautiful,’ Dyas said. ‘They are asking us – loudly – to show more ordinary real women in advertising. ‘

Some have already got there. ‘Both Oxo and Persil, in their different ways, are widely seen as accurate and enjoyable reflections of contemporary life, featuring modern mothers who combine humour, character, warmth and – most important of all – intelligence and individuality,’ explained Judie Lannon of J Walter Thompson. Oxo ads shown a realistic family life, with warts and all sympathetically portrayed. Persil gets away from the traditional washing machine syndrome with its stylish use of a punk and his washing.

But, to return to the Garden of Eden, it is worth remembering that Eve was in fact the deciding influence: the purchaser of the point-of-sale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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