Reader's Digest UK Oct 2011

When a child genius grows up Alexander Masters

The history of the WI Jane Robinson

"I didn't know who I was, or what I was doing"

HOW TO bounce back enjoy maths research your health "Gaddafi scores!" A survivor's guide to football in Libya: see p72 The world's worst commutes (have a nice day!)

OCTOBER 2011 FEATURES

cover are shown in red

Digest

"The Libyan conflict is the biggest story of this year," says Martin Geissler, a correspondent with ITV News. "It's both fascinating and challenging."

"It's bizarre that so many producers turn to an exmanager of Dixons when they start working on a new movie," says writer Vincent Graff.

"You don't need to see the people you're working with," claims writer Christopher Middleton. "Being invisible can give you an advantage."

Dinner at 1,000 feet? The Shard promises this and more

34 Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 11 James Brown takes up his pitchfork and gets to work on the farm

40 Ben Miller: Mad Dogs and Englishmen Filming in 38°C heat is all in a day's work for this comedian. But the woollen suit was probably a mistake...

46 The World's Craziest Commutes Trips that will put your daily trek to the office into perspective

54 Shard Work The inside story of the building that will soon be the tallest in Europe

63 100-Word Story Challenge It's the return of our short-story competition! Tell a tale in just 100 words and you could win £1,000

66 Simon Pegg: "I Remember" The actor recalls his first joke, kissing boys and brawling with 007

72 A Game of Life & Death Colonel Gaddafi tried to crush football in Libya, but now it's bouncing back

80 Best of British: Paintings Homegrown masterpieces to rival Picasso or Monet—and where to see them

88 Drugged-Up Britain, Part 3: the Healing Power of Nothing How the "placebo effect" could cut the UK's £llbn-a-year drugs bill

94 The Scrap King of Hollywood You may not have heard of Bob Thorne, but you see his work nearly every time you go to the cinema

102 The Maverick:"Who Wants face-to-face contact at work anyway?"

REGULARS WELCOME

...at the front

11 Over to You...

15 Radar: Your Guide to October

21 You Couldn't Make It Up...

25 Word Power

28 In the Future...

30 Instant Expert

32 If I Ruled the World: Antony Gormley

...at the back

106 1,001 Things Everyone Should Know

112 Medicine: Max Pemberton

114 Health: Susannah Hickling

118 Beauty: Jan Masters

120 Consumer: Donal Maclntyre

122 Money: Jasmine Birtles

126 Food: Marco Pierre White

128 Drink: Nigel Barden

130 Gardening: Bob Flowerdew

132 Wildlife: Martin Hughes-Games

134 Digital: Martha Lane Fox

136 Motoring: Conor McNicholas

138 Travel: Kate Pettifer

141 The Reader's Digest— our recommended reads of the month

149 Books That Changed My Life: Lynne Truss

154 Beat the Puzzleman!

156 Laugh! With Alun Cochrane

160 Beat the Cartoonist

When I was a young slip of girl (and there's no need to laugh quite so loudly, thank you) the received wisdom was that once you were over, ooh, 30, you'd be stuck in your ways for life.

But was that really a rut that post-war generations, raised to have expectations, were ever going to jump into, never to emerge from again?

On our cover: Ben Miller photographed by Arno/Corbis Outline

Into the witness box I call this month's cover star Ben Miller. At 45, is he taking it easy, having reached the top of the entertainment tree? Is he ever. He's tried his hand at drumming, for a start. Now he's taking French lessons. Oh yes, and he's writing a book about science, too. No wonder he went into meltdown for his latest role—see p40!

theeditor@readersdigest.co.uk

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Have you got problems with your perennials or droopy dahlias? We've got Bob Flowerdew (left) on standby to answer your gardening questions. Or if you've been ripped off or scammed, then Donal Maclntyre (right) will use his investigative skills to find out what your consumer rights actually are. Send your questions to excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk. We're also on the look-out for Reader Radars (see page 18), so send your book, music, web and TV choices to the same address, with "Reader Radar" in the subject box.

The new Jetta. Less expensive than you'd like to admit.

Completely restyled, with a sleek and sporty look and a spacious interior, the new Jetta is real value for money. But you don't need to tell anyone that. With its range of TSI petrol and TDI diesel engines, including the highly efficient BlueMotion Technology 1.6-litre, and the quality and reliability you expect from a Volkswagen, they probably wouldn't believe you anyway.

Benefit-in-kind tax of £100.68 a month for company car drivers: For more information call 0800 333 666 or visit www.volkswagen.co.uk

*Based on a 40% tax rate on the Jetta S 1.4 TSI 122 PS at £16,780 PhD value. Model shown is a Jetta 5. All prices shown are recommended on-the-road prices. Official fuel consumption in mpg 54.3 (5.2) - 78.5 (3.6); combined 44.8 (6.3) - 67.3 (4.2). CO2 emissions 145 - 109g/km.

1.4 TSI 122 PS at £16,965 rrp plus metallic paint (£465). Figures correct at time of going to print. (litres/100km) for the new Jetta range: urban 34.4 (8.2)— 57.6 (4.9); extra urban

Das Auto.

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Online this month...

Fun and Games

Love stretching your mind and having a laugh at the same time? Then there's plenty for you on our website:

N,- Play Word Power, our 14 famous vocabulary game, for fun—or for cash!

N If lateral thinking's your thing, 14 we have a weekly Logic Problem for you to ponder. r. Or for a real mind-bender, how about trying

1'44.7 Codeword? It's a special crossword—the answers are in the grid, but they're in code...and there are no clues!

N.And don't forget our Bingo—we'll triple your first 14 deposit, so for just £10 you'll get £30-worth of play! Find these and more at readersdigest.co.uk/fun-and-games

0Watch our motoring correspondent Conor McNicholas test-drive the new Evoque from Range Rover (see Motoring on p136). Who needs Jeremy Clarkson?

DON'T FORGET to check out our fabulous apps! Go to the iTunes music store to download our iPad app and our new walking app.

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EMAILS, LETTERS, TWEETS AND FACEBOOK

£30 FOR EACH PUBLISHED LETTER, £15 FOR SHORTER EXTRACTS, £50 FOR THE LETTER OF THE MONTH! SEE P4 FOR MORE DETAILS

Drugged-Up Britain _Awe

DITCHING THE DRUGS

I was on a downward spiral due to a circulatory problem that stopped me from walking. I even had difficulty getting out of my chair.

Luckily, I was referred to a seated exercise class by my local vascular clinic—and was amazed at how quickly my strength improved. I'm now off all my drugs and feel much better. And to top it all off, my instructor has asked me to star in her fitness DVD! Gordon Ashford, Birmingham

LETTER OF THE MONTH

Your "Drugged-Up Britain" article brought to the surface a number of worries I already had. I suffered a heart attack two years ago and was a patient in one of the leading heart hospitals in Britain. Given the risk of a second attack, I was prescribed a cocktail of drugs to take for life—aspirin, plus tablets to control my heart, cholesterol and blood pressure.

I've queried this mixture with my GP, but she feels the benefits of prevention outweigh any side effects. Having suffered from constant heartburn, which my GP thought could be a side effect of the aspirin, I'm now taking another tablet to control this. While it's relieved the heartburn, I'm worried about possible side effects from this drug as well.

Your article was excellent for making people stop and think, but it's also left me with great concerns. After all, it's hard to go against the advice of medical people you respect.

Christine Prior, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

A FAULTY TACKLE

Paul Morgan's "A Right Royal Rugby Team" sadly missed out the most important person of all—Princess Anne, Zara Phillips' mother and patron of Scottish Rugby Union. She should have taken up the open-side flanker position in place of Camilla, who's more interested in horses anyway. Gerald McCulloch, Bradford

POINTLESS DEGREES?

I completely agree with Simon Dolan's "Maverick" article. Universities churn out badly equipped graduates with questionable degrees and poor employment prospects every year—I know because

"My name is Derek, and I really need a drink"

I was one of them. I spent three years studying English and history, learning lots about Walt Whitman and Chaucer in the process, but nothing about how to get a job. After graduating, no one wanted to hire me. Eventually I got a position at a school, but the economic downturn has left me unemployed again.

I implore young people to think twice about university —you might find your talents better rewarded elsewhere.

Joanne Higgins, Donegal, Ireland

When my husband left school and got a job about 25 years ago, the company he joined allowed him to work one day a week at a local college towards his degree. After finishing, he bumped into a friend who'd

gone to university but was now working at a chip shop—it was the only job he could get, as everyone wanted experience as well as qualifications. I think my husband got the best of both worlds.

Debbie Rosen, by email

SCOUTING FOR GOD

Stuart Holm isn't quite correct when he says in "Over to You" that because he's an atheist the Scout Association doesn't regard him as suitable. Stuart couldn't be a section leader, it's true, simply because he wouldn't take the oath that includes a "duty to God" (we Scouts have an exemption in the religious beliefs part of the Equalities Act, because of our long-standing constitution). But he'd be welcome to help

"COME AGAIN?"

• "...How often have we heard the saying, 'It's the best thing since sliced bread'? But has anyone ever considered the worst thing since sliced bread?..."

• "...I must go. My husband has just said, 'What's that awful smell?' It's only old soap and rhubarb leaves, for goodness' sake!..."

• "...We decided to have a go at tracing our ancestry. Then one of our friends told us that she'd discovered she was descended from Jack the Ripper's third victim. Needless to say, we discontinued the tracing..."

• "...I'm not mad enough to be dangerous, just mad enough to be entertaining. What a relief!..."

• "...The English weather should be known henceforth as Muslim weather: partly Sunni, but mostly Shi'ite..."

as a section assistant, helper, instructor or administrator.

Eric Fell, North Yorkshire

A DIGNIFIED PURSUIT

Thanks for including Studland, one of our finest naturist beaches, in your "Best of

British" feature. But while I'll forgive attempts at humour such as "Let it all hang out", I must take issue with your headline: "For exhibitionists". Absolutely not! Naturism is about comfort, relaxation and confidence—"exhibitionism" has no place in that.

Brian Taylor, Staffordshire

TRADING UP

While reading July's Reader's Digest, I discovered the item called "How to Enjoy an Empty Nest". My kids have left home,

and I lost my wife of 58 years to cancer. So I read on—and to my delight I came across this: "Trade the people carrier for a Mazda MX5".

Joy of joys, that's exactly what I did! Surfing the net, I found a model that suited me: an 1,800cc with power steering, auto-transmission and ABS brakes, in British racing green. My wife, an import from the UK, would have loved it!

Alan Mason, New Zealand

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

Your August issue will always be in my memory! I was doing the crossword, with my partner helping, when I went to check on our baby son. On getting back, I found the living room covered in candles and my ri partner on one knee. He then proposed—and even though he was doing better at the crossword

than me, I said yes. Thank you Reader's Digest—that's the best crossword I've ever done!

Carolyn Leslie, Midlothian

errneibow Even Moore

@bemietb oh reader's digest. Now there's a compact and quality way to pass the time.

YOU'RE STILL TALKING ABOUT...

"Let the High Street Die", Patrick Grant's "Maverick" article about rethinking our town centres.

• I don't think supermarkets should really be allowed to diversify into other retail areas. People need to remember their local shops. I do, and I find the quality superior.

Jon Cooper, London

• It's time to let the high-street shops die a natural death. Let's face it, the supermarkets have mostly won the battle for business. It's time to get over it and move on.

Carole Mooney, Manchester

• I use local butchers, bakers, greengrocers and decorators. But, sadly, lots of these places will be closed when people get home from work

—and that's when supermarkets come into their own.

Beth Webb, Clwyd III

PUT YOURS INTHEpi

The on at the NEC where you'll see all the new 2012 caravan and motorhome models from all the leading manufacturers!

SHOW NEC

• Be the first to see and compare all that's newhot off the production lines at the industry's biggest annual showcase

• Choose your new model and get it delivered in time for the start of the new season

• Get advice on finance, insurance, the best tow cars, and pick up all the accessories you need from the Accessory Megastores offering hundreds of products at show-only prices

• Discover fantastic new holiday destinationsfrom campsites across the UK and Europe to worldwide fly-drive holidays

• There's so much to enjoy with FREE towing and motorhome manoeuvring lessons, cookery demonstrations with Gino D'Acampo, kids' activities, celebrity appearances, competitions - and more. For further info and regular show updates register at www.motorhomeandcaravanshow.co.uk Don't miss the UK's

AR YOUR SHORT, SHARP GUIDE TO OCTOBER

Author and BBC2 Review

Show critic Natalie Haynes on the new releases

IN CINEMAS

We Need to Talk About Kevin. The film version of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prizewinning novel has taken a long time to appear—and it was worth every minute. Tilda Swinton is phenomenal as the edgy, brittle Eva, and Ezra Miller holds his own as her troubled and dangerous son Kevin. Lynne Ramsay has created an excellent adaptation of the novel, which is brilliant, tense,

disturbing and terrifying. Just don't eat lychees before going to see it—you've been warned.

Midnight in Paris. Stop the presses because I have news!

For the first time in more than a decade Woody Allen is on top form with this gorgeous homage to Paris, its artists, and its writers. Owen Wilson charms as the screenwriting hack who wants to pen novels so much he goes back in

time. Kathy Bates is perfectly cast as Gertrude Stein and Carla Bruni even pops up as a Rodin Museum guide.

DVDS

Potiche. Catherine Deneuve sparkles as the potiche (trophy wife) who realises she's destined for greater things than looking good and ignoring her husband's serial infidelities. Gerard Depardieu co-stars as her former lover and wardrobesized business rival. A terrific comedy of manners. Green Lantern. In a summer packed with superhero movies, you may have overlooked this. Granted, it's deeply silly, but Ryan Reynolds is an extremely likeable superhero who can save the world with all the charm and gusto you might wish for. Well worth a rental, a tub of popcorn and a choc ice.

Gadgets and Games

Batman: Arkham City (PS3, Xbox360, PC)

Technology expert and Answer Me This! podcaster

Oily Mann reveals the latest must-haves

J.99 You can play as the Dark Knight or Catwoman in this muchanticipated sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, but not as Bruce Wayne. Why not? What hardcore gamer wouldn't want to try their hand at charming high society at a series of champagne fundraisers? Ah, just me then. But if pretending to be the Caped Crusader is more your thing, strap in. You can swoop off stunningly rendered skyscrapers, glide through the night sky, and practise your kick-boxing on a nutter dressed as a penguin. Superb.

AND CHECK OUT

Cooker, The ricemaking option may be unnecessary, but this one also steams veg and slow-cooks meat. , t, Super-cute underwater arcade game that's instinctive and addictive. Nikon Cooip' £329. The first "all-weather" camera in the brilliant Coolpix range: waterproof, shock-proof and freeze-proof.

Air Wick Odour Detect, £13.99. This electronic aerosol acclimatises itself to its surroundings and sprays out scent when it detects new odours. Choose carefully where to put it, as it ruthlessly combats unfamiliar aromas, even if they're pleasant—I'd always rather sniff a Sunday roast emanating from my kitchen than a chemical concoction from a canister. But, strategically placed by my cat's litter tray, believe me, "White Lilac" is a winner every time.

Velociraptor! by Kasabian. Think Oasis with a media studies degree. It's fashionable among the hiperati to mock Kasabian. Surely they are lumpen, Leicestershire, Lynx body-spray lad-rock for Oasis fans' younger brothers; Father's Day gift alternatives to that Top Gear DVD? But this doesn't quite acknowledge the churning electronic grooviness at the heart of their workmanlike rock. If Velociraptorl breaks little new ground, it covers the familiar patch with a winning swagger.

A Creature I Don't Know

by Laura Marling. Think Joni Mitchell for the Facebook generation. The incongruity of seeing the tiny, luminous Laura, alone— well, with band—and palely loitering (with apologies to

Tennyson) on the stage at Glastonbury this year was both odd and rather charming. She seemed more at home at the Cambridge Folk Festival where she was the hit of the weekend. This is her richest outing yet, and the fleshed-out sonic palate and jazzy settings recall Mitchell's post-The Hissing of Summer Lawns phase. Utterly now, yet delightfully anachronistic, she's here for the long haul to stardom.

The Story of Trojan Records

Think a whole vibrant "ital" culture on five CDs. From the echoey mystery of dub to the string-drenched pop of Bob & Marcia to the skinhead stompers to the lovers-rock crooners, this gorgeous box set collects in one place pretty much everything you need to know about one of the world's great record labels. Across the elegantly themed CDs, you get both huge hits and scores of unreleased rarities and obscurities. Island may have courted the rock crowd, but Trojan Records is the sound of Jamaica. A joy.

BBC 6 Music's Stuart Maconie's pick of the recent releases

World Series baseball, October 19-27. The gum-chewing will be ramped up to jawdislocating intensity as sport's most idiotically long season reaches its conclusion. The American League title could well be another Yankees vs Red Sox slug-out—how can the Middle East be expected to sort itself out when these two age-old rivals can't? The winner will play the victors of the National League, where Philadelphia Phillies have more top-class pitchers than the International Museum of Jugs. Super League Grand Final, Manchester, ictober 3. Likely contenders for the rugbyleague title include holders Wigan, and Warrington, bidding for their first championship

ALSO ON OUR

ESPNcricinfo cricket blogger, broadcaster and stand-up Andy Zaltzman previews the best of the month's action

since shortly after Winston Churchill hung up his Downing Street cigar. However, no recent October has been complete without St Helens losing in the final, suggesting that Saint Helen herself is more of a union fan, and doesn't approve of her name being used—or that she's gunning for a new job as patron saint of sporting heartbreak.

AND DON'T N!!..Sr

The NSPCC City Conker Cup, London October 6. World Judo Championship Open, Russia October 29-30.

Nobel Peace Prize winner announced. October 7-22 Brighton Comedy Festival. A < AR October 26-30 Diwali (events nationwide). October 6 National Poetry Day. October 7

Ian Gardiner, 31, information specialist

WATCHING:

Mad Men. No new series on at the moment, but I've been working through this on my iPad. My wife is totally hooked.

Comfort Zone, Stephen Halpern. This is music to meditate to. Really relaxing. thebrowser.com. I'm loving this new site dedicated to long-form journalism. It was created by Henry Lane Fox [the brother of RD's Martha].

READING:

Making Wildflower Meadows, by Pam Lewis. I'm hoping to transform my small London garden into, yes, a meadow. •

1 My mother was telling me about two ladies who kept knocking on her door and preaching the gospel.

"Who were they?" I asked.

"Jerusalem Artichokes, I think," she replied.

Rob Prince, Surrey

1 When my son was very young, he was quite often mistaken for a girl. One day in the park, an elderly lady asked me what his name was.

"James," I replied. "Jane?" she said.

"No, James," I replied, slightly louder.

"Julie?" she said

"No, James!" I shouted.

"Oh, James," she said. "Funny name for a girl."

Mandy Benjamin, Wales

1 A work colleague of my mum's arrived late one day, explaining that she had to take her goldfish to the vet.

"I noticed that one of them wasn't swimming round the bowl, and its scales were falling off," she explained.

Intrigued, my mum ►

YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP...

"We might not be using this thing correctly"

I I WAS VISITING A FRIEND IN HOSPITAL WITH MY four-year-old daughter. As we sat waiting, a man with both legs missing was wheeled through the double doors by a nurse. I found out later that he'd had them amputated following a car crash.

My daughter, a loud and curious child, glanced up from her book, then looked away. I breathed a sign of relief. Perhaps she hasn't noticed him, I thought.

Suddenly, at the top of her voice, she said, "Mummy, that man has no legs."

Mortified, I explained that shouting out such things was very hurtful. She seemed to understand, and returned to her book. Then, ten minutes later, she stood up and asked, "But Mummy, how does he ride his bike?"

Luckily, the gentleman saw the funny side. Nonetheless, I did all my future hospital visits alone.

Kath Johnson, Pontefract, West Yorkshire

asked her what type of fish food she was using.

"Fish food?" she replied. "You have to feed them fish food," said my mum. "I thought they just lived off the water," she remarked.

F Sandford, Surrey

1 I overheard the barman in my local the other day discussing the merits of "guest" beers with a customer.

"We used to have an ale called Titanic," he explained, "but it didn't go down too well."

Brian Lewis, Hertfordshire

1 A friend at work was nearing retirement and becoming more and more annoyed at having to use computer technology.

"Can you help me?" she asked somewhat crossly, as she peered at the screen. "This cursor won't move at all. It's totally stuck. What is the matter with it?"

I MY YOUNGER BROTHER, a plasterer by trade, had been working in a large private house for two days without being offered so much as a cup of tea.

But his luck changed on the third day when the lady of the house called out from

WIN

£70 FOR YOUR TRUE, FUNNY STORIES. EMAIL excerpts@ readers digest.co.uk OR GO TO facebook. com/readers digestuk

I immediately saw the problem. "It would be better if you put your hand on the mouse rather than your glasses case."

Pat Pitt, Worcestershire

1 I was reading a renewal notice from my car insurer, Churchill, when my son Matthew asked me for help with his homework. "Just a second," I answered. "I have to call Churchill first."

He looked at me with a puzzled expression and said, "I thought he was dead."

Marzanna

Taczek, Harrogate

the kitchen, "Philip, there's a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich on the table for you. I have to go out for a while."

My brother finished his job, went into the kitchen and started munching. All of a sudden, he found

himself face to face with the astonished young son of the house, peering at him from the doorway.

"Is your name Philip?" he asked.

My brother nodded. "So's mine."

Carol Wale, Hampshire •

WHEREWOULD YOURTEETHBE WITHOUT YOURGUMS?

CORSODYL Dp, uy'

WORD POWER

Fall for nature's lure with Harry Mount

The natural world— captured in the new series of BBC2'sAutumnwatch —provides a bountiful harvest of distinctive words. See how many you can identify by selecting A, B, or C.

1 genus (jean-uhs) n

A insect antenna

B DNA test C group of organisms with shared characteristics

2 thorax n A bloodsucking insect B body part between head and abdomen C panda claw

3 sett n A mosquito bite B thrush's head

C badger's burrow

4 muntjac (munt-jack)

n A small deer B large hamster C fish food

5 natterjack n A small toad B swallow's song

C birdwatcher

6 fetlock n A rabbit hutch B joint in horse's leg C crow's nest

7 pupa (pyu-per) n

A insect in immature state

B pigeon toe C backbone

8 chough (chuff) n

A shark fin B horsefly

C mountain and coastal crow

9 chlorophyll (klor-ohfill) n A elephant medicine

B green pigment in plants

C white blood cell

10 caudal (kaw-dul) adj

A of or like a tail B fading

(of plumage) C dying

11 mongoose n

A small carnivorous mammal B duck egg

C farmyard gate

12 goldeneye n

A pheasant's feather

B diving duck

C buzzard's eye

13 down n A dolphin's leap B panther's tooth

C soft, fine feathers

14 mandible (mandi-bull) n

A vine leaf B leaf

mould C jaw

15 saithe (saythe) n

A type of cod B grizzly bear C ostrich egg

A word is born: Add to cart

is an expression borrowed from the internet, meaning an intention to buy or to engage in a particular activity. Online, the expression is used when you want to buy an item. In its new incarnation, you might use it to say something like, "I saw the enormous pizza in the fridge and I thought, Add to cart."

RD Rating

Useful? 3/10

Likeable? 6/10

WORD POWER ANSWERS

9-11 getting there 12-13 impressive 14-15 word-power wizard!

1 genus—C group of organisms with shared characteristics. "A genus can be divided into subordinate groups." Latin (race).

2 thorax—B body part between head and abdomen. "A mammal's thorax starts below the neck." Greek thorax.

3 sett—C badger's burrow. "A badger shares the sett with its family." Middle English set.

4 muntjac—A small deer. "The muntjac originally came from southeast Asia." Latin muntiacus.

S natterjack—A small toad. "The natterjack has a yellow stripe on its back." Natter (because of its loud croak) and Jack (nickname).

6 fetlock—B joint in horse's leg. "Her fetlocks looked good in the paddock." German fessel.

7 pupa—A insect in immature state. "The pupa is the form between larva and adult." Latin pupa (girl, doll).

8 chough—C mountain and coastal crow.

WHY BLUESTOCKING?

The word bluestocking was first used of Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702-71), a writer who was fond of wearing blue stockings to literary gatherings in London. One of the salons he attended in the 1750s was popular with women writers and intellectuals, who began to be called bluestockings, too. In time, the term bluestocking was applied to any intellectual or literary woman, such as A S Byatt (above), as it is today.

"Choughs have a moving call." Middle English.

9 chlorophyll—B green pigment in plants. "Chlorophyll is crucial for photosynthesis." Greek khloros (green) and phut/on (leaf).

10 caudal—A of or like a tail. "The Manx cat has caudal abnormality." Latin cauda (tail).

11 mongoose—A small carnivorous mammal. "The mongoose is native

to Asia and Africa." From the Marathi language of western and central India (mangus).

12 goldeneye—B diving duck. "The goldeneye gets its name from its yellow eye."

13 down—C

soft, fine feathers. "Down is used for stuffing cushions." Old Norse dunn.

14 mandible—C jaw. "The tiger's mandible has great power." Latin mandere (to chew).

15 saithe—A type of cod. "Saithe is found in the north Atlantic." Old Norse seithr.

SEAMUS KEARNEY ( AS BYATT)

A time saving recipe for family meals.

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IN THE FUTURE...

...servers may heat your home, says Gary Rimmer

Driving change

Introducing the digital thermostat

There are two big problems with "cloud" computing (machines running software accessed from, and storing data in, the internet's "cloud" of information). Firstly, where to put all the computer servers needed to run the cloud? And what to do with the heat they generate? One mooted solution comes from Iceland: build vast "server farms" offshore in its icy territorial waters—a natural cooler and a welcome business opportunity after the global credit crash. Microsoft proposes another: put adapted servers into private homes for dual use. Warm your air and water, and ditch the boiler—and the telecoms company pays your heating bill. Your choice by 2020.

Remote controlling rage

Regenerative surgery was once just sci-fi, but last year doctors near Baltimore used a "miracle powder" to regrow a fingertip, and University of Pittsburgh doctors recently used pig-tissue gel—an "extra-cellular matrix"—to regrow muscle. Next up: photo medicine? Boston scientists have used the protein that

Polythene can nowadays be manufactured from sugarcane rather than petrochemicals—a winwin process, as every ton of green polythene produced traps 2.5 tons of CO2. Ingenious new engines could also play a significant role in conserving oil supplies. One approach is an engine with cylinders containing two pistons that push in opposite directions when the fuel ignites. In normal engines, cylinders contain just one piston, wasting much energy.

Designers claim such modifications could double petrol-engine efficiency. Expect these engines around 2015.

makes some jellyfish fluorescent to create a living laser, which could lead to targeted laser therapy or a functioning brainmachine interface. And, using mice, researchers have identified the brain structure that triggers aggression—and how to control it with light. Could it all lead to a "cure" for human violence at the flick of a switch by 2030? ■

Talking to your family about cancer can be really tough. But a chat with one of our experts on the Macmillan Support Line can help you find the words you need. So you and your family can face the future, together.

This is just one of the ways the Macmillan team can help you through cancer. Our medical professionals, cancer support specialists and benefits advisers are just a phone call away. For cancer support every step of the way call the Macmillan team free on 0808 808 00 00 (Monday to Friday, 9am-8pm) or visit macmillan.org.uk

INSTANT EXPERT

Harry Mount reveals the facts behind the news

The decisions of the OECD, which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year, affect a whole range of policies in a number of countries. But how much do you really know about this economic organisation?

What is it?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development was founded in 1961. Its central aim is to foster social and economic policies that will help people around the world.

Why is

it in the news?

As well as marking

its anniversary, the

di OECD will publish its Consumer Price Indices on October 4. This is the annual survey of the average changes in the prices of consumer goods and services bought by households in the 34 member countries, which should be particularly interesting this year. It's one of the many economic and social research exercises the OECD undertakes, measuring past productivity, trade and investment, and trying to predict future trends.

The OECD's tentacles also spread into education standards, taxes, social security and pensions in its member countries. Each year, it publishes hundreds of books, reports and statistics.

Once it's processed all this information, the OECD recommends policies. Its aims are to encourage democratic institutions and market economies, and oppose terrorism, tax-dodging, corruption or anything that undermines a fair, open society.

How does it work?

Each member puts forward a representative to serve at the OECD headquarters in a swish chateau (see picture). A further delegate comes from the EC, and together these representatives make up the OECD Council, which meets once a year. Their decisions are then acted on by the OECD Secretariat. Both the Secretariat and the Council are headed by Angel Gurria, a Mexican diplomat and economist. There are around 250 sub-committees, where the representatives specialise in areas such as employment, trade, science and economics. Astonishingly, around 40,000 officials from the member countries will attend these meetings, to help with OECD research.

ning up for the Convention in Paris,1960

The OECD

Why was the OECD originally set up?

It grew out of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), set up in 1948 to administer the Marshall Plan—the American-run finance programme to reinvigorate Europe after the Second World War. The aim was to encourage cooperation between European countries, and avoid the disharmony that followed the First World War.

In 1960, the 18 European founding countries of the OEEC (including Britain), along with the US and Canada, signed the OECD Convention, and in 1961 the OECD was born. Over succeeding decades, the OECD spread its membership across the world beyond Western Europe and America. Only last December, Estonia became the most recent recruit to the club. £310m

The

The OECD's annual budget, paid for by the member countries in proportion to their GDP 25% Proportion of the OECD budget that's contributed by the US, a statistic that's angered some Americans

•ALI. OUR COLOURS TO THE HA,

Château de la Muette, home to the OECD

IF I RULED THE WORLD Antony Gormley

Known internationally for his sculptures, including the Angel of the North in Gateshead and Another Place at Crosby Beach, Merseyside, Turner Prize-winner Antony Gormley's artistic career has spanned more than 30 years and 100 exhibitions.

...I'd try to shift some core beliefs. The biggest challenge facing humankind is how we admit the fact that, as our desires grow ever greater, the resources are more limited. It's a cultural issue—we live in a world in which fulfilment is seen to come through possession. This is the way economies work and the way people have their identities reinforced.

But it's all very shortterm. It's a myth that the industrialisation of the world is the way forward. I'm a realist and it seems clear to me that, if we carry on like this, human beings are not going to participate in whatever future there may be for our planet.

...I'd take part of our national defence budget and use it for sustainable energy research. We have the opportunity to make a difference to our world, but there is still too much denial

about climate change. The science is clear—the writing is on the wall. So a radical shift in the way we commit our resources is vital.

...I'd use art to provide an opportunity for people to reflect on their lives. The 2,400 people who participated in the living monument [the Fourth Plinth] in Trafalgar Square in 2009 were a fraction of those who wanted to get their thoughts across by using their own lives as the raw material for that work.

I'm utopian enough to believe you could extend that principle from individuals to nation states.

I'd like to gather the armies of Nato, China and Russia to work together on a creative project that'd be both symbolic and practical— perhaps a world parliament building. It'd be wonderful to harness the energy of these armies—normally geared to L.J a negative notion of human capability—to create something positive. Art provides an

important space for communication and participation in ideas for the future.

...I'd give art greater status in education. We put too much value on things that can be judged, quantified and calibrated over things that can be dreamt, imagined and enjoyed. The amount schools spend per child on art supplies is shockingly low. Education should be about intensifying an individual's connection with their own passions. The idea that it's only through the language of numbers or manipulation of formulae that we contribute to a greater world is horrendously limiting.

I also believe that having even one piece of original art in the home is important. Participation in the art of our own time, even if that's just buying an unknown student's work, is at least contributing to the process of enchantment and questioning the world we live in.

...I'd tell everyone they are all creators. Too much of our experience of the world is about us being dumb receivers of things that have the "wow" factor. Our own intrinsic sense of longing or anticipation shouldn't

tt

I'd like to gather the armies of Nato, China and Russia to work together on a creative project

Antony's latest solo show, Still Standing, is at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg until January

be subverted by the power of advertising. We should acknowledge that we all have the capability to respond to a sound or image and discover resonances that connect to a part of ourselves that we didn't know existed before. These are the things that make life worth living.

...I'd ban cars in cities. As a cyclist myself, it's encouraging that our tribe is growing bigger. But I think it's crazy that we still insist on cohabiting with cars in cities. In Paris there are so few cars now—Parisians really feel their city is theirs, their own communal living room, and they treat it with respect.

...I'd celebrate the very fact of existence. We spend a lot of time obsessing about what our bodies look like, but they are just workshops on temporary loan to us. They have their own lives, and instead of getting angry when they go wrong, we should celebrate their uniqueness. We don't allow ourselves enough time to recognise that every minute on earth is a miracle. Each breath I take is a new world —a moment to be savoured. ■ As told to Caroline Hutton

REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL

11. Life on the farm

James Brown discovers there's a lot more satisfaction in mucking out than logging on

This time last week I was strolling around a farmyard in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, mucking out stables. Yes, that's right: scraping up pig sh*t, pitchforking old straw, and shovelling up other farmyard mess into one massive pile. Before that I'd climbed a stepladder and shaken apples into buckets for the pigs' lunch. Like a lot of men, as soon as I've tried something once I assume I'm an expert at it. So after half a morning of this I thought I was It. I kept thinking of the "Are you the farmer?" line from Withnail and I—for a while, I think I was even saying it to myself. I don't know why; I clearly wasn't the farmer. I was just some London-based media ponce pushing a stick around a yard. I looked a state—baggy shorts and white T-shirt, massive green wellies—but I felt absolutely great. The simplicity of what I was doing brought a calm orderliness to my brain that my work online at Sabotage Times never does. It was positively meditative.

How did I end up mucking out? My son and I were staying on our friend's farm beneath Whitestone Cliffe, a giant rocky outcrop that the Yorkshire Gliding Club launch themselves off. It's very easy to stand on top of that cliff, survey the Yorkshire landscape and imagine what Britain looked like in Robin Hood's day, before tarmac and Tesco carved up the country.

That morning, my friend and host Jeremy had shown me the new cottages he was going to rent out—and then went off to York races with the Beatles producer George Martin, and football legends Eddie Gray and Sir Alex Ferguson. So I was left with his wife Catherine and a yard full of animal droppings. There are popular erotic novels that don't need much more than that to get going.

As our kids ran off playing secret agents in the trees, Catherine told me some of the things she has to do on the farm. When she mentioned tagging the pigs, I initially thought she meant identifying them on Facebook photos with a click of the cursor.

It's not a natural fit, a media man with arthritic fingers from typing badly, coming to terms with hard manual outdoor labour, but I took to it with enthusiasm. A lovely day lay ahead, and I figured I could do some

exercise in far prettier surroundings than the gym.

I have a friend called Caroline who jacked in her job as a secretarial temp two years ago and worked through the hard daily rigours of a freezing winter as a farm hand. I thought she was bonkers until she came back looking like a more natural Cheryl Cole—all

cheekbones and radiant glow. Again, deluded, I figured that shifting hay about for a day might leave me looking ripped and beach-ready.

Mucking out actually promotes great peace of mind. Working out how many loads the wheelbarrow would take before I pushed it out into the yard and dumped it gave me something to focus on. Once I'd started, I completed more tasks than I personally achieve in an average internet-orientated day. For the record, I did 24 loads into the barrow at a time, switching between scraper, shovel and pitchfork.

The day was not without its challenges, though. Spit on the ground and hens will run at you thinking it's feed. Holding an apple that's hollow except for 15 drunken wasps inside the skin was like a detail from a horror film. Thankfully, the narky insects were well tanked up on cider, and just fell out and lay on the ground where the apple had landed.

I was so engrossed in my progress that I forgot about lunch. At one point, I fixed a big-bristled yard brush with hammer and nail. This news shocked my girlfriend; at home I can't even get P,

gg Admittedly, the work I did in five hours would probably take a genuine stable hand about half an hour

•l round to changing the light bulbs. Most people I know were stunned by my apparent enthusiasm for hard work. The big question is whether or not I could hack it in worse weather?

Some people fantasise about running off to Caribbean beaches or meeting their heroes. Right now, my type of fantasy is going back to the farm in late autumn. Admittedly, I'm

1)

trying not to focus on the reality that the work I did in five hours would probably take a genuine stable hand about half an hour—but that's another matter altogether. ■

James, founder of Loaded magazine, now edits Sabotage Times—an online magazine with the motto: "We can't concentrate, why should you?" You can follow James on Twitter @jamesjamesbrown.

BACK IN THE DAY: "I MARRIED A NAZI"

Extracts from the harrowing story of 21-year-old British girl Margaret Schmidt, first published in our March 1940 edition:

■I met the man I married when I visited the Black Forest—a rapturous swimming, canoeing, hiking period of comrade-ship that lasted three months. I've now been married nearly four and a half years. I have two children and another on the way. They belong to Germany and to my husband—the two are indistinguishable. I merely take care of them.

■My husband is splendidly educated, a generous and devoted father. There's no hatred of Jews or foreigners. But you cannot talk to him as a human being at all. Individualism terrifies him. We are part of a race being reared under the best possible conditions by a super-fatherHitler. Often I surrender, and sometimes with a kind of rapture. I might as well enjoy what I have got the feeling that I belong to the mightiest nation on earth, the finest.

■I sometimes feel I'm married not to a man, but to Hitler's Order of Perfect German Wives and Mothers; as long as I obey the rules within my enclosed life, the rewards are rich. Coming from a democratic country where individuality and personality are tolerated in the female, where one's son is not born to a regime and a uniform, I sometimes feel I'll go crazy.

■Germans feel immortal in a mortal world. That's what Hitler has bestowed upon them. Other nations are conscious that they are mortal in an immortal world. That's what Hitler has not been able to destroy.

The journey is just the start

\ once-in-a-lifetime holiday that includes the USA's major cities, world-famous sights such as the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, and a journey across the stunning Rockies.

Day 1. To the USA. Flight from London/ Manchester to New York for a three night stay in the city centre.

Days 2-3. New York. See the incredible sights of the 'Big Apple on our guided tour and Manhattan cruise leaving Day 3 free to explore.

Days 4-5. Washington. Travel to Washington for a two night stay with a tour of the city's famous landmarks.

Day 6. To Chicago. Leave by overnight sleeper train for Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Days 7-8. Chicago. Arrive in Chicago and take a city tour, including the site of Al Capone's headquarters and the Sears Tower. Next day depart on the California Zephyr overnight train into Iowa and Nebraska.

Days 9-10. Denver. Spend a day in Denver, then a day exploring the Rocky Mountain National Park, Big Thompson Canyon & Estes Park.

Day 11. Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. Travel along the route of the USA's most scenic train, the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, past dramatic peaks and deep ravines, for an overnight stay at Grand Junction.

Day 12. Durango. Visit Silverton, then take a breathtaking ride on the historic Durango and Silverton Railroad to the Wild West town of Durango.

Day 13. Monument Valley. Explore the rugged landscape of Monument Valley, one of the USA's most famous locations staying two nights in Flagstaff.

Day 14. Grand Canyon. Travel in vintage carriages to the majestic Grand Canyon, one of the world's most awe-inspiring sights.

Day 15. Flagstaff. Free day, possibly to enjoy the fabulous setting of Flagstaff, then travel by overnight train to Los Angeles.

Day 16. Los Angeles. Explore Los Angeles and spend a night on board the RMS Queen Mary, formerly a famous ocean liner.

Days 17-19. San Francisco. Take the Coast Starlight along the Pacific coast, past pristine beaches and through the wine country of San Luis Obispo, to San Francisco for a three night stay and sightseeing tour, including the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz.

Days 20-21. To London/Manchester. Overnight flight back to London/Manchester, arriving on Day 21.

Scheduled flights London/Manchester to New York & San Francisco to London/Manchester

Rail and coach travel as described

16 nights' hotel accommodation

3 overnight train journeys in two-berth roomette with meals included

5 guided city tours

2 harbour cruises

4 iconic Amtrak journeys & 2 rail journeys on heritage lines

Transfers and luggage handling in USA

Accompanied by an professional Tour Manager

60 departures between 16 April and 15 October 2012

21 day holiday from £2,995

LEADING THE WAY IN ESCORTED RAIL HOLIDAYS FOR OVER 30 YEARS

ctor en ler has been frying for his art in the Caribbean sun while filming new detective

show Death in Paradise.

Then there's the typhoon, the rain, the insects...

BY TIM OGLETHORPE

When you're stuck in a boat in the Caribbean Sea, frighteningly close to a typhoon, there's a lot to observe. Gentle waves become mountainous, the wind howls, the rain becomes a vast, heavenly power shower, and the typhoon itself is magnificent—a spiralling mass of ocean spray and vapour.

But it's the look on Ben Miller's face— as the storm comes within 200 yards of the ferry on which the cast and crew of new BBCI drama Death in Paradise are travelling—that's most striking. He seems totally unmoved by the danger, with a quiet acceptance that yet another thing ►

-41 on this extraordinary production could be about to go spectacularly wrong.

"I'm a little concerned," he says, taking a short pause in our interview "But don't worry—I'm enjoying this! Let's carry on talking. If the typhoon engulfs us, that's probably the end, though."

Thankfully, the storm eventually passes and, after finishing our journey between the ports of Deshaies and Pointe-A-Pitre in Guadeloupe, Ben and I recover in his air-conditioned motorhome, drinking glasses of fridge-cold water.

Ben has the starring role in Death in Paradise,playing Richard Poole, a murder detective seconded from London to the fictional Caribbean island of St Marie, after his people skills make him persona non grata in Blighty. But, says the 45-yearold, "this whole project is mental. My partner Jessica suggested on the phone that it might be cursed. It's not, but it's a big learning curve—we're dealing with problems as they crop up.

"We came out to Guadeloupe in April and we've had more storms in the last few months than you'd expect," continues Ben. "There have been days when it hasn't stopped raining. We can't shoot outside, and it's hard to film inside as the buildings have tin roofs, which make the most almighty noise and drown out the voices of the actors."

The team have also had to put up with Sara Martins, who plays glamorous detective Camille, slipping on a wet quayside and tearing her Achilles tendon. She missed two weeks of filming as she underwent surgery, and an entire episode had to be rewritten. But it's Ben, famous as one half of comedy duo Armstrong

and Miller, who's arguably suffered the most, largely thanks to a combination of 38°C heat and Richard Poole's regular attire—a woollen M&S suit.

"It shows that he's an Englishman abroad; a fish out of water. It's what the Met do when they come here—they carry on wearing their suits. But Basse-Terre, where we're filming in Guadeloupe, is currently too hot to do anything. There are no tourists, and no one is working apart from British film crews and actors, frying in the midday sun!

"The problem is the humidity. When I sweat, it can't evaporate and my temperature just climbs, little by little, to the

"Heatstroke makes It's like a night's but with none of

point where I suffer heatstroke. I ended up in the back of an ambulance earlier in the shoot. I didn't know who I was, where I was, or what I was doing.

"Then, yesterday, I lost sensation in my hands and feet. I couldn't remember the crew's names or the dialogue I had to speak. I also suffered heat rage, mouthed off and insisted on being taken to a cool environment between scenes. Heatstroke makes you crazy, and you get a headache the next day. It's like a night's boozing, but with none of the benefits."

Adds Ben hastily, "I just hope I didn't offend anyone. I have apologised.

"An insect died in my ear and a load of pus came out when the doctor removed

it," he continues. "And I've had water on my knee. Every day it occurs to me that I'm the wrong man for this job. I don't have the constitution."

Ben

Miller as detective Richard Poole: "I hope my character gets to wear a mankini in one of the episodes!"

But at least the crew have been sympathetic? "They know I'm suffering, but they've still sidled up to me and said, `When David Suchet was filming Poirot in Morocco, he had a thermometer—if it reached 28°C, he was allowed to stop.' Or, 'David Suchet had his own doctor so there were no...communication issues.'

"Then they look at me knowingly, as

you crazy. boozing, the benefits"

if I should demand such extras. But it isn't going to happen—certainly not a doctor on set. Much of my heatstroke has been self-diagnosed. The best I can hope for is that my character gets to wear a mankini in one of the episodes!"

Ironically, David Suchet's Poirot is one of Ben's favourite TV detectives. "I'm also a big fan of Inspector Morse, Lewis, and Miss Marple—and Colombo is hard to beat. But Poirot is the gold standard, the one we all aspire to."

But, if he's a fan of the fictional variety, he wouldn't want to be a real detective. "I'd be terrible! The work carries an incredible amount of responsibility. I spoke to this guy from the Met's homicide 1.-

MILLER'S MARVELS

Among his many talents, Ben is writing an as-yet-untitled book on science. These little facts make him particularly happy...

Go back far enough in your family tree and you'll find algae

• division before I came out here, and he said he gets momentary satisfaction from his job when he catches somebody and can tell the dead person's relatives. But such moments are rare."

It's unusual for Ben to turn down the opportunity to do something new He tends to grab at the chance to expand his talents, both in case they come in useful for his acting and just for fun.

When I interviewed him in 1999, his great new discovery was drumming, and his north-London flat was awash with cymbals, wood blocks and chimes. Twelve years on, he's been learning French while in Guadeloupe to make it easier to converse with locals on the French-speaking island—and in case he gets a role in a French movie. The Cambridge University natural-sciences graduate—who gave up a PhD in quantum physics to go into showbusiness—has also been writing a book about science. "It's a light-hearted jaunt through the subject, as opposed to the kind of heavy, scientific tome for which a doctorate is essential," he says.

Doesn't he ever feel the need to relax?

"I like to dabble," he grins. "I'm not an expert in anything—I'm passably mediocre. My dad is the same. He always has projects. He'll go off to do a class in woodwork, make a desk, then change his mind and learn German. I've inherited the dabbling gene from him."

The only time the French and the writing have been put on hold has been when his partner, film producer Jessica Parker, and five-year-old son Sonny have been visiting. His face lights up when we talk about his child. His marriage to Sonny's mother—Inbetweeners actress Belinda Stewart-Wilson—may not have survived, but he's determined not to be too much of an absent parent.

"I've missed some less obvious things about Britain since I've been out here. Bizarrely, I've really missed marmalade— not because I'm particularly fond of the taste, but because of what it represents. And I miss 'real' tea. I know it's a cliché, but you can't get a decent cup of tea out here. Of course, I miss my family most. Sonny's been out here three times

There are marine fossils at the top of the Himalayas

Einstein considered his first greatest invention to be the theory of general relativity—and his second greatest to be boiling an egg in soup, thereby only having to wash up one saucepan

The first rocket that went to the moon was basically a souped-up intercontinental ballistic missile with three men in the front

The universe was once the size of an atom

already. He loves the heat and the beach far more than I do.

"I did a couple of movies in Hollywood, including The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Daredevils of the Desert. But when Sonny was born, that completely changed my focus—it made me want to be at home in the UK more. Admittedly, I've spent the last few months in the Caribbean, but my basic desire to remain as near as possible to my son at all times remains."

Indeed, future plans include a Londonbased Channel 4 sitcom with Alexander Armstrong about two ne'er-do-well Edwardian gents called Felix and Murdo. And more Death in Paradise, perhaps? "Let's see if it gets recommissioned," he grins. "Let's see if I'm even here. I might encounter a more deadly typhoon somewhere along the line..." ■

» Death in Paradise starts this month on BBC1.

NATURAL WONDERS: SHOEBILL

It was christened abu markub by the Arabs—roughly translated as "one with a shoe" (a tribute to its large bill)—and there are also ancient Egyptian carvings of this eye-catching bird. But the shoebill was discovered late by Europeans, and even then only in the form of skins brought back by 19th-century merchants.

This isn't surprising—shoebills live a reclusive life largely in the vast swamps of east Africa, particularly Sudan, with a total population hovering around 8,000. Even its ancestry is confused, having been linked at various stages to pelicans, storks and herons.

LOS PINOS ZIP WIRE, COLOMBIA

Forget the perils of bullies on the school bus—for the children of Los Pinos, a village in the Colombian jungle, the trip to and from class holds rather more dramatic dangers. With their settlement cut off from neighbouring communities by a 1,200foot-deep gorge that takes two hours to walk around, the kids get across using 1,300-foot zip wires.

Every morning, around a dozen of them arrive at the launch pad, armed with their own pulley,

rope and—crucially—a piece of wood to use as a brake so they don't slam into the tyres on the other side at 40mph. Smaller pupils are bundled into hessian sacks and tied to older children.

Some 60 adults brave the trip daily, too, often transporting supplies. Nobody knows what the zips' weight limits are, but locals have carried animals, large food parcels and even furniture across, and the steel cables haven't broken. Yet. ►

tkEemTV'Vorld's Craziest Commutes

So your bus is stuck in traffic and you're ten minutes late for work? It could be worse—as these mindboggling journeys demonstrate...

• TOKYO RAIL SYSTEM

You know a city's got transport issues when it's coined a specific phrase, tsukin jigoku, to describe "commuter hell".

And Tokyo's commuter lingo doesn't stop there—or get much cheerier. White-gloved train pushers, known as oshiya, are employed to cram the rail network's 8.7 million daily

When it's minus 2°C outside, the thought of leaving your warm bed and waiting on a frigid train platform can fill even the hardiest British worker with dread. So spare a thought for commuters in the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk—they regularly have to brave temperatures below minus 45°C.

Just starting a car in such conditions can, of

course, prove impossible (wealthier residents use heated garages that cost £20,000—some four times the average annual salary). But if travellers manage that, they then have to brave roads that are so thickly coated in ice that winter tyres are little help. There are dozens of accidents each week, as cars skate across junctions and career off roads.

passengers into carriages. Meanwhile, sleazy travellers who take advantage of the cramped situation are labelled chikan —loosely translated as "train gropers". As well as being sex pests, they also create paranoia. A girl recently caused chaos in a carriage by spraying Mace at a number of innocent businessmen after she'd unwittingly straddled a clarinet case.

Waiting too long at the bus stop can be fatal, too—especially for older people, who can quickly develop respiratory problems. And permafrost means an underground tube system is out.

The city will finally be linked to Russia's overground rail network late this year, though, so at least residents will find it easier to get away.

The fact that there are plans to reduce Tokyo's train capacity to 150 per cent in the next two years demonstrates the extent of the city's problem. The TOzai Metro line frequently operates at 199 per cent capacity. Passengers can just about grasp a newspaper, but there's no chance of holding it up and reading it.

►

YUNGAS ROAD, BOLIVIA

This mountain pass is also known as El Camino de la Muerte. or the Road of Death" —and the nickname's not a jokey exaggeration. Up to 250 people a year have been killed on this 38-mile-long stretch since it was carved into the mountainside in the 1930s and became a key route for trucks travelling from Bolivia's capital La Paz to rainforest settlements in the north.

The road is about as wide as a dining table is long—not ideal when you're trying to creep a lorry round a hairpin bend with

a 3,000-foot sheer drop on one side. Add a smattering of landslides, torrential rain and another lorry coming in the other direction (even if there is the occasional narrow passing place), and suddenly the M25 seems much more palatable.

Since 2006, a less-dangerous bypass has provided an alternative to the worst parts of the route. But, even so, the memorial crosses and floral tributes that appear at regular intervals along the Yungas Road show that it remains far from accident free.

BEIJING

Singer Katie Melua claims that there are "nine million bicycles in Beijing", but it's the five million cars she wants to worry about.

Even in London, where rush-hour traffic crawls along at under 10mph, there are just three million cars—or 432 cars per square mile. In Beijing, that figure is 1,226 and, though Beijing is half the size of London, the average commuting time is around 12 minutes longer at 52 minutes.

The Chinese capital's economic growth over the last decade or so has resulted in 1,900 new vehicles on the road each day, and poor public transport doesn't provide much of an alternative. What's more, you don't get ahead in a country of 1.3 billion people by waiting your turn, so a traffic jam on a two-lane highway can quickly turn into four-lane gridlock as drivers nose into gaps.

Last August, a jam starting in Beijing grew into a 60-mile tailback that stretched all the way to Inner Mongolia and lasted nine days. For now, investing in a pair of trainers and walking to work is probably the best option.

If there's one thing worse than navigating a rickety wooden suspension bridge, it's having to do so while looking at its broken predecessor dangling alongside (out of shot). But that's the routine of villagers in Hussain!. northern Pakistan, who need to cart firewood, crops and livestock across the 635-foot-long structureto reach their farmland.

A strong gust of wind lifted up the old bridge a couple of years ago, then smashed it back down, dislodging most of the slats and rendering it useless. But the new bridge hasn't had an easy time of it,

- _either. A recent landslide caused the water levels of the Hunza River below to rise so much that the bridge was submerged for weeks. Indeed, even under normal conditions, the Hunza is no gentle stream. To put it bluntly, if you fell off the bridge into the rapidriddled torrent, you wouldn't be sculling to safety. Locals try to keep the bridge patched up as best they can, relying on bits of wood, twine—and hope. But it's still not so much a serious river crossing as something resembling an Indiana Jones film set —or possibly the Bridge of Death in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. ■

10.4P op

An artist's — impression of how " The Shard will look when completed

built-on-a-pos stamp story behin

Britain's highest skyscraper

BY JOHNODYSON

.;":"/./.7

The nation's capital reaches dizzy new heights this month, as one of the most spectacular buildings in London's history puts on its hard hat.

In a tricky six-week operation, huge prefabricated sections of The Shard's 23-storey spire are being hoisted up by cranes to cap what, at 1,016 feet, will be Europe's tallest building. For two years, Londoners have watched the skyscraper creep upwards from behind the old brick arches of London Bridge railway station, then get cloaked in glass sheets that look like ironed-out splinters of sky.

When it opens in early 2013, you'll have historic London at your feet and a view to the curve of the earth.from its upper floors. On the day of the royal wedding, steel workers raced to the top so they could look down on the RAF flypast. Yet remarkably little ►

is known about this new British landmark. Enter Reader's Digest with the high points of The Shard...

THE KEY PLAYERS: A LOCAL LAD AND AN ITALIAN VISIONARY

The rags-to-riches story of the man who dreamed up The Shard, which forms part of the £2bn London Bridge Quarter, is as London as they come. Born and raised in the north of the city Irvine Sellar left school at 15. But by 17 he was running a handful of clothes stalls in different towns and, just as the world broke out of browns and greys in the early Sixties, Sellar was moving into coloured clothes and had started buying shops. With two outlets in Carnaby Street and seven in Oxford Street, he dressed Swinging London.

His chain store Mates, which sold both men's and women's clothes—a concept previously unheard of—grew to 90 UK stores by the end of the Seventies. Sellar reckons that, at one point, everyone under the age of 30 had worn at least one of his garments.

Restless, he sold the business and went into property. The 1991 crash cost him £28m and nearly wiped him out, but he sold his home to survive and, with contacts and confidence, built a second fortune. Now 73, he has a property portfolio worth about £600m—plus a sizeable share in The Shard.

Sellar came up with the idea for an enormous skyscraper in 1998 when he

bought an ugly 1970s office block next to London Bridge station. The footprint was only one acre so, to make serious money out of it, Sellar had in mind a tall circular tower. But he needed a top architect.

A master of light and lightness in buildings, Italian architect Renzo Piano, 74, had designed the world's longest airport terminal in Osaka, Japan, the Pompidou Centre in Paris (with Richard Rogers), and other signature buildings. But he hated skyscrapers.

"An office building sheathed in glass is like meeting a man wearing sunglasses," he'd often been quoted as saying. "You can't tell whether he's smiling or will kill you."

But when, in April 2000, Sellar flew all the way to Berlin, where Piano was attending an exhibition, and dragged him out to lunch to explain the site's potential, Piano's imagination took flight.

Thinking of the masts of ships berthed along the Thames, the beauty of the south of England's spires and Monet's haunting paintings of Big Ben, Piano flipped over the menu and rapidly started to sketch. His felt-tip pen outlined a multi-faceted pyramid reaching high into the sky. With quick swirls, he showed how the differently angled planes could catch the light. "What do you think?" he asked.

Sellar's heart leapt. The genius concept would be an icon, not just for London but also for the globe, and would turn his single acre of land into 24 acres13 football fields—of lettable space,

Arc

Renz hitect o Piano

.' probably a world record for such a small footprint. Sellar looked at Piano and told him with a wide smile, "I think you're my man." Piano began drawing up his designs in detail.

"What do you call broken pieces of glass?" Piano asked at a British press conference, called in 2002 to announce the building concept. Somebody said "shards" and Piano nodded. "The building will be a light, crystal presence: a shard of glass."

The name stuck and—after years of fund-raising problems— construction began in March 2009.

HEALTH, SAFETY, AND SHARING A SMALL STREET WITH COMMUTERS

With the area around the site used by more than 320,000 bus and train commuters a day, and the busy Guy's Hospital just across the road, planners insisted that the building operation took place entirely within The Shard's footprint.

But the contractors have overcome this task without one road being closed and with only six parking bays suspended. To test logistics, a plan of the site was painted on a disused airfield. Then a dual carriageway was built through the site at ground level. Lorries delivering materials had to bid for half-hour slots, like landing aircraft. A holding area was also set up five miles away where they could wait as they were marshalled in sequence by radio.

For safety, workmen had to leave coins and mobiles at ground level, and keep all tools tethered to their belts. Just one bolt falling through the roof of the station below —even if it didn't kill anyone—would shut it down at a cost of £2.5m an hour. As the building rose ever higher, train passengers were also warned not to lean out over the platforms to admire it.

Over at Guy's, meanwhile, sensitive locations and equipment, such as critical-care units and electron microscopes, were monitored for vibration, noise and dust by an alert system linked to engineers' mobiles. Things went well, except for a mysterious string of warnings sounding at the same time every day during one part of the build—they turned out to be cleaners and nurses shaking out sheets while making beds.

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO ILD A DREAM?

• Ninety-six floors, each with 26 corners. The floors get smaller the higher they go. In some corners are gardens partly open to the elements, Where the 2,000 workers will be able to get a breath of fresh air.

• 11,500 panes of triple-glazed glass, with built-in semi-transparent roller blinds operated by computer, will create warmth in winter or coolness in summer. The system is expected to be so effective that even on the coldest days the heating will go off at 10am.

• A team of over 40 engineers, whose job was to spend more than a year thrashing out how

to put the cone-shaped Rubik's cube together. The concrete contractor even constructed a three-storey mock-up to ensure everything slotted in place. "That architect—you'd kill him," growled one of the team.

• Revolutionary ideas to save time where possible and keep the build's enormous labour and equipment-hire costs in check. It was decided, for example, that three months could be gained by building up at the same time as digging down—starting the concrete core and propping it up on steel stilts before the foundations were finished.

• An amazing "slip form"

construction. Around the top of the core— which encloses the shafts for 44 lifts, some of which will be double-deckers—a square, screened platform on steel struts called "the slide" was built. As concrete was pumped up from below, the slide moved upwards, providing a sheltered platform for a crane and men to shape the concrete form, like a builder's yard in the sky. At best, they finished 30cm an hour, or one floor a day.

• An outer shell for the building, constructed around the core from the ground up. This was only started once the foundations were in place. ►

REACHING FOR THE SKIES

How does The Shard measure up to other famous structures? Gherkin

Eiffel Tower

feet plus antenna

The Shard 1,016 feet

Empire State Building 1,250 feet plus antenna

BUILDING A WIGWAM THAT WON'T FALL DOWN

The Shard's wigwam shape is naturally sturdy and simply doesn't want to topple over.

"The building's been designed to be very robust," says project engineer Ian van Hek. Its structural strength lies not in its outer shell, but in the concrete core— essentially, an immensely strong pillar. If the floors were damaged by some impact, they are built in

such a way that they would sag, but wouldn't fall onto the floor below, so there would be no progressive collapse.

The Shard is also one of the first hybrid buildings. The lower half of the outer structure is steel, but the upper residential part is concrete, which dampens jerky movements and vibration. Hit by 95mph winds last winter, the building

swayed less than 4cmconventional skyscrapers of similar height might have swayed ten times as much.

Elsewhere, white "intumescent" paint covers the steel and can expand 1,500 times when heated, preventing the metal from burning. But if there were a serious fire, half the building can be evacuated using heatand-smoke-proofed lifts, while the staircases are wide enough to allow two streams of people.

WHO'LL BE CALLING THE SHARD HOME?

Irvine Sellar and Renzo Piano conceived The Shard as a vertical town. Offices will fill the first 28 floors, the restaurants and bars on floors 31 to 33 will be as high as the London Eye and, above them, there'll be a 19-floor luxury hotel, followed by 12 floors of private flats. Sellar is guarded about how much they'll cost, though figures of £50m are being bandied about.

But you won't need quite so much money yourself to get a good view. The most famous buildings in the world—the Empire State, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa—are those in which the public can go to the top, and The Shard

will join their ranks. In one of two lifts, you'll reach floor 68 in a couple of minutes, then walk up one more floor to a threelevel viewing gallery. The structure then goes all the way to floor 95, with decorative cantilevered shards screening service floors, cranes and other equipment.

London Bridge Quarter is the name given to The Shard and four associated projects that will revive a sooty, run-down part of old London. A new 17-floor office block, bus concourse, food market and a station hall under a glass roof were all designed by Piano. Along with the nearby South Bank's theatres, concert hall, galleries and London Eye, the area could grow into one of Europe's liveliest and most important cultural areas. ■

BUDDING AUTHORS, TAKE A BOW!

This tale of espionage and intrigue was penned by Bernard Dominic Stricker. It's one of many 100-word stories that just missed out on the major prizes in our recent competition, but which we thought our readers would enjoy.

Unsuspected

The grandfather clock stood like a third person in the room. The two gentlemen pretended to enjoy the drinks and each other's company, but neither could stop glancing at the clock. At precisely 11 o'clock, the gentleman sipping brandy gave an involuntary smile. His men had just ambushed his friend's amateurs and were seizing the documents. At precisely 12 o'clock, the butler brought more drinks. As he filled their glasses, he couldn't help allowing himself a broad smile. Submitted by Bernard Dominic Stricker, Bristol

Bernard says: The story was inspired by films such as "Mission: Impossible" where the characters are continually being doublecrossed and you're never sure who's "the good guy". I hoped to leave the ending open. Perhaps the butler's attempt on the vault has been sabotaged by another person who doesn't feature in the story—if the butler wasn't just smiling at a private joke, that is... Bernard will receive a cheque for £70

Read a new 100-word story every day at readersdigest.co.uk/magazine

Damp proofing without the mess of replastering!

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It rots woodwork and carpets, peels wallpaper and causes fungus and mould growth on walls.

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in the external walls of your home, close to the ground.

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Holland's no-chemicals system is messfree, and as the work is completed from the outside, there is no need to replaster. It can be used on most types of wall (including stone) at ground level.

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Damp Prooftng

1 WORD STORY

Our 100-word story competition was such a hit when we launched it last year that we've decided to do it all over again.

So come on all you budding authors out there: this is your chance for publishing oglory—as long as ,o

oyou can write a 12 compelling story

oin just 100 words, t that is! st

• Send your stories—which should be original, unpublished and exactly 100 words long—to theeditor@ readersdigest.co.uk by January 31, 2012.

• There are three categories—one for adults, and two schools' categories: one for children aged 12-18, and one for 8 ' •

READER'S DIGEST 100-WORD STORY

children under 12.

■ In the adult category, the entry voted best by our panel of judges will each receive £1,000, and two runners-up will receive £100 in book tokens.

■ In each of the school categories, the prize for the winner is £500 of high-street vouchers of their choice, and £500 for their school. Mark each entry either "Adults", "Schools 12-18 category" or "Schools under-12 category". Winning entries will be published in a future issue.

■ To help get you started, read these 100-word stories by five top authors, written exclusively for Reader's Digest.

Rules

Please ensure that submissions are original, not previously published, and are exactly 100 words long. Don't forget to include your full name, address, email and daytime phone number with all correspondence. We may use entries in all print and electronic media. We cannot acknowledge or return your story. Do not send SAES. Contributions become world copyright of Vivat Direct Ltd (t/a Reader's Digest).

Entry is open only to residents of the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland. It is not open to employees of Vivat Direct Ltd (t/a Reader's Digest), its subsidiary companies and all other persons associated with this competition, their immediate families, and relatives living in an employee's household. The judges' decision is final.

Julian Barnes

In January they met.

By February he was beginning to doubt they were suited.

In March she became pregnant.

All April and May they discussed the matter.

In June she decided to have the baby.

In July he persuaded himself that he had always wanted a child.

Throughout August all was quiet.

In September he offered to give up his job as her career was more important to her than his was to him.

In October she accepted and he became a househusband.

By November she was beginning to doubt that they were suited.

In December the child was born.

■ Julian Barnes's memorable novel The Sense of an Ending is published by Jonathan Cape at £12.99

Cecelia Ahern

Adam was aware of how ,nervous he sounded, and of how his heart had lost its usual rhythm. "Susan." He swallowed. "I love you. I've loved you since the moment we met. I know you're getting married in two hours and I know it's bad timing." He smiled, sadly. "Understatement of the year. But I just had to tell you—I love you so much, and I always will."

His face was hopeful, sincere, showed love and heartbreak, all at the same time. Then he looked away from the mirror. One of these days he'd tell her. Not today.

■ Cecelia Ahern's new novel The Time of My Life will be published by Harper Collins on October 13 at £16.99

Anthony Horowitz

Gary Blake had sold secondhand cars all his life, some of them nice little motors, others...well, that was the game, wasn't it? And here he was, on his back in the operating theatre, in need of a heart transplant. Who'd have thought it? He would quit smoking. Drink less. Lay off the white powder. He promised himself.

The surgeon leaned over him. "Nice to see you again, Mr Blake."

When had they met before?

"I've got a perfect heart for you. Only one owner. Ticking over nicely. A real bargain..."

Gary felt the touch of the scalpel and screamed.

■ The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz will be published by Orion Books on November 1 at £18.99, and as an eBook at £9.99

Maeve Haran

He had planned his whole life on the back of an envelope. She didn't possess a pen let alone a lifeplan. She was a free spirit. She went with the flow. Love picked him like a tornado and swept him in her wake.

After ten years she demanded a divorce. She needed certainty in her life, the security of knowing her future. He had learned to live from day to day. It irritated the hell out of her. "We always kill the thing we love," she told him blithely as he got out the kitchen knife.

She hadn't meant herself.

■ Maeve Haran's latest novel The Painted Lady has just been published by Macmillan at £6.99

Many of last year's stories were so good, we decided to publish a new one online every day—read them at readers digest.co.uk/ magazine

Jonathan Coe

Some detectives charge a fixed fee. Findlay Onyx charged by the hour. Arriving at Dunstable Towers, he found that Lord Dunstable had been stabbed in the library.

Lady Dunstable had been shot through the heart on the croquet lawn. Agnes, the maid, was poisoned in the parlour. Gardener Stubbs had been bludgeoned in the hollyhocks with a blunt instrument. Meanwhile Hamilton, the butler, was sitting in the kitchen, smoking a reflective cheroot, his clothes bloodsoaked and a dagger, revolver, halfempty arsenic bottle and garden rake laid on the table before him.

"Now let's not jump to conclusions," said Findlay, warily. ■

■ Jonathan Coe's novel

The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim is published by Penguin at £8.99

Simon Pegg

...TELLING MY FIRST JOKE. I was still at primary school when I said to my mum, "My friend's dad's a dentist." "Does he practice?" she replied. "No, he doesn't—he's a real one."

Even now, I can vividly recall how I knew the joke would work better if I delivered it in a matter-of-fact, deadpan fashion. Not only that, but I remember how delighted I was when I realised the double meaning of "practice". A comedy god was born that day—and I was still in short trousers.

...MY DAD APPEARING ON OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS. Both my parents loved performing. Mum was a keen member of the local am-dram group and was always being described as a scene-stealer in the regional papers. As for Dad, he's been in bands as long as I can remember. One of his groups, Pendulum, was invited to perform on Opportunity Knocks, back in the days when the far-from-sincere Hughie Green was still presenting and producing the show. The night he was on, the

entire street crammed into our house to see the show and eat all the vol-au-vents in Gloucestershire. If all this wasn't thrilling enough, Pendulum scored highest on the clap-o-meter! The only downer was that, to reach the final, you had to poll the most postal votes, and Pendulum came a close second. The winner that week? Pam Ayres.

...THE

FIRST TIME I

REALISED

HOW

SMART

MOVIES COULD BE. I was 12 when I watched Steven Spielberg's ET and noticed that part of the soundtrack mimicked that of another Spielberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Even then, I thought that was really clever. I also liked the fact that most of the audience didn't notice—it was like a wonderful secret. That kind of flourish still gives me a thrill. When Edgar Wright, Jessica Hynes and I made our sitcom Spaced, we were sure to reward viewers with touches like that [for example, the first episode of the second series references The Matrix].

...WANTING TO BE A ROCK STAR.

I think it's every kid's first dream—either

Simon with his dad John and mum Gillian, after his christening at St John's church in Gloucester; and (left) as a cheeky four-year-old

• play football or form a band. When I was 16, I was in a group called God's Third Leg. How we didn't make it big, I'll never know. Personally, I blame it on a JFK-style conspiracy. Maybe Oliver Stone could make a film about it.

...FALLING IN LOVE WITH

HORROR MOVIES. I was a teenager when I became a fan of pictures like The Evil Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Like a lot of kids, I was drawn to the gore and suspense but, in the case of Dawn of the Dead, I was also taken with its intelligence. The film largely takes place in a shopping mall, and you can tell that the director, George A Romero, is commenting on consumerism. In 2005 I had a small part in one of George's zombie pictures, Land of the Dead. I don't know what was more remarkable, having the opportunity to work with my hero, or the fact that George was a fan of my horror movie Shaun of the Dead [made in 2004].

...BEING IN A COMEDY TROUPE

WITH DAVID WALLIAMS. I was studying drama at Bristol University with David Williams, as he was back then. Even in those days, you knew he had it in him to become a fine transvestite comedian with a decent sideline in Channel swimming. Our group was called David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus—this was just after Icke stopped presenting the snooker and started claiming to be the son of God.

A few of the guys in the troupe went on to great things—Myfanwy Moore's now a big figure at the BBC, Jason Bradbury

hosts The Gadget Show on Channel 5 and Dominik Diamond presented Gamesmaster and worked for Radio Five. As for David, he changed his name and met a little bald bloke called Matt.

... MOVING TO LONDON. Because I was born and raised in Gloucestershire, the capital seemed the most impossibly exciting place on the planet—and because I started acting when I was young, it seemed even more enticing. London was not only the home of the world's greatest theatres, but also the place where the Star Wars films were made.

When I eventually moved to the city, I set up home in a pokey little place in Cricklewood. It couldn't have been less remarkable but I don't think I've ever been happier. Here I was, living in London at last. And everything was amazing—even

I don't-mow w v exactly, but I've snagged quite a few blo <es over t le years...

Top left: Simon with his mum at his graduation; left: on his 18th birthday, complete with crimped hair; (above) with best buddy Nick Frost, rehearsing an episode of Spaced in 2001

the fact I had a surly Irish landlord who made it quite clear that bad things would happen to my person if I was ever late with the rent.

...MY EARLY DAYS AS A STAND-UP. It's a brutal way to make a living, stand-up comedy—it's just you and them, and if they don't like you, or your material isn't tight, ten minutes can feel like two hours.

I'm glad I did it, though. After stand-up, nothing else ever feels quite as frightening. I was able to crowbar some of my best stuff into Spaced, so I've a record of my work, which not every comedian has.

...MOVING IN WITH COMEDIAN AND SCREENWRITER NICK FROST. Nick's

my best friend—we were one another's best men. When we met, Nick was a waiter. He had a lovely life and absolutely no ambition to become an actor [he later became Simon's co-star in Spaced as well as films Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Paul]. When we moved in together we only had one bed between us, so we had to top-and-tail the way people do in the movies. You'd probably think we got sick of that after a couple of nights; in fact, we slept together in that fashion for the best part of a year!

... KISSING LOTS OF BOYS. I don't know why exactly, but I've snogged quite a few blokes over the years. When I was at school, me and my friend Kyle always seemed to be kissing. Then, years later, when Nick and I were hanging out in north London, if we met any male friends during a night out, we'd greet them with a full-on snog. The only excuse I can offer is that I've read somewhere that the Hells Angels like to do the same thing in order to freak people out. I'm happily married now—to a lady.

... MY FIRST TASTE OF MAINSTREAM SUCCESS. I had a supporting role in the mid-1990s ITV sitcom Faith in the Future, which won a British Comedy Award. The title role was played by Lynda Bellingham and, during her acceptance speech, ok

she said some lovely things about how I had a great career ahead of me. It was incredibly kind of Lynda, just as it was very funny when she reminded the sponsors, Cockburn's Port, of their old "Don't say 'cock', say 'Cockburn's' " campaign.

...THE FIRST TIME I CROSSED THE INTERNATIONAL DATE LINE. I was heading from Los Angeles to Sydney to promote Shaun of the Dead. When you cross the Date Line in that direction, you lose an entire day. As a science-fiction fan, I rather like the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, October 20, 2004, didn't exist.

...PALLING AROUND WITH TOM CRUISE. After I made Mission: Impossible Ill, journalists only seemed interested in asking two questions—number one, "What's Tom Cruise like?" and number two, "Did he try and convert you to Scientology?" The incredibly boring answers were that: one, he's absolutely lovely; and two, Scientology wasn't mentioned once over the course of the entire shoot. I've said it before, but pretty much everything you hear about people that isn't first hand is invariably untrue. I like Tom no end—he's a positive, energetic guy, and he rides a mean motorcycle.

...BECOMING

OBSESSED WITH WORKING OUT.

My part in Hot Fuzz was so physical that I had to lose a lot of weight. By the time we started shooting, I think I'd lost more than two stone. Then, to everyone's surprise, I kept on running and working out over the course of the shoot. By the time we wrapped, I was even combining foods and making sure that I only ate at certain times of the day. Things got so extreme that, when I began work

Simon and Spaced co-star Jessica Hynes read a fanzine article about their show

"Do you wanna play Scotty?" he burbled enthusiastically

on Run, Fatboy, Run, they had to kit me out with a prosthetic belly.

...BEATING

UP JAMES BOND.

Timothy Dalton plays my nemesis in Hot Fuzz, the no-good supermarket owner Mr Skinner. The film ends with a massive punch-up in a model village. When we were choreographing the fight, I almost had to pinch myself—here I was, putting up my dukes with 007, and I got to win! Even more excitingly, Timothy said that Hot Fuzz's climactic car chase was more thrilling than any of the stunts he'd filmed for The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill. If you watch the making-of feature on the Hot Fuzz DVD, you can see how

overjoyed I was when I heard that— compliments don't come any higher.

...WHERE I WAS WHEN J J ABRAMS OFFERED ME A PART IN THE 2009 STAR TREK FILM. I'd just got off a plane and the moment I turned my mobile back on, I got a call from J J. "Do you wanna play Scotty?" he burbled enthusiastically. Being relatively new to America, I thought this might have been some new sort of slang I had yet to encounter. Of course,

as a Trekkie, I didn't need asking twice when I worked out he meant the role of Montgomery Scott in his Star Trek remake.

...GETTING MY FIRST PHONE CALL FROM STEVEN SPIELBERG. "Hi, this is Steven Spielberg"-1 recognised all those words, but I'd never had anyone say them to me in that particular order. Once I stopped hyperventilating, we wound up having a really nice chat. He's a regular guy, Steven. Someone once said that the famous people we like the best are the ones who remind us of ourselves. Steven might be a visionary genius but, when you talk to him, he's just this lovely, gracious guy who's a pleasure to be around. ■

As told to Richard Luck

» Simon plays Inspector Thompson in Steven Spielberg's animated film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, out on October 26.

FANCY THAT! GETTING A HANDLE ON BLACK HOLES

A black hole is a region of space created by a collapsing star, forming a gravitational force so strong that nothing can escape, not even light. So how do you study something you can't see? And does it even exist anyway?

The answer to the second question is yes... in theory. The theory of general relativity, that is, developed by Albert Einstein, whose equations show that gravity has an effect on light. As for the first, most of our knowledge of black holes comes from observing their effects on other matter—gas or dust that orbits around the surface before being sucked in, forming what's known as an accretion disc. It's also thought that black holes are pretty common; there's probably one at the centre of our own galaxy, millions of times bigger than the sun. As for the sun itself, don't worry—we'll be waiting another five billion years for its collapse.

A GAME OF LIFE & DEATH

BY MARTIN GEISSLER,

Colonel Gaddafi crushed their club— literally. But thanks to the revolution, Benghazi is back in the beautiful game

The seafront promenade in Benghazi, Libya's second city, is a busy, vibrant place these days. Still high on revolutionary zeal, people come here to meet, pray, talk and relax: a community now free from the clutches of Muammar Gaddafi.

Vendors sell rebel tat from picnic tables. Hats, T-shirts, sweatbands. It feels more like the outside of a rock concert than the fringes of a revolution. But just a few yards away, photos of the dead and the missing are plastered across vast walls. Hundreds of faces, mostly of young men, stare down at the passers-by.

Among it all sits a small tent—unremarkable except for the fact that it's attracting a lot of interest. It looks like a rotary club stall at a village fete, but it's not. 0,

The Rebels' mocked-up picture of "FC Gaddafi", with Colonel Gaddafi's sons and henchmen going for glory.

Right: the Al-Ahly supporters' club tent in Benghazi

This is the fan headquarters of Al-Ahly Benghazi—Libya's "Rebel FC".

Inside, a group of supporters have hung pictures and banners charting the club's past. It's a curious mixture: part celebration, part shrine. It provides a perfect illustration of how sport (often football) can provide a release from life's misery, a safety valve for pent-up anger and a platform to hit back at an oppressor. From one banner, the mugshots of 32 supporters gaze down at the visitors. "They're the ones Gaddafi caught," my new friend Ahmed tells me. "He was tired of our dissent, so he rounded up some of the best-known fans and made them stand trial in Tripoli. You can see the jail terms printed beside their pictures. Some were sent down for just a year, others got ten-year sentences."

Three of the faces don't have numbers attached. "What happened to them?" I ask. "Well, it was decided they were the ringleaders," Ahmed tells me, "so they were hanged."

Al-Ahly's history is full of extraordinary tales. And one name, of course, weaves its way through every story. The Gaddafi

family hate Al-Ahly. The club became a problem, and it paid the price.

Colonel Gaddafi was no fan of spectator sport. He didn't like it because it encouraged the cult of celebrity He enjoyed being a celebrity a great deal, but he couldn't tolerate the thought that his people might develop other idols besides him. Such was his paranoia that he banned all spectator sports in Libya for many years. Only when his wayward son Saadi expressed a desire to become a footballer did he relax the law.

Saadi had an extraordinary career, to say the least. Using a combination of influence and menace, he won a place with Al-Ahly's namesake club, and great rivals, Al-Ahly Tripoli. It was a bad idea to cross Saadi—the prestige of his father's regime was on the line whenever he played. Before long, he was captain of the team, president of the Libyan FA and representing his country at international level.

He had a problem with ability, but that wasn't an issue. No one dared criticise him, and tackling him carried a stiff punishment. One former player, who is still too scared to be named, said, "When he

COLONEL GADDAFI'S RULES OF FOOTBALL

.01,' AAA A list of the fans of AI-Ahly Benghazi rounded up by Gaddafi and made to stand trial in Tripoli into the top of the net from ten yards out. We had to make that happen. He really was living .) the dream."

"Some

fans were sent down for a year; others got ten-year sentences. Three were hanged"

got the ball, everyone backed off. He had all the time to do what he wanted. It was ridiculous.

"People from Tripoli would call goalkeepers before matches, telling them how Saadi wanted to score. They'd say he'd dreamed about a fantastic goal where he came in from the left, then sent a shot

One player who crossed him learned a hard lesson. "He interd1/2, cepted one of Saadi's passes," a former teammate said, "then later he took the ball off him in a tackle. Saadi fell over. There was laughter in the crowd. It was a terrible moment." The player was visited by a group of security guards after the game. He was badly beaten and never played again.

Saadi, by contrast, moved to Italy, where he made a surreal attempt to buy himself a career in Serie A. Despite racking up just 25 minutes of playing time in four years, he managed to sign deals

REMEMBER AT ALL TIMES THAT IT IS ONLY THROUGH MY GENEROSITY THAT FOOTBALL CAN BE PLAYED IN LIBYA

• with three different clubs: Perugia, Udinese and Sampdoria. Make of that what you will.

By July 2000, fans of Al-Ahly Benghazi had had enough. In a game against a team from al Baydah (the home town of Saadi's mother), the referee ordered a penalty in the first minute of the second half. The supporters invaded the pitch, forcing the game to be abandoned. Later that evening they held a protest in town. During the demo, the local branch of the Libyan FA was burned to the ground.

In a dictatorship where even whispered dissent was intolerable, the demo was an outrage. That very night Gaddafi vowed to crush Al-Ably. It didn't take him long.

Within hours, the feared secret police were knocking on the doors of 50 prominent fans. They were rounded up and taken to Tripoli, more than 600 miles

Fifty years of history demolished in just two days. Club director Khalifa Ben Sriti (above) was put into solitary confinement: "I wanted to die"

away, to stand trial. Among them was Khalifa Ben Sriti, 50 years old, a club director and former player of some repute. "It came as a total shock," he says. "I wasn't even aware of the protests, far less involved in them."

Khalifa was locked up in Tripoli's notorious Abu Saleem jail. He spent the first month in solitary confinement in a six-foot-by-two-foot cell. He's a tall, dignified man. "It was the size of a coffin," he told me. "There was no window; a hole in the ceiling was my only source of light. My head was touching one wall, my feet pressed against the other. I was given two bottles: one to drink from; the other was my toilet. I wanted to die."

MARTIN GEISS LE R

After a month, Khalifa was transferred to another jail, where he was put in a cell with eight other men from Benghazi. After nine months and seven court appearances he was released. A case of mistaken identity, apparently. Most of his

he had to watch as it was torn down."

"There are only a few players who could score a goal of this quality. Maradona, Lineker... and, of course, the great Saadi Gaddafi..."

haa to say—or eise...

friends weren't so lucky-29 of them were jailed for up to ten years. Three others were hanged.

When Khalifa got back to Benghazi, his beloved club was gone. Gaddafi had sent in the bulldozers-50 years of history was demolished in a couple of days.

"It was a crime," Khalifa says. "This wasn't just a football team, it was a community club. We had basketball and handball courts all round the first team's training pitch. Five-a-side pitches, too. The people could use them all, then overnight they were gone."

As we walk round the rubble, a man in dungarees runs up to Khalifa, and the pair embrace warmly. They speak in Arabic for a while, the younger man delighted to see his old friend again.

"This is Henri," Khalifa says, "he was the groundsman here for years. He helped to build the place and then

Henri remembers the day clearly. "They came on a Friday." he says. "We were about to go to the mosque to pray when the door of our workshop was kicked in. We all recognised the man standing there—he was Salah Sharif, a former prison guard, and a wellknown and much-feared member of Gaddafi's spy network" (Sharif died in the early days of the Libyan revolution. He was found with his head blown off. Suicide, the rebels say, but execution, or payback, is as likely.)

"He told us we had to go out to watch. There were soldiers and armed police everywhere, completely encircling the complex. Then the bulldozers came. There were four of them. The first one smashed the big concrete logo that stood at the gates. Sharif was shrieking with delight. All around us the soldiers were whooping and firing their guns in the air. I wanted to cry."

Over the next two days the 20-acre site was reduced to rubble. The pitches, the grandstands, the dressing rooms, the accommodation block—nothing was left.

"On the second day, a motorcade came round the complex," Henri says. "The people in the cars looked terrifying; there were soldiers in the back of pick-up trucks. In the middle of it all was a Land Cruiser with blacked-out windows. We never saw inside, but we all knew it was Saadi Gaddafi." He'd come to see his father's bidding done.

4 For five years, Al-Ahly lay dormant. But just as suddenly as he'd crushed the club, Gaddafi allowed it to rise from the rubble. In trademark style, he made the announcement without warning. Apparently concerned at early signs of unrest in his country, he relaxed certain aspects of his strict grip on power. TV censorship, while still strict, was no longer suffocating—and Benghazi, the cradle of any Libyan dissent, was given its team back. That'll fix it, he must have thought.

But while the team was allowed back, the playing environment was as bizarre as ever. Abdel, a commentator on Libyan radio, has seen it all. A short, stout, angry character in his mid-thirties, Abdel shouts his way through life with great enthusiasm. "I had to do a ridiculous job," he tells me. "It was terrifying. Government agents would listen to all my

Football's coming home to Benghazi; fans will soon be back in their stadium—and they'll no longer have to worry about the secret police listening in to what they say

commentaries; they just wanted me to peddle propaganda.

"I'd have to mention Colonel Gaddafi every few minutes. 'This is a great game,' I'd say, `and please remember it is only through the generosity of our leader Colonel Gaddafi that we are allowed football. We must thank him.' It was ridiculous.

"And it got worse—I wasn't allowed to mention players' names, just their numbers. And whenever anything good happened, I'd have to say it reminded me of the talents of Saadi Gaddafi. 'Number seven scored a great goal,' I'd say. 'There are only a few players who could score a goal of this quality—Maradona, Lineker, Gascoigne—and, of course, the great

Saadi Gaddafi.' I had to give the Gaddafis—father and son-90 per cent of my attention. I wouldn't mind, but Saadi was a useless player. Completely useless!"

But everything has changed in this Arab Spring and now Abdel—like all fans of Libyan football—is looking forward to a new lease of life. "The revolution meant our football season was scrapped," he tells me, "but now we've kicked Gaddafi out, we'll start playing again. The atmosphere will be so wonderful."

It's easy to believe him. The whole city of Benghazi has an air of emancipation. This was the birthplace of the revolution, the first city to rise up and reclaim its streets. The people smile, they're courteous and charming, they're all still in the first flush of love with their newfound liberty.

"We're breathing different air now," Ahmed says, "it's deep within our lungs. Just wait until we get back into the stadium and release it—we'll be able to free our souls for the first time ever. No more secret police listening to what we say. No more surveillance cameras filming faces in the crowd. We'll be free."

He thinks for a second, the beginnings of a frown forming on his forehead. I ask him what's up. "The stadium— it's new It was built with money from Venezuela, so they called it the Hugo Chavez stadium..." Then a broad smile breaks out and his eyes light up. "But we'll soon change that," he says, slapping my thigh.

His laughter is infectious, as is his enthusiasm. Better times lie ahead for him, and Al-Ahly Benghazi, no doubt. Libya's Rebel FC are on the march again. ■

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WALKING IN HEAVENLY COMFORT

Forget the Manets, Monets or Picassos for a moment— our experts have chosen a range of paintings by British artists, just waiting to be discovered in galleries dotted all over the country. And, for the most part, they can be viewed for free

SIR HENRY RAEBURN

The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch, 1795

You'd presume a picture of a Scots member of the cloth, painted in the latter part of the 18th century, would be a dour and austere affair. So what could be more surprising than this balletic pose from a dapper reverend dancing on ice with a wintry sky in the background?

Raeburn was quite a famous portraitist, but his paintings don't usually have this sense of sheer fun—apparently, the Rev was something of a local Christopher Dean, belonging to a prestigious skating club. Charming, quirky and one of the most popular paintings in the UK. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh ►

THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH

The Honourable Mrs Graham,1775

The pride of the National Gallery of Scotland, and no wonder. Mary Graham was just 18, ravishingly beautiful and recently married to a wealthy Scottish landowner a kind of 18th-century WAG, if you will. Gainsborough, a master portrait painter, was very taken with her. He used the image to show off his dazzling technical skills (look closely at the feathers) and relaunch his career. It worked. Her fancy outfit gestures towards Van Dyck, who was one of the painter's heroes.

Mrs Graham died aged 35 of consumption, as did most of her family; her griefstricken husband put the painting into storage. Rediscovered many years later by a descendant, it was given to the National Gallery in Edinburgh on condition it should never leave Scotland. And it never has. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

JOHN

SELL COTMAN

A Ploughed Field, c1808

One of the greatest achievements in British art is our contribution to watercolours, says Noel Annesley from Christie's. Turner, naturally, is at the top of the heap; but another gifted yet little-known painter was Cotman, the son of a silk merchant. One of the Norwich school, Cotman struggled financially throughout his life, and after his death in 1842 his entire collection of works was sold for

the pathetically small sum of £525. But he produced magical watercolours, such as this landscape, a small but perfect painting of an unknown location, with a composition that's cleverly organised in geometric blocks.

Leeds Art Gallery

J M W TURNER

The Blue Rigi,1842

Generally regarded as one of Turner's best paintings, and certainly one of the best watercolours ever produced. Anyone who's ever tried picking up a brush will stand slack-jawed at Turner's technical ability here. This landscape shows Lake Lucerne in Switzerland shimmering in the foreground and the Blue Rigi of the title looming behind just as the sun is rising.

What's so great about Turner? He was a Londoner who spoke with a cockney accent all his life, but he was well-read and also wrote poetry. His genius, says art historian Christopher Lloyd, was that he combined historical subjects with a sense of the utterly sublime in nature.

Tate Britain, London

SAMUEL PALMER

Self-Portrait, 1826

This painting has such a modern quality, it could almost be of a member of an indie band.

But it was actually painted nearly 200 years ago by the visionary artist Palmer, a disciple of William Blake. Palmer's pen-and-ink landscapes from the so-called Shoreham Period (named after a town near Sevenoaks in Kent, where he lived for a decade) are small, poetic portrayals of a British idyll. Sadly he grew old and dull, but most of the original works from his early life remain. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

SIR STANLEY SPENCER

Southwold, 1937

SOUTHWOLD BY SIR STANLEY SPENCER, ABERDEEN ART GALLERY AND MUSEUMS COLLECTIONS It couldn't be a more British subject —a breezy day at the seaside. But, says Christopher Lloyd, while most painters in Southwold would look out to sea, what Spencer does

is more mundane and typical—he focuses on the shingle and paints an inventory of beach equipment (deckchairs, swimming towels and bathing costumes).

Then again, Spencer was always looking for the luminous in the ordinary. He was a true

eccentric (he carried his easel in a battered pram around his home town of Cookham, Berkshire), perhaps best known for his biblical scenes. Southwold was the scene of happy times with his first wife Hilda. Aberdeen Art Gallery

LUCIAN

FREUD

Small Naked Portrait, 1973-4

The figurative artist Lucian Freud, z who died in July, painted sitters

as diverse as Kate Moss, the

Queen (the result was described

as "psychologically penetrating",

a polite way of saying "hideous"),

and a job centre worker. The resulting life-size painting of the latter, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, set a record price at auction in 2008—over E17mfor a work by a living artist. Grandson of Sigmund and brother of the late Clement, Freud was obsessively private, but fascinating to the tabloids, because of a tangled personal life. He usually painted friends and lovers, and this tiny portrait of an anonymous girl on a bed is typical of his unflinching style. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

GEORGE STUBBS

Cheetah with Two Indian Attendants and a Stag,1764-5

Stubbs was the son of a Liverpudlian

.Tc leather worker and a technically brilliant c, 23 "I; painter. Many associate him with horses, but this lesser-known work has a

curious story. The cheetah depicted was

presented by the governor of Madras to George III, who in turn gave it to the Duke of Cumberland for his menagerie at Windsor. On June 30,1764, the duke staged an experiment by putting the cheetah into an enclosure with a stag —to see how cheetahs killed their prey.

Commissioned by the governor, the painting stands as an odd mixture of fact (you can feel the apprehension oozing from the stag) and fantasy (the background doesn't look much like Windsor). The outcome? The stag tossed the cheetah into the air. Hurrah! Manchester Art Gallery

JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery,1764-6

An orrery was an instrument for demonstrating astronomical events such as eclipses. (Wright was fascinated by science and the advanced thinking of the day.) In this painting, he was demonstrating the art of the Enlightenment—the scientific and philosophical ideas that brought about the industrial revolution. Known for his extraordinary treatment of light, Wright, as typically in his work, here illuminates the scene from a single source. The light is also symbolic, representing knowledge and the pushing back of ignorance—hence the shelf of books (just out of frame) and the shining glow on the children's faces.

Derby Museum and Art Gallery

RICHARD HAMILTON

Swingeing London '67, 1967-8

A fabulous example of British pop art tucked away in a smaller gallery. Hamilton was one of Britain's best-known pop artists, and this depicts an iconic Sixties moment: Mick Jagger and the art dealer Robert Fraser in a police van, after being arrested during a drugs bust.

The title is a pun on the "swinging" London of the Sixties and the "swingeing" sentences that were given (the judge declared, "There are times when a swingeing sentence can act as a deterrent"). Jagger was fined, but Fraser was jailed for four months. Hamilton was outraged and piled this fury into painting. So an, ahem, arresting image, but also a searing social comment. ■

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

With thanks to: Christopher Lloyd, author of In Search of a Masterpiece (Thames & Hudson); Sarah Philp, head of programmes at The Art Fund; Noel Annesley, honorary chairman, Christie's International UK Ltd, London, part of the advisory panel to the National Heritage Memorial Fund; Christopher Baker, deputy director and curator at the National Gallery of Scotland; Sandy Nairn, director, National Portrait Gallery; Mike Edwards, painter; and Mary Jane Ansell, painter.

Have we missed out your favourite British painting? Then let us know. Send an email to theeditorctreaders digest.co.uk. There are more paintings—and other choice pickings from our Best of British series—at readers digest.co.uk/ magazine, and also on Facebook at facebook.com/ readersdigestuk.

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ARTISTS: SIR STANLEY SPENCER © GETTY IMAGES. LUCIEN FREUD C STEPHAN AGOSTINI/ AFP/GETTY IMAGES. RICHARD HAMILTON © STEN ROSENLUND/ REX FEATURES

NEXT MONTH: CAKES

In the third part of Drugged-Up Britain, our campaign to cut unnecessary prescriptions, Jerome Burne looks at the powerful effect of placebos. Could they help get us off drugs?

Healing power Nothing

There's a remarkable electrochemical device that can instantly transfuse powerful healing abilities into almost any household object. It's free, and all you have to do is expose, say, a pin or a tablet or a piece of clothing to this machine and it will at once imbue it with the power to reduce pain, bring down inflammation and cheer up people who are depressed. I could be talking about some scam being promoted on the web, but this doesn't involve magic or conspiracy theories around cures they don't want you to know about. You've all been helped by this device, and some of you may even have used it on other people. It's called the placebo: the ability of your mind—an electrochemical ►

4 device—to persuade your body that water/a stick/chalk is going to make you better. By implication, it's something that's not real, not worth having, and often a way of fleecing the gullible. But a few researchers at top medical centres in Europe and the US are now asking whether rejecting the placebo in this way and pushing it out to the medical fringes isn't an appalling waste. After all, it makes people feel better, it's free and, usually, harmless. What's not to like, apart from not being profitable?

It's an idea that's being taken more seriously—medical journal The Lancet recently devoted a major article to it— because scientists have been making some remarkable discoveries. In fact, the line between a drug and a placebo is looking increasingly blurred.

Professor Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin is one of the pioneers of the new view of the placebo. He's been shaking up conventional thinking by showing that, without the placebo effect, some widely used drugs don't work at all. He discovered this by doing something simple: he didn't tell patients they were getting the drug.

His experiment involved two groups of hospital patients who were anxious about a forthcoming operation. Each of them had a catheter inserted into their arm and were told it would be used to deliver an anti-anxiety drug on a regular schedule. But only one of the groups was visited by a doctor at the time the drug was given. He would bustle in, ask how they were, do a few basic checks on temperature, and so on, then fiddle with the line into the catheter, saying something like: "You should be feeling a lot better in a moment." Those in the other group got the usual hospital care, but no visit when the drug was pumped in.

The remarkable discovery was that only those who saw the doctor got any benefit from the drug. The others reported no benefit at all. When the experiment was done with a powerful painkiller such as morphine, those not visited by

WHAT IS THE PLACEBO EFFECT?

It's a phenomenon whereby an inert substance believed by a patient to be a drug has effects similar to the actual drug, resulting in a patient's medical improvement. It's been called the "ghost in the house of biochemical medicine"—and, unsurprisingly, pharmaceutical companies go to enormous lengths to exorcise it. All drugs must show they are better than a placebo before they can get a licence. This means there's a campaign to discredit all forms of non-drug medicine by dismissing any reported benefits as simply due to the placebo effect.

A few researchers are now asking if pushing the placebo out to the medical fringes isn't an appalling waste

the doctor needed almost double the dose to get the usual effect. "The conventional idea is that a real drug is better than a placebo," says Benedetti. "But here the drug didn't work without the help of a placebo."

Research by Professor Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at Hull University, also suggests there's a serious flaw in the way drugs are normally tested. The aim of a clinical trial is to prevent people knowing if they're getting the drug, so any effect has to be due to the chemical effect. But Kirsch found that over 70 per cent of patients in trials for SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac or Seroxat were able to work out if they were getting a drug or not.

"The way to tell is by the side effects," he explains. "If you get a dry mouth and feel a bit nauseous after taking your pill, there's a good chance you've got the real thing." One worrying implication is that drugs with stronger side effects are likely to show up as more effective in trials.

A way round this would be to test drugs against an "active placebo"—a compound that produces similar effects to the drug, but doesn't have any effect on the problem the drug is targeting. It's not something that drug companies are very interested in doing, for obvious reasons, but a few such trials have been done. When Kirsch analysed them, he found that there was no difference between the drug and the placebo, as he explains in his book The Emperor's New Drugs (£11.99). The NHS currently spends £300m on SSRI prescriptions a year, and many more people are using them in the wake of the recession. How many other drugs are licensed on the basis of their side effects? No one knows.

What this shows is that the notion of any clear division between proper medicine that has no truck with the placebo, and pretend complementary-type medicine that depends on it, is nonsense. Brain-scan studies have shown that when placebo effects are at work, they have just as clear an effect on the brain as a drug does. So if the placebo effect is a vital part of all forms of treatment, why not O'

How many drugs are licensed on the basis of their side effects? No one knows

A PLACEBO IN ACTION

In one study, subjects were either told truthfully they were getting a painkiller or untruthfully that they weren't, before having something hot pressed against their leg. This prior information had a big effect.

Those in the group who thought they weren't getting any pain relief reported feeling about as much pain as if they really hadn't had any painkiller—a simple instruction could wipe out the benefit of a strong drug. The other group reported much more benefit than was normal in subjects who didn't know if they were getting a drug or a placebo, as happens in regular trials.

find out about it and make use of its power? That's just what Professor Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical School in Boston has been investigating. He's already found that there isn't just one placebo effect—there are many, depending on the situation. For instance, there's your belief as a patient ("I'm about to get a drug that will help"), and there are your thoughts about your doctor ("He/she seems really nice").

A recent study found that diabetes patients treated by doctors rated high on empathy had better blood-sugar control and lower cholesterol than patients on the same drugs treated by doctors who were seen as more distant. How much the doctor believes in the treatment—a phenomenon called placebo-by-proxy—can have a big effect, too.

Kaptchuk found that you can boost the placebo element of a treatment by combining these different sorts of placebo response. "We treated patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) with either just sham acupuncture (a toothpick) or sham plus lots of emotional warmth and care from the doctor," he says. A third group was left on a waiting list as a control. "We found that those getting just the sham treatment reported a 40 per cent reduction in symptoms compared with those on the waiting list, but those with the boosted placebo-plus had a 60 per cent improvement. That's the level of benefit you get with the best drug."

The truth is that we're social creatures who respond emotionally to the world around us all the time. Rejecting the placebo means ignoring that side of ourselves that we value most. The same emotional responses that power the placebo come into play when we care for our children, when we make friends, or when we decide to trust someone.

Clinics based on the idea of getting the most out of our natural placebo response would be a path to a more generous, patient-centred sort of medicine. Could this be one of the ways out of Drugged-Up Britain? ■

HOW SHOULD PLACEBOS BE USED?

The big objection to using placebos deliberately has always been that it would involve lying to patients. No one's going to respond to a dummy pill if they know it's fake, right?

But Kaptchuk discovered that even when he told IBS patients that their pills were placebos —in a bottle marked "Placebo"—they still reported feeling nearly twice as much benefit as those who got nothing.

This shows that pretending humans are just biochemical machines responding to chemical inputs is to miss a huge part of what goes on, not just in healing but also in our lives.

We want to hear about your experiences of Drugged-Up Britain. Please email us at readersletters@readersdigest.co.uk

Next month: How some pioneering doctors are experimenting to get the most out of placebos

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Master of miscellany:Bob Thorne displays some of the obscure objects that have helped make films such as The King's Speech (right) feel so authentic

A Life Less Ordinary ScraiiKing

A fascination for bric-a-brac has filled Bob Thorne's Hertfordshire semi to the rafters. It's also made him a serious film-industry player

By Vincent Graff PHOTOGRAPHED BY PHIL STARLING

YOU'RE A FILMMAKER AND YOU'RE ABOUT

to start shooting a movie that—not that you know it yet—will dazzle audiences across the globe, scoop four Oscars and earn almost £250m. You have the stars, the story, the script. You even have the name of the film: The King's Speech. But you're missing some crucial ingredients for the opening seconds.

Picture the scene: Colin Firth, as the future George VI, is trying (and failing) to deliver a speech at Wembley Stadium, much to the embarrassment of the crowd, the prince himself and the team of BBC radio technicians who are beaming his stammering performance across the world. Yet if the film's going to evoke the 1920s, every detail needs to be authentic, and those technicians will need genuine vintage

• headphones and lots of old-fashioned knobs and dials to twiddle. So where are you supposed to find those?

Enter a bloke who used to be the manager of the Watford branch of Dixons. Bob Thorne, 55, has transformed his modest three-bedroom semi in Hemel Hempstead into a treasure trove from which he runs Bob's Bits, an extraordinary one-man cottage industry that rents or sells "set dressings" to producers and has played a significant role in some of the biggest films and TV programmes of the last 20 years.

In his living room, conservatory, bedrooms, attic and five nearby lock-up garages, Bob has hoarded all manner of items that a film director might need to make his production look convincingly period, or that could double as pieces of sci-fi equipment—including 1980s mobile phones, 100-year-old light bulbs, thousands of tiny rivets, gauges and buttons, and the sort of antique headphones that played such a small-but-important role in The King's Speech.

BOB

BEGAN HIS WORKING LIFE IN

Dixons in 1973. He'd wanted to work in TV and approached the BBC for a job, but was told to get some "photographic experience". His careers master suggested he work in a camera shop.

But Bob didn't give up on the idea of working in TV or the movies, so he made amateur films with a friend before eventually getting part-time work in the industry, then becoming a special-effects technician on early 1990s Channel 4 game show The Crystal Maze. Part of

his job was to design the "futuristic zone", and he got many of the metal components he needed from a scrap dealer who specialised in aircraft parts. Soon, Bob began buying pieces for himself. "I think I knew in the back of my mind that it might be a nice sideline one day," he recalls, "and, anyway, I loved collecting all that stuff."

It was a clever move. A little while later he was asked—via a freelance technician he'd met through work—to provide some components that could double as robot parts in the 1997 film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. It soon became clear that his hobby could become a serious money-spinner when the makers of 1999's Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace asked for numerous metal items that could be used to do everything from creating guns for the Naboo Royal

A "blaster" from Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace (seen in action above)

Bob in his loft.

panels used in this summer's

First Class can be seen top left

Submarine

X-Men:

-4 Palace guards to serving as controls in the pod racers.

"They wanted so much stuff," says Bob. "I had to start looking in the Yellow Pages." He eventually found, among other things, some old Formula One car parts, vintage brass buttons and stainless-steel medical instruments that met the producers' requirements. "But I'd now realised that there weren't many people doing what I was doing—that there must be a business there."

He threw himself full-time into building up his collection, his reputation grew through word of mouth in the film and TV industry, and soon production staff were coming to his house once or twice a week to get some set adornment they couldn't find elsewhere. He's since supplied parts for more than 50 films, TV programmes and adverts, including two James Bond movies (The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day), three Star Wars films, Charlie and the Chocolate

BOB'S BEST BITS

The World Is Not Enough

Back in 1999, Bob tried to kill Pierce Brosnan's James Bond by supplying the bits for three nuclear bombs. The casings were ribbed aluminium metal boxes—originally used in the lighting industry to house transformers.

Factory and BBC1's Doctor Who—almost the entire central console in the Tardis is made from his "bits".

He's also worked on Ridley Scott's new sci-fi thriller Prometheus—due out next year—and, when the set designers of this summer's blockbuster X-Men: First Class wanted to build the interior of a submarine, Bob gave them some 1970s aircraft panels that, with a bit of tweaking, were just the job.

WHERE DOES BOB GET HIS STOCK?

When we meet, he's just returned from an auction of unwanted government items—"mostly Ministry of Defence"— in the Midlands. "I bid for 20 lots and I won eight," he says. His hoard of peculiar bits of metal and other items includes 200 rubber air hoses (possibly part of some breathing equipment used by the RAF) that he bought for £130.

Auctions account for about a quarter of his purchases. The rest come from

The World Is Not Enough, featuring "a lorry load' of Bob's objects

Upstairs, Downstairs

Last year's BBC1 remake of the period drama featured an oven

made out of MDF, but decorated with period knobs supplied by Bob. They originally came

from air-trafficcontrol equipment. Bob also supplied a mahogany telephone and 1920s Bakelite-andbrass light switches, purchased from car-boot sales.

Captain America: the First Avenger Bob supplied parts for a robotic arm in this summer's 1940s superhero

Doctor Who operates the Tardis console— with a little help from Bob's collection!

scrap dealers, eBay and buying up surplus stock from film companies at the end of shoots. Then there are calls out of the blue, such as when companies go into liquidation and want to offload stock.

"Plus, I used to go to a lot of car-boot sales," Bob smiles. "Though I don't get to quite as many now

Aluminium device used in Captain America: the First Avenger_ f movie, along with an aluminium candle holder that cost £4, but is the

centrepiece of a Nazi lab.

Prometheus

Next year's Ridley Scott space film needed (not unreasonably) a spaceship. Bob helped make the interior believably shiny and hightech with dozens

At 55, those early Sunday mornings are getting a lot more difficult. "I did well with knobs and dials on The King's Speech," he adds. "The dials were these lovely Bakelite things I took off some old voltmeters, many of which I'd picked up from a school in Herefordshire. The school had been there since about 1920 and the owners had decided to refurbish some old science labs. So they had a load of amazing stuff they wanted to get rid of—wonderful old mahogany equipment, loads of bunsen burners, test tubes, microscopes...they even sold me a skeleton."

•Walking through Bob's house, which o.

of stainless-steel handles from medical drills that are fixed to walls and consoles.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The detective film—starring Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law—hits our cinema screens in December. Watch out for a 1910 Bakelite-and-steel microphone (above). Bob picked it up on eBay for £40.

41 the divorcee shares with his 19-yearold son Jason, is a strange experience (in case you're wondering, Bob stresses that his collecting was nothing to do with his marriage break-up). In the living room, there's a huge metal panel leaning against the front of the sofa—just back from the X-Men shoot—while behind the sofa is a red metal box that's due to be picked up today. It's about the size of my hand with a big switch in the middle, and Bob reckons it's some sort of emergency "stop" button for military equipment.

"I think it's being used in a TV drama, something to do with football. They want to fix it onto the wall at the Arsenal football ground, so that it can look like someone's switching on the floodlights."

There's scarcely room to walk in Bob's conservatory—filing cabinets take up most of the space, with labels such as "triangular components", "cones and pyramids", "period brass" and "optical aircraft components". There are dozens more all over the house.

THEN THERE'S THE BIGGER STUFF—

the radios, the microscopes, the (empty!) nitrogen canisters—that fill his utility room, loft and garages. In his wardrobe, above his work shirts, there are robots, a candelabra and a skeleton head. When he offers me a cup of tea, he has to move a pile of nuts and washers and a lovely mahogany meter out of the way. Bob's not sure what it is, though it has a small

panel that boasts: "Precise heading test set, made in England by Sperry Gyroscope Company Limited". It'd look good in some scientist's lab on the TV.

So how many bits does Bob own? "There could easily be a million. Some of my drawers have got 10,000 pieces in them."

Sometimes he spends a lot of money —an antique microscope might cost him £350, for example—but usually it's just a few pounds. "The cheapest thing I ever bought was also the best value. I saw a 1950s-style eight-foot-high rocket on eBay. I got it for 99p, then sold it for £500 to a production company making a beer ad. A week after filming, they gave it back for free." Film companies often return items, he says, "because that keeps them in circulation, and they know where to come if they want them again".

Bob doesn't want to go into detail about how much he earns from his work, though he says a big film can very occasionally bring in up to £20,000 and a typical job is likely to be around £2,000. But it's clear that money isn't Bob's main motivation. "I get a kick out of this," he says. "A kick out of finding new stuff."

"It's such a thrill when I turn on the telly or go to a movie and see someone flick one of my switches," he continues. "When Doctor Who twiddles a dial in the Tardis that I've put there, it's brilliant. Especially because I know I bought it at a car-boot sale." ■

WE ASSUME THEY'RE REFERRING TO CARS...

A sign outside our local garage: "Leave our garage tyred and exhausted."

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THE MAVERICK

"WHO WANTS FACETO-FACE CONTACT AT WORK ANYWAY?"

Email, phone, social media—it all means that personal contact mit siot, in the office is in MI A decline. But, says Christopher Middleton, that je such a bad thing

"Nice to put a face to a name." It's a phrase that you frequently hear, but which—in the work environment, anyway—is at least a decade past its sell-by date.

All right, so it might be mildly satisfying to find out what a business associate or client looks like, when you've only previously spoken to them on the phone or corresponded using the written word. Nice, yes, in the same way that it's nice getting a clue right in a crossword. But essential? Not any more.

In fact, the decline of face-to-face contact in the working world is not something to be lamented, as many do, but to be actively celebrated.

For a start, not meeting removes all manner of possible discrimination on grounds of age, gender, weight or even clothes sense. Operate mainly by phone or email, rather than in person, and you get judged on the value of your work, not on the firmness of your handshake, the colour of your shirt or any of the 101 other visual criteria by which we make assumptions about people. Be honest—if you were the boss of a company choosing between two suppliers, would o-

41 you opt for the one with the sharp suit and the state-of-the-art iPad, or the plump one with dandruff who offered a better deal, but whose hands shook nervously when rummaging through their paperwork?

Take "Sid", for example, a retired London printing-firm owner I know, who people used to

Where email triumphs is that both sides have time to think, rather than respond on the spur of the moment

tricky call—it gives you an extra degree of confidence, as if you're towering over the person you're talking to. When he or she snaps back "I'm busy," you somehow find the jauntiness to suggest that this may be because they're having to chase up lots of unreliable sprocket suppliers, rather than using a 100 per cent reliable person, mock (and not give work to) because of his rather obvious toupee. Yes, he did sport a bright-orange wig (and grey sideburns)—but, whereas other companies used to employ smooth-talking salesmen who had their own hair but little knowledge of the business, Sid was always on top of the job, ready to answer phone calls, and was cheaper than everyone else. If only you gave him the chance.

Then there's that awful old-pals pantomime, whereby, in order to keep getting work, you're required to take clients out to lunch and pretend to be their friend. It can be much more effective simply to speak to them by phone. You can still have a friendly conversation and create an important personal link, but it's a lot less time-consuming. And if they're a bit rude, opinionated or offhand, it's easier to rise above it if they're not sitting in front of you. One of the best tips my careers master gave me was to stand up when you're making a

such as yourself.

But perhaps the most valuable contribution that remote working has made to business life—and humankind in general—is in reducing the number of meetings that people have to attend. Yes, we now have to endure those awful conference calls, in which you get a perpetual transatlantic-style wobblecum-delay whenever anyone speaks. But the good thing is that everyone wants to get them over as quickly as possible, rather than drone on like they do in face-to-face meetings.

Not having to travel for meetings has huge implications for the planet, too. You can send your business plan from one part of the world to the other at the touch of a button, without having to burn half a forest's worth of fossil fuel to get there yourself.

Witness also the savings remote working makes on firms' hotel bills and train fares, or when people work from home, rather than in large, hard-to-heat

corporate castles. Employers can use the money to help weather the downturn and ensure everyone keeps their job. Indeed, according to the CBI, the number of firms offering these kinds of flexible or teleworking opportunities has risen from 11 per cent in 2004 to 66 per cent today.

Join t faceboo diges read read

Does e or email face time?

he debate at k.com/readers tuk or email ersletters a ersdigest. co.uk :non Frump

The benefits of working by email cannot be overestimated. When you're involved in negotiations over fees, say—be it face to face or, to some extent, on the phone—one side will often feel forced into a corner. Where email triumphs, though, is that both sides have time to sit back and think about an offer, rather than needing to respond on the spur of the moment, possibly rashly.

And what about when your line manager walks over and, instead of asking politely if you can have another look at your carefully crafted 60-page report, dismissively throws it onto your desk and barks some criticism or order? It's an extremely strong-minded person

who doesn't just snap back in response and come out with sentences that were better not said, but will never be forgotten. In front of the whole office.

But when this annoying request comes by email, yes, you may still curse (under your breath, if at work; out loud, if at home), but you also have time to compile a reasoned explanation of why you disagree with your boss—or, failing that, respond positively to his or her suggested corrections.

Of course, there are occasions when face-to-face communication is still useful—an ideas brainstorming, perhaps, or when someone is simply better at expressing themselves in person than by other means. But if remote workers can improve their firm's cash flow, spend less time on the train and in meetings, and enhance their career (fewer clashes with bosses/colleagues), then maybe the secret of success today is to keep as low a profile as possible. ■

WHO'S DOING WHAT AROUND THE GLOBE: DEM BONES

Ever come across those musical gadgets that turn wood or glass surfaces into speakers? Belgian designer Judicael Cornu has now gone one better with the Bone Conduction Headphones, which use vibration technology sometimes found in hearing aids to transmit sound through the bones of your skull to your inner ear. There's also a bracelet that pumps music through your forearm, and a ring you can press up against your jaw. All rather eccentric, but much better for your hearing than earbuds.

HOW TO... BY LINDA GRAY

1

,

001 THINGS

Welcome to the pages that help make life simpler, easier and— we hope—more fun!

How to BOUN1/4_,: BACK

Resilience makes the difference between success and failure, and happiness and depression, say psychologists—and, until recently, most believed it was a trait you were born with or without. But work with survivors of traumatic events shows that's not so. "Resilience isn't all or nothing. No matter how resilient you are today, you can become more resilient tomorrow," says American psychologist Karen Reivich, co-author of The Resilience Factor, who's identified ways to increase it.

Resilience has nothing to do with being stoical, so forget the stiff upper lip. Feeling angry or sad when things go belly up is only natural—the difference is that resilient

people don't get stuck in an emotion. "They might feel scared, but their feelings don't prevent them from coping," explains Reivich.

Cautious optimism (not the blind hope that everything will be fine) is key, because it gives you confidence to take on new challenges.

Flexible thinking is also essential: "Resilient people always have a Plan B," says Reivich. And because they score high on empathy and are quick to help others, they have a support network of people to turn to when bad luck strikes. Self-aware, resourceful, hopeful and caring? It's more appealing than back-stabbing and greedy as a survival mechanism in tough times. What's more, it works.

How to ENJOY MATHS _

Problem 1:Take two empty jugs, one holding seven pints and the other 12, plus water on tap. How do you measure out exactly one pint? Unless you have a flair for maths, the puzzle sticks in your brain as maddeningly as an earworm. After metaphorically sloshing the contents of one jug into another for ten minutes, I rang maths wizard Johnny Ball—who broadcast the riddle—for the answer (see below) and some advice on making maths fun. He recommends:

• Making it easy. Why waste time working out percentages when a calculator does it in seconds?

"We're told numeracy is essential, but it isn't," he says.

• Seeing maths everywhere. The geometric "golden ratio" is a building block of nature, music and art, and Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (above) in a

square and a circle isn't just a great drawing. "It shows that height equals the distance between your outstretched arms—and it's based on the calculations of a Roman architect."

• Playing games.

"Maths is puzzling things out, so puzzles enlighten us," says Ball. His new book Ball of Confusion, published by Icon Books, contains 180 of them.

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MyLast Will

How to SO " k OUT A WILL

An elderly relative living alone dies, naming you as an executor. What do you do? Two-thirds of people employ a solicitor, but it's not the only choice. If the estate is straightforward, you can sort it out yourself—it costs just £105, compared with up to 3.5% of the estate if a bank or law firm does it.

• Executors are responsible for totting up all the money, paying debts and distributing legacies, so you need a Grant of Representation (probate). Download form PA1 from the Ministry of Justice website, plus one for inheritance tax (it's only payable on estates worth more than £325,000, but you'll need to fill it in before probate is granted).

• Send the forms with the will, a copy of the death certificate and the fee (waived if the estate is under £5,000) to your nearest Probate Registry. It's worth ordering extra sealed copies of the Grant for £1 each, as the banks may demand one before releasing funds.

• In around ten days you'll be called for a short interview where you're asked to swear that the information you've given is true. If everything is OK, you'll receive the grant giving you access to the estate within two weeks.

How to RESEARCH YOUR HEALTH ONLINE

Three out of four of us scour the Internet for health information, according to a Bupa poll last year, but only one in four checks who's giving the advice. "Googling symptoms can lead to 'cyberchondria'—believing they're life-threatening—or complacency, where you conclude they're trivial," says Dr Max Pemberton, RD health expert (see page 112) and author of The Doctor Will See You Now (02.99). So how do you find a credible site?

First, click on "About us". Is the site run by the NHS, a government department, a national charity or a university you've heard of? Is there an advisory board of experts? Information should be up to date and based on cited research. Any ads should be clearly identified, and check if there's a sponsor or online shop. This doesn't mean the site's not trustworthy, but it does mean there's a financial motive. If that bothers you, try: NHS Choices Includes an A-Z of health conditions and rates service providers such as hospitals (with mortality rates), so you can search for those that specialise in your condition (nhs.uk).

Cochrane Review Assesses research to find the best evidence-based healthcare. Reports include a succinct, plain-English version (cochrane.org/reviews).

National Institutes of Health

The US government's guide, so policy differs from the UK, but good for an overview (nih.gov).

How to PICK A FILM FOR KIDS

It's not just the obvious horrors that spook children, says film critic Jo Berry, who flags up scary moments on movies4kids.co.uk. "There are lots of films featuring the loss of parents (think Bambi's mother) that children find frightening. Even the experience of sitting in the dark surrounded by noise can be scary if kids have never been to the cinema before."

To make sure the treat doesn't become a nightmare, start them young—there are plenty of films toddlers will love. When renting a DVD, look at the BBFC classification and don't assume that, because the first Harry Potter was rated PG, the whole series is equally benign. And if you decide to ignore the guidelines, watch the film first.

If children get stuck in a groove and you can't face a fifth viewing of Cars 2, explore the rich archive of children's films, says Berry, who lists alternative choices on the website. And if only a new film will do? Look out for these new blockbusters:

• "Disney'sThe Lion King in 3D (October 7) introduces Simba to a whole new generation," says Berry. Or try the real-life African Cats (October 21).

• The Adventures of Tintin (October 26). "Spielberg's

first animated movie [pictured above], with Simon Pegg and Daniel Craig. Best for over-nines."

• Arthur Christmas (November 11). "An Aardman production starring Jim Broadbent as

Santa and James McAvoy as his dysfunctional son."

• Puss in Boots (December 9). The kitty from Shrek gets a movie of his own. "It's a prequel, so kids don't need to have seen the other films."

How to MAKE COMPOST

WITHOUT A BIN

Forget the council-bought bin that delivered so little—there are alternative ways to produce rich compost that take less effort, says RD gardening guru Bob Flowerdew (see page 130), author of Composting (£9.99).

Leaf mould Rake up leaves (discarding evergreens) and pack into a plastic bag pricked with holes. Wet the leaves with water, cover and hide away. In a year orthree, you'll be able to retrieve crumbly leaf mould from the bottom.

A heap "Drown" weeds in a bucket of water until well-rotted, then add to the heap along with shredded twigs, paper, cardboard and veg peelings. Wet with the water or nitrogen-rich urine (your choice!). Sprinkle with soil, used compost, and blood, fish and bone meal. Layer this with grass cuttings or nettles, sprinkling garden lime between each, and a mix of lime and soil on top. Cover loosely and leave for 12-24 months.

A veg bed Dig a trench and fill with compostable materials, scattering lime and soil over each layer. When it's full, cover with soil and plant with marrow, squash or sweetcorn in the spring. Next year, grow cabbage, peas and beans, followed by potatoes. For your final crop, plant with onions and root veg, then start again.

WHAT YOUR SUPERMARKET WON

TELL YOU

• I've hidden the eggs again. I place essentials like veg, bread, eggs and milk in different parts of the store and change the layout regularly, so you're forced to roam the aisles. But here's a tip: aim for the central walkway in megastores that gets you from one end to the other in seconds. Then keep your eye on the placards above each aisle, listing what they contain.

• Sorry your tomatoes are squashed. I put fresh fruit and veg at the front so we look more like a market than a superstore. I need to, because fruit and veg prices have risen

by 5%, and it's one of the first areas where customers cut back.

• Your corner shop may be cheaper. I keep prices steady on food you buy regularly, such as milk and baked beans, but load it on occasional buys from cookingoil to kiddies' favourites like Jammie Dodgers, up by 40% in the past year in some stores. To get around price rises, check out the cost on comparison site mysupermarket. com. And try my basics line to see how it measures up to the big brands, or my deluxe offerings. It could cut your bill by as much as a third—that's £1,700 a year on a £100 weekly shop.

• My special offers aren't always that special. I often raise prices before announcing reductions, or

roll them back by as little as 1p. And though I'll say a bigger pack is better value, it's not always true. Check the price per unit before buying that maxi jar of mayo or jumbo pack of cheese.

• Your shopping is shrinking. Multibuy crisps with five packs instead of six, soap bars down by a fifth and chocolate by two squares, even loo rolls with bigger tubes and less paper...downsizing the product while keeping the packaging and price the same is a sneaky way to maintain profits. And most of the time you don't notice.

• I'm a creative writer. I've been known to call bread fresh though it's frozen, and use terms such as "finest", "best" and "quality" with impunity. A handful of terms, like

"natural mineral water" and "fruit juice", are protected by law, but spring water and juice drinks can mean anything.

• I love red signs. They don't always mean the goods are on offer—but your brain has been primed to think they do.

• Don't follow the crowd. Threequarters of people look to the right and walk anticlockwise, so that's how I position

my offers—many of which you won't really need. Simply walking clockwise can save you Oa trip.

• The round pound is my new come-on. I'm guessing you won't remember that those carrots and doughnuts used to cost 65p.

• Wash your hands now. The handles of shopping trolleys contained more bacteria than the toilets in the supermarket, according to one study: 72% had faecal bacteria and half had traces of E.coli.

• Isn't it time you stocked up on tampons?

Your cycle is just one of the things I know about you since you took out a loyalty card. But I'm sure you think it's worth the 2% discount.

• You may not like me, but you can't live without me.

Nearly all groceries are bought at supermarkets. And though Tesco and Sainsbury's scored under 30% in a popularity poll run by Which?, Tesco's profits have jumped by 11.3% and Sainsbury's by 12.8%. ■

MEDICINE WITH MAX PEMBERTON

AUTHORITY FIGURE?

How a homeless man in McDonald's taught me a

tough lesson

"And you can take that tie off for a start," said the man standing in front of me. What an oat I thought. It was a shame he was my boss. My first day working in an outreach project for the homeless hadn't started well. I'm not usually criticised for being too smart—quite the opposite. I consider matching socks an event. But working with the homeless showed me a different side to being a doctor. For these people, doctors represented authority and were not to be trusted —in fact, they were to be avoided at all costs. And a shirt and tie only emphasised the divide. So I donned T-shirt and trainers and soon found myself sitting in McDonald's.

My concern should be for my patients, not for their gratitude

I'd been there for over an hour and, despite my strenuous efforts, had already eaten fries and a McFlurry. And now the vanilla milkshakes were looking tempting. I'd have to exercise some self-restraint if I was to remain this side of coronary heart disease by the end of this job.

I couldn't be picky about where I met these patients, though. If they agreed to a meeting at all, it was on their terms. So here I was sitting waiting for Danny. And waiting. It wasn't easy to be suddenly faced with a group of people who need help more than most, only for them to be, at best, utterly uninterested, and at worst, abusive. At first, this angered me. I was indignant that anyone would miss an appointment. But sitting waiting for people who may or may not arrive gave me time to analyse my own motivations, and I came to the stark realisation that the real problem wasn't with them, it was with me.

To them, I represented the authority figures they wanted to leave behind. For many reasons, I embodied the society from which they wanted to disengage. They hadn't asked me to be here, they hadn't asked for my help, so why, when I tried to get them to meet me, should they agree?

I realised that, deep down, part of my enjoyment at being a doctor was being

liked by my patients; being thanked for what I had done for them. But this is a self-indulgent pleasure. My concern should be for my patients, not for their gratitude.

I was about to leave when Danny walked up to me. "You waited, then," he said, by way of an introduction.

"Someone at the hostel was worried about you, and asked me to see you," I replied.

"All right," he said, then paused. "I'm gonna get something to eat." I went to the counter to order him some food.

"It's all right," he said, indignantly, "I got money." He pulled out a fiver. "What you havin'? My treat," he said, smiling. I ordered a vanilla milkshake.

Max Pemberton is a hospital doctor, and the Mind Journalist of the Year 2010.

Max's new book The Doctor Will See You Now is out now.

• t.

PHARYNX

The pharynx essentially makes up the throat. It's a tube about 12-14 centimetres long that starts at the back of the nose and extends down to the gullet, or oesophagus. It has a vitally important role to play —not least in ensuring that the air we breathe and the food we eat don't get mixed up and enter the wrong part of the body. It's organised into three separate sections, each with their own particular function.

NOSY PARKER

The nasal part—or nasopharynx—is at the back of the nose, above the mouth. The tissue here is engorged with blood. As air is drawn in through the nose, it enters this part of the pharynx and is warmed by the blood, before it travels down and enters the lungs. A special tube also opens here—the Eustachian tube. This connects the middle ear to the pharynx and helps regulate pressure in the ear. Swallowing opens the tube, which is what happens when

your ears "pop" in a plane after you swallow. There are also pharyngeal tonsils here—sometimes called "adenoids"—which are large lymph nodes that help fight off infections.

MOUTHING OFF

The second part—the oropharynx—is at the back of the mouth. There are more tonsils here—the ones that get inflamed and painful when we have tonsillitis. Because both food and air pass through this part of the pharynx, there's a nifty flap called the epiglottis that moves up and down, diverting food into the oesophagus and air into the trachea and towards the lungs.

SWALLOW HARD

The third part—the laryngopharynx—is the section below the epiglottis that connects to the oesophagus. When we swallow, the epiglottis closes over the trachea to protect it—that's why it's impossible to breathe and swallow at the same time. If food or fluid does get past the epiglottis and enter the lungs, it's called aspiration and it can lead to severe chest infections. ■

NEXT MONTH: the stomach

HEALTH WITH SUSANNAH HICKLING

COUGH IT UP

What do the experts do when they've got a cold coming on?

Dr Peter Swinyard, GP in Swindon and chairman of the Family Doctor Association:

"Inevitably my patients are very generous in sharing their winter viruses and I usually catch a cold at some stage.

"I generally just press on at work as usual, moan loudly to anyone who'll listen, take some paracetamol and (when totally bunged up) some Sinex nose spray for a couple of days. There's no point in taking antibiotics as they make absolutely no difference."

Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre, Cardiff University: "When I feel a cold coming on I sip a hot, tasty drink such as a blackcurrant cordial. This type of drink provides relief from cold symptoms and promotes salivation and nasal mucus secretions that may help to trap viruses."

Sultan Dajani, Andoverbased community pharmacist and Royal Pharmaceutical Society spokesperson: "As I'm an

NOW WASH YOUR HANDS

Iindependent practitioner with no second pharmacist on call, I can't afford sick days. Luckily, I haven't had any since I started seven years ago!

"Unfortunately, you can't cure a cold. The only treatment is symptom control. I increase fluid intake by eating soups and drinking water because colds can leave

The best protection against catching a cold or flu is to wash your hands regularly—or if you're not always near a sink, carry some antibacterial hand rub.

you dehydrated. I also eat steamed foods, which are easily digested, and I get plenty of rest. A good diet helps fight lethargy and strengthen the immune system."

ll

Mehmood

Syed, medical director, Bupa Home Healthcare:"I find over-the-counter products that combine both ibuprofen (which reduces inflammation) and pseudoephedrine, such as Nurofen Cold and Flu, really help my symptoms. Pseudoephedrine works to clear blocked sinuses by reducing blood flow to the nose lining, though people with severe coronary heart disease or very high blood pressure should consult their GP before using it."

TRICKS FOR EATING LESS

1.Serve food on a smaller plate—it will help downsize those superlarge portions. We tend to scoff what's in front of us even if we've eaten enough.

2. Eat slowly. It takes 20 minutes to feel full.

Plate up your food in the kitchen rather than allowing

Dr

WHY YOU SHOULDN'T STORE VEDICINE

IN THE MEDICINE CABINET

a free-for-all from a dish on the table.

4. Concentrate on what's in front of you. Bristol University researchers discovered that if you free yourself from distractions like the TV or your smartphone, you eat less.

5. Use a larger fork. Yes, we know it sounds bizarre, but a new US study shows that people who ate in a restaurant with a fork that was 20 per cent bigger than usual didn't scoff as much.

6. Chug water before a meal. Scientists from Virginia found that drinking two glasses of water before eating made dieters lose an extra five pounds. Water is calorie-free but makes you feel full. Result!

Drugs are formulated to be kept at room temperature in a dry place, so the bedroom rather than the warm, damp bathroom is the best place for your medicine cabinet. Always check the expiry date on the label before you take any drug or supplement, and discard the out-of-date ones. But no matter when it expires, chuck it if:

• The colour has changed.

• The texture or consistency has altered (tablets may crumble or crystallise, for example).

• It has a strong pong (outdated aspirin smells like vinegar).

• There's any other change in appearance (for example, if floating particles appear in a syrup).

But don't panic if you do down a pill before noticing that it's expired—it's unlikely to make you ill.

THE DIET DOCTOR

Any type of activity can help you burn calories, says Dr David Ashton of Healthier Weight

Recently, I was on a long-haul flight and sat next to a very large man who occupied the window seat on my left. To my right, there was a middle-aged man whose constant moving around began to border on the irritating. One minute he was on his computer, the next he headed to the toilet, then he dived into the overhead locker to get his bag and then he fiddled with his smartphone. It was endless. Meanwhile the obese man was utterly inert: not even a toilet stop in six hours of flying. The difference between these two individuals was striking because the fidgeter was as slim as the man next to me was obese.

Recent research corroborates my own observation that even

TOEING

apparently trivial, low-intensity movements—pacing up and down, fidgeting, standing, tying your shoes, etc—can make an important contribution to weight loss. These sorts of activities are sometimes referred to as NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis), and although they include all the normal activities of daily living, they specifically exclude sporting or leisure-time exercise such as jogging, swimming and going to the gym.

The problem nowadays is that modern living, with all its labour-saving devices, has greatly reduced calorie expenditure through NEAT, and since NEAT may account for 15-50% of total calories expended in a day, after long periods, this decline could clearly make a contribution to weight gain. For example, in one study researchers analysed the effects of normal daily activities such as washing dishes and climbing stairs, and found that people who didn't use labour-saving devices burned an extra 120 calories a day—this adds up to around 12Ibs of fat a year.

So, in terms of managing your weight, it may be easier to focus on NEAT—walking to work, using the stairs, ditching the remote—rather than x slavishly trying (and 0 failing) to get to the gym. And don't forget to fidget! c cr,

Did you know that people still get bunions in societies that don't wear shoes? That said, ill-fitting footwear definitely compounds THE LINE this genetic problem. So choose shoes with a fastening and allow a centimetre gap between your longest toe and the end of the shoe. Wearing orthotic insoles may help prevent bunions getting worse, as they stop your feet rolling in when you walk—a known cause of bunions. ■

Fightthemiseryof Colds & Flu thiswinter...

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BEAUTY WITH JAN MASTERS

SCENT TO TRY US

Want to smell gorgeous all day long? Here's how to sniff out a winner

Perfume. There's a lot of it about. Mintel reports that there were 506 women's fragrance launches in the UK last year, and we shelled out £824m on the stuff.

No wonder buying perfume can seem overwhelming—especially when you end up with expensive un-spritzed scents sitting on your dressing table.

So give yourself the best chance of getting it right with some precision planning. Start by studying the fragrances you already own. Take a note of the bottles that are still full, and ask yourself about the appeal of those that you've drained to the dregs.

Shopsavvy

Perfumer Roja Dove, who's just launched his range of luxury fragrances in Harrods' Black Perfumery Hall, including a lavish new addition called Reckless, offers these (prudent) steps to perfect scented shopping:

• Leave the house in aroma-neutral mode. Don't apply your usual fragrance. Avoid preparing or eating spicy food or garlic the day before, as the odour can remain

on, or within, your skin. Likewise, don't wear fake tan or body cream.

• Never go fragrance shopping with a friend. Perfume should represent your preferences and it's mighty difficult to ignore someone else's strong opinions.

• Write down a list of the perfumes that appeal to you and any that have been on your radar to try. Once in the store, edit the list to between five and ten (your sense of smell can't cope with any more). Mist blotters with your chosen few and write the name of the fragrance on each.

• Take yourself off somewhere quiet for some refreshment. Place the blotters on the table, hiding their names (you don't want to be influenced by brands). Pick up two and decide which one you prefer. Continue this elimination process, until you're left with your two favourites.

• Go back to the counter, test them on your skin (your inner forearm is best) and leave for at least an hour. If you're still in love with one, make that purchase!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness

THINK

Month and lots of beauty brands are PINK participating. Here are some favourites.

• Estee Lauder's "The EVelyn Lauder Lip Set", £18.50, comes in a pink clutch bag and contains a Pure Color Lipstick in Evelyn Wildly Pink—and £5 from each purchase will be donated to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Available in October, while stocks last.

• £1 from every bottle sold of OPI

Pink Shatter: Pink of Hearts Nail Lacquer, £10.50, will go to The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

• Buy online a bubblegum-pink Tangle Teezer Original, £10.20-15 per cent will go to Breast Cancer Care and you'll have lovelier, detangled hair.

OLD AND \ EW

Guerlain's Shalimar, created by Jacques Guerlain, was following the stir it caused on board a liner, when the wife of Raymond Guerlain (Jacques' cousin) was "testing" it. A new oriental scent, it burst with bergamot, jasmine and rose with a base of vanilla, opoponax and tonka bean, enhanced with powdery iris. So many guests wanted to know what it was, the ship's orchestra composed a song in its honour!

officially launched in 1925,

Cut to 2011. Guerlain perfumer Thierry Wasser creates Shalimar Parfum Initial for the next generation, after Jade Jagger designed a new style of bottle last year (see left). The result is a fragrance with many of the original's ingredients—but in a younger, fruitier interpretation. Both are gorgeous. Which one do you prefer? Going ammo to have to hurry you...

GET UP & GLOW

Happy fifth birthday to Balance Me (balanceme.co.uk) the award-winning aromatherapy skincare line.

Founded by sisters Rebecca and Clare Hopkins, who started by concocting products at home, stockists now include John Lewis, Waitrose, and Wholefoods.

• Their new facialcare range includes Radiance Face Oil, £30, which I predict will be a cult buy. Suitable for all skin types, it's great for giving your complexion some get-up-and-glow ready for winter. ■

11111Me-.

INSURANCE CLAWS

Why understanding your policy is the trickiest consumer issue of all

You can insure against anything these days, but there's no area that generates more consumer distress than insurance claims. This is largely because policies are so indecipherable, with all their clauses and sub-clauses, that most of us need a policy against losses accruing from misreading our insurance policies.

It was one reader's query about the small print that got me onto this difficult subject. She's just realised that her home insurance stipulates a certain kind of movement-sensitive burglar alarm—but she can't install it because she has a dog that will set it off. What to do? (I have visions of the dog bounding, crawling and tip-pawing around and under a matrix of triangular red lines, Mission: Impossiblestyle, just to get to its bowl.)

As I'm fond of dogs, I wouldn't advise trading it in for a goldfish. Instead, I'd tell her to contact the insurance company and suggest that the dog is restricted to one room of the

house—which, by agreement, is not movement-sensitive. (Alternatively, you could cheekily ask for an immediate reduction in your premium, because your dog offers you more protection!)

But then insurance comes in many shapes and sizes. "What's your 'proof-of-life' question?" I was asked by an earnest war reporter. This is a question to which only you could know the answer. It's a crucial means of verification that, in the event of you being kidnapped, negotiators for your release could use. By asking your captors your proof-of-life question, the correct answer would confirm that you were still alive.

Business travellers and journalists with kidnap insurance leave their proofof-life question and answer on file, in a manner akin to the security questions we all fill in for our email or bank accounts. What would your proof-of-life question be?

IF YOU

DON' ASK... Donal answers your questions. Please email queries to excerpts @readers digest. co.uk

Donal mac' ntyre is an investigative journalist and a former presenter of ITV's London Tonight

e% Who has kidnap WI insurance?

A You won't Pit always know, because many corporate entities don't inform those with kidnap-andransom cover that they do—it might encourage it.

et How much Wig does kidnapand-ransom insurance cost?

AIt depends on where you're travelling to. If it's close to Somalian waters, it could cost £350,000 for a month's cover for one person, with a ransom fund of up to £10m.

do% Can I insure Mr myself against trauma if, as a spectator, I have to suffer my national team going out in the early stages of a sporting event?

A Yes, you can. Pit In 2006, one football fan insured himself against

severe trauma in the event of England going out in the group stage of the World Cup. (They topped their group but lost to Portugal in the quarterfinals, so no claim was made.)

QCan I insure myself against alien abduction?

AThis is a tough one to prove, but yes you can. Typically it costs £150 per £1.5m of coverage. Some policies even promise to pay double if a woman is made pregnant by an alien. I've not been able to find any evidence of a claim being paid out...

Q Did Tom Jones really insure his chest hair for £7m at Lloyd's of London?

A As a hirsute man fit myself, I can understand why he would. But I'm afraid it's an insurance urban legend.

DONAL'S STORY

I was kidnapped once while in the Congo for the BBC. A local militia unit took me and a group of wildlife officers into custody at gun point. After some negotiation, they released me and left me in a truck-stop brothel for safe keeping. Mindful that it was a dangerous area, the madam gave me a bottle of whisky, a Bible and a loaded AK-47, and locked me in one of her rooms. I needed insurance that night, I can tell you...

What to do? If you're in dispute with your insurer and getting nowhere, you can contact the Financial Ombusman. Find all details at financialombudsman. org.uk •

WITH JASMINE BIRTLES

JUNIOR PENSIONS

Here's one way you can invest in youth—and get some bang for your buck

"But Peter, if you never grow up, you'll never claim your pension..."

If you're wondering how to invest for your child or grandchild right now, getting them a pension may not be your first thought—but it probably should be. Since 2000, anyone under 75 has been allowed to have a stakeholder pension—and that includes babies and children.

WHAT IS IT?

Stakeholder pensions were originally devised to give people on little or no income (women taking a break from work to have children, people on low pay or the jobless) the chance to add to a pension. In fact, the rules allow anyone to set

one up, which means you can start one for your child or grandchild. Amazingly, with this pension you can put in small amounts each month and it will still provide a decent sum for their retirement.

WHY SET UP A STAKEHOLDER PENSION FOR YOUR CHILD?

There are lots of reasons:

• The scheme is tax-efficient for you and your baby. You can pay in up to £2,880 each year. This is then topped up by the Government to a maximum of £3,600 as a tax-back incentive.

• The fees are very cheap. The only way

companies are allowed to charge you is through an annual fee of 1.5% on the total value of the fund that year, which drops to 1% after ten years. Different providers charge different rates up to this maximum.

• The money invested won't be accessible until the child reaches 55. So they won't be able to go on a spending spree with it at the age of 18.

• You can stop and start contributions as you wish, so if your cash situation changes you won't be penalised for it. The minimum amount you can contribute at any one time is £20 gross (including the tax benefit). You can pay in nothing at all or up to £2,880 net each tax year, in as many or as few instalments as you wish. It's very flexible.

• Anyone can put money into the pension fund when they want, so it's something the whole family can get involved in. If granny and grandpa have some money to invest, they can use the stakeholder pension to leave money to their grandchildren without it being liable for inheritance tax.

• Even if you can't afford to invest the full amount each year, just putting child benefit in for a rather longer period can create a sizeable sum.

HOW MUCH IS A STAKEHOLDER PENSION WORTH?

If you invest a total of £2,880 each year for the first ten years of the child's life, then by the time he or she reaches 55, which is the minimum age at which they can access the fund, they should have over £700,000 to spend (this is assuming a 6% return, on average). If they wait until they're 70, they should have a total of over £1.8m.

Not a mean amount considering this does not include any additions to the fund throughout the child's working life. Given that a typical person, or their employer, will add to a pension fund over the course of their life anyway, the amount they'll have on retirement is likely to be more than this figure.

WHICH STAKEHOLDER PENSION SHOULD YOU GET?

There is a minimum set of standards specified by the Government so you are pretty safe when choosing which companies to invest with. If you want to compare different options, the website moneymadeclear.org.uk has a decision tree that will guide you to the best stakeholder pension option for your situation.

ARGON USTER: STIMULUS

This phrase means that the Government steps in to give a positive jolt to the economy, usually by increasing public spending and lowering taxation. It's part of fiscal policy, which is the use of government expenditure and taxation to influence the economy (as opposed to "monetary policy", which is the control of the money supply through changing interest rates).

THIS MONTH'S BARGAIN

Get discounts of up to 70% on luxury holidays, including beach breaks, city getaways and skiing, with new holiday membership site Voyage Prive. Go straight to readersdigest. co.uk/magazine to get details of your bargain holiday.

Between July and December 2010, our "Big Five" banks received 1.1 million complaints from unsatisfied customers—up 15%. Almost 100,000 of these customers took their case to the Financial Services Ombudsman, and more than half won their case!

If you've always suspected that the banks were after your money, then you're right. They are—and they have some sneaky ways of getting it off you. Here are some of the ones you should be wise to:

ID-THEFT PROTECTION

Most of us have read horror stories in the press about identity fraud—and it's a real problem. So now customers are finding that everyone from mobile-phone companies to

banks is trying to sell them ID-theft protection. Yet it's your bank's responsibility to cover any money lost from your account as a result of ID fraud, providing you haven't been negligent (for example, having your PIN written down next to your credit card). Most also have free identity-theft assistance in place.

If you're seriously worried, get Protective Registration with CIFAS for £12 plus VAT a year. This will put a warning

flag on your credit file, which tells banks to make additional checks to ensure that any application for credit or a new account is genuine.

STRUCTURED INVESTMENTS

These offer a mixture of investments (such as corporate bonds) all in one product, which can seem like a sensible way to spread the risk with your money. In recent years, these types of products have been sold to the mass market, sometimes as unit trusts.

But structured-investment products are notoriously complicated. Justin Urquhart Stewart, financial blogger at my website, moneymagpie. corn, says that some products require a level of understanding that can even be beyond investment professionals.

More importantly, there are also high fees to pay. There's often a one-off charge of 3% of the value of the investment. Sometimes the investors may take a management fee for each part of the structured investment, plus a management fee for the total product. There can also be an "earnings cap", which means the investor cannot earn more than a certain amount, even if the product does unusually well. Finally, some structured investments have a "lock-in period"—a window of time during which investors are not

allowed to redeem or sell shares. Should you need to sell, you could discover that your returns will be eroded by paying redemption fees, or even that redemption may not be possible.

PAID-FOR BANK ACCOUNTS

Paying for your account used to be the preserve of the rich and famous, who flashed their gold and platinum cards at every opportunity. Nowadays, gold cards and premier accounts are open to all—for a monthly fee.

These products are not always a rip-off. Some of them offer handy extras like travel insurance and breakdown cover, and if you use them it can be well worth it. But most people don't use more than one of the services, so they end up paying 00412 a month for something they could get for free.

A "FINANCIAL REVIEW"

If your bank calls you up to offer you a "financial review", just say no. You might feel that you're being conscientious by accepting their offer, but it's a con. When they say "financial review", they actually mean "sales pitch". You could come out of that meeting with a loan, a credit card, insurance products or a paid-for bank account, or all of those in one over-priced bag. Say "no"!

HE ONE IN THIS ONTH...

This is going to be a tough autumn financially, so get some extra cash in quickly and easily by signing up to Code 3 Research (code3research.

co.uk). Once registered, you'll get invitations to focus groups and market research events in your local area. It's a quick and easy way of making money just for offering your opinions. You get at least E40 cash on the day—not bad for two hours' "work". ■

Jasmine Birtles is a personal finance writer and the founder of moneymagpie.com

WITH MARCO PIERRE WHITE

STOCK EXCHANGE

Autumn

nights plus hearty suppers

equals satisfied customers

One thing we all have in common is a habit of complaining about the weather. But as I get older I've noticed that I've become more and more tolerant of our climate. In fact, I positively welcome the highs and lows of our seasons. Once upon a time, I longed for perpetually long summer evenings and clear night skies. Now I think we're lucky to have such distinct seasons and changeable conditions.

Autumn is the most subtle of seasons. It's when we learn to accept the inevitable —nothing lasts forever. But persevere— spring is just around the corner.

The food we eat should mirror what's going on in the natural world. I don't want asparagus, plums and rhubarb in October. I want a hearty stockpot with lots of flavour as I batten down the hatches in preparation for a long and exacting winter. Nothing could be simpler than this dish. I was asked once what I'd have for my last meal. "Roast chicken," I replied. Thigh or breast? Drumsticks, actually, because they're the tastiest part of the bird. You don't even have to be an expert at chopping things up to make this meal. When I say "coarsely sliced" I mean exactly that. Once everything's ready, just pop it on the heat and go and walk the dog for an hour. On your return, everything will be piping hot and ready to serve.

Marco Pierre White, the "godfather" of modern British cooking, is a restaurateur and TV personality.

CHICKEN STOCKPOT

(SERVES 4)

12 large chicken drumsticks

6 medium-sized carrots, coarsely sliced

2 onions, finely sliced

1 celery stick, coarsely sliced

3 Knorr chicken stock cubes

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 sprigs of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

1. Put the chicken drumsticks, carrots, onions, celery and stock cubes into a casserole dish or large, heavybased saucepan and cover with cold water.

2. Cook on the hob for one hour or until the chicken is tender. Keep an eye on the heat—the water should simmer and not boil rapidly.

3. After an hour, remove the pan from the heat, add a splash of olive oil and stir in the thyme and bay leaf. Serve from the casserole dish, allowing three drumsticks per person. ■

MARCO'S

Drop in a handful of macaroni ten minutes before the dish is ready. It will add some extra body and reduce the liquid slightly. This was exactly what my mother used to do.

DRINK WITH NIGEL BARDEN

IT'S DA BOMB!

Open the hatches...and drop a Jagerbomb

So why is Jagermeistera German herbal concoction created in 1935, whose name means "hunt master"— America's biggest-selling imported liqueur?

Its secret blend contains nearly 60 different herbs, flowers and roots, including ginger and cinnamon, and is steeped in alcohol for five weeks, then filtered and stored in oak barrels for a year.

Served ice-cold, this dark, rich, spicy and yet sweetish 35% ABV elixir is available in bottles or on tap, and can be drunk as a shot, or with a mixer.

A Green Dragon blends gin and crème de menthe with lime juice, orange bitters and, of course, Jager. Ask for a Golden Elk, or a Starry Night, and expect Jager and

Jagerbomb

Goldschlager (cinnamon schnapps with 24-carat gold flakes). A Black President mixes it with Coca-Cola, and then there's the Jagerbomba shot glass of Jager dropped into a half pint of Red Bull.

But why the US popularity? It's really down to heavy metal, and particularly the Jagermeister Music Tour. Last year, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer (50 million album sales between them) went on the Jager tour and, as Slayer's Tom Araya promised, there were "no ballads, no acoustic and no slow tempos".

Jagermeister is actually a complex, sophisticated, well-crafted drink, perfect with ice and, despite the stories, doesn't contain deer or elk blood. So let's rock!

6%144 ...from Cornwall?

Hicks & Healey seven-year-old malt whisky is produced at St Austell brewery from local barley and spring water, distilled at Healey's Cyder Farm (home of Cornish scrumpy) using a copper still from Speyside, Scotland, and aged in bourbon casks. A heady 61.3% ABV, it's best with a little water to unleash a gingerbread whiff and white pepper prickle. At £150 a 50c1 bottle it's one to be sipped! ■

Nigel Barden is the food and drink presenter on Simon Mayo's show on BBC Radio 2, and chairman of the Great Taste Awards.

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DURABLE FRUITS

As the days grow shorter, what fresh fruit can you turn to?

I want W . to grow more of my five-a-day, so what fruits could I eat freshin winter?

AApples have to be the first choice; plant several to give a wide spread. Most late-autumn varieties keep fresh on trays until the new year—after that, you need varieties such as Wagener, Winston, Granny Smith and Tydeman's Late Orange.

Pears seldom keep long except for cooking varieties, but try the Humbug, a new late keeper. Kiwis, surprisingly, store well into late winter, but the plants do take a lot of space. If you have a frost-free conservatory or bay window, you could easily grow your own lemons, tangerines, kumquats, oranges, limes or grapefruits, as these are all winter croppers. With some warmth and skill as well, you

could produce cape gooseberries (pictured), passion fruits, strawberry guavas and even pineapples.

HOT HOUSE

QI have a small conservatory, which is heated along with the rest of the house and quite sunny. I want some suitable plants, preferably scented, with not too much work other than buying and watering them.

AAlmost any plants will need moving up to bigger containers one day, preferably in spring, and most will need an occasional feed in their water during the growing season (but little else the following). Scented-leaved geraniums

come in a huge range of scents and foliage, and many also flower well. Lemon verbena has pretty foliage with the most delicious lemon scent. Hyacinths give a tremendous show in winter and spring, and can be discarded after.

Some cyclamen are perfumed but seldom strongly—freesias are the same. Tuberoses throw tall spikes of strongly perfumed creamy flowers in summer. Gardenias are never long-lived but are beautiful in foliage and flower (they have an opulent, heavy perfume). Tender jasmines do well and are nicely scented. And also any citrus—the orange tree has the sweetest blossoms.

HEDGE FUN

I've moved to a new home with a small garden and a huge, half-dead conifer hedge. How hard would this be to get rid of, and what should I put in its place?

AAlthough you could tackle it yourself, it's a lot of work1 suggest you hire insured professionals. Either way, the old hedge needs cutting down and burning or skipping (the stumps should be pulled out or ground down). Then the soil will need improving. Add copious amounts of well-rotted manure or garden compost and let the area weather for at least six months before planting anything there.

Another hedge may not be a good idea with a small garden. I'd recommend a wooden fence—economise on the panel quality, but buy the longest-lasting posts available.

Bob Flowerdew is an organic gardener and a regular on BBC Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time. Send your gardening questions to Bob at excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk.

Short days mean any withering gardening time is herbaceous plants, restricted, so take pull and hoe out every opportunity weeds, give your of fine weather grass a last cut to finish tidying and trim the edges up before winter —then send the closes in. mower off for an Collect fallen overhaul so it's leaves, trim back ready for spring!

READER'S TIP

How to reach fruit high up in trees? Take a plastic bottle, cut off the bottom and cut a couple of "V" shapes along the side. Fix the neck onto the end of a pole or stick. You can use this to pluck fruit from inaccessible branches, which then falls into the empty bottle. Submitted by David Froggatt, Lincolnshire •

» Email your gardening tips and ideas—with photos, if possible— to excerpts@readersdigest.co.uk. We'll pay £70 if we use them on this page.

EARWIGGING

These modest insects are full of surprises—have you ever seen one fly?

Earwigs are wonderful mums—right now, a mother "wig" will be making a small underground nest where she'll lay her eggs and clean and protect them all winter. When they hatch, she'll carefully feed them mouth to mouth.

We have four different species. Our most common one actually has wings and could fly, but no one, to my knowledge, has ever seen a common earwig fly. The lesser earwig occasionally

Know your earwigs: a male with curved pincers (right) and a female (left) takes to the wing on balmy nights. The delicate wings fold up like a fan, then fold over again. It's thought that this unfolding and refolding may be such a business the earwig can't be bothered! You can tell a male from a female by their pincers: the female's join together

Some mysterious instinct will now be driving adult eels—between seven and 20 years old—to the sea. They swim west, then spawn and die, and the young eels (elvers) will drift back to our shores on the current. In 1912 it was speculated that they spawned in the Sargasso Sea, but

along their length (and are quite useful tools), but the male's are strongly curved, like sickles.

Why "earwigs"?

Well, their name contains the word "ear" in many languages because they automatically look for a small space to hole up in, so if you were sleeping outside, your ear would be perfect! But they don't mean any harm—they're just looking for somewhere safe to hide.

so far no spawning females or eggs have ever been found there.

Now a brilliant research project has been tagging eels in an attempt to solve the mystery. The tags record how deep they swim, and the water temperature. When the eel dies, the tags are released and float to the surface, eventually drifting back to the shore and waiting until someone (maybe you?) finds them. So keep an eye out for tags—eels are in desperate trouble (in the UK, returning elver numbers have dropped a shocking 98%), so data that tells researchers where the eels go and what happens to them is important.

BACK

I haven't ridden a horse for years, but I'm back in the saddle and loving it! That's because I'm getting involved with the autumn IN THE Exmoor pony round-up, and want to help on horseback—a SADDLE motorised quad feels like cheating, somehow.

The Exmoor pony is Britain's oldest breed, little different from the wild ponies that roamed the country thousands of years ago. A normal pony wouldn't stand a chance of surviving up on the moors, but Exmoors are unbelievably hardy, with a special double-thickness coat that grows in autumn to protect them in winter (most Exmoors are a lovely russet brown). Their coats grow in such a way that the rainwater runs off just a few "drip areas".

They eat an enormous amount, as their food supply (a lot of gorse in winter) is very low in nutrition. Their front teeth are precision tools for nipping off fodder, their back teeth big and powerful for chewing the tough food into a digestible mush.

Their numbers crashed during the Second World War—partly because soldiers used them for target practice, and partly due to an illegal trade in pony meat. No more than 50 survived, and all of today's Exmoor ponies (around 800 worldwide) are their descendants. I now treat these ancient survivors with new respect. ■

Go to readersdigest. co.uk/magazine to see Adam Canning's wildlife videos. This month: fungi, deer and jays

Martin HughesGames is a host of BBC2's Springwatch and Autumnwatch

DIGITAL GIVING

How donating online can be a force for good

More than half of adults in the UK now shop online—we spent a whopping £5.3bn in June alone. However, of the Ellbn we give to charities annually, only two or three per cent comes via the web.

This is largely because so few charities have properly got to grips with it.

Personally, I find this really frustrating—charities do such vital work, but their failure to use the web as cleverly as possible means they're missing out on tremendous opportunities to inspire more of us to give time, cash or support to their brilliant campaigns and causes.

There are exceptions.

JustGiving. com enables huge sums to be raised at real speed. It's netted a phenomenal £700m for UK charities since its launch—so no more schlepping door-to-door with a

sponsorship form. (One plucky seven-year-old raised £143,000 for Haiti in just 48 hours last year—a cause that also netted the Red Cross £30m in a textmessage appeal; another great example of technology being used for good.)

Ewan McGregor's bike went under the virtual hammer for Unicef

eBay for Charity is another big success story—raising £28m to date via the sale of everything from T-shirts, shoes and secondhand books to big-ticket charity donations, like the bonkers hat Princess Beatrice wore to the royal wedding (which fetched £81k) and Ewan McGregor's motorbike (E22k), both of which went under the virtual hammer for Unicef. Its "give at checkout" 0 tool, which lets eBay traders make 7 , 0 a small 0 donation on every sale, 'd generated S £2m for charities in its ( ,,Dc first year.

There are lots of other ways tech helps charities besides fundraising.

• Sparked.com really sped up the heart-wrenching humanitarian work to reunite families with missing loved ones in the wake of the Haiti earthquake. It let volunteers take mobile-phone photos of survivors that they'd then tag so people could search for family online.

Ct-I/Arri ON THE WEB [ [ew TO HELP

• Horsesmouth.co.uk has 30,000 people using its site to find—or offer—mentoring.

• Do-it.org has more than a million volunteering applications a year.

• Slivers.com hosts lots of "micro-volunteering" opportunities using the web's functionality to enable you to help in small portions and at times that suit you. A scheme in Hertfordshire, for example, lets local people pop round to visit vulnerable people to reduce their feelings of loneliness.

The web is also where to go to find out about local, real-world spaces that are vacant and might be available for you or your community to do good, charitable or cultural things.

• Somewhereto.

corn is a fantastic scheme, encouraging young people wanting to do everything from staging a play to starting a magazine to take advantage of otherwise empty buildings. Venues start as small as a spare desk space and range all the way up to a theatre or a swimming pool—and they're always on the hunt for more.

• Meanwhile.org.uk works with landlords and local authorities to unlock empty properties for general community benefit.

Of course, you can't take advantage of any of these tools for doing good unless you're already online, which is why later this month Race Online 2012 and the BBC are launching a big campaign to encourage everyone to go out into their community when the clocks go back on October 30 and teach someone to use the web.

Lots of our Race Online partners have plans for how they'll get involved, including NHS Choices, whose champions will be demonstrating an online "life-check" tool, showing people how to get a health MOT on the net. Head to raceonline2012.org for updates, but UKonline and BBC First Click centres will be running free, hour-long, internet taster sessions across the UK. Call 0800 77 1234 for details.

And on October 31, Mecca

bingo clubs will be holding internet taster sessions from 10am-lam, with free tea and biscuits for early starters. Check your local Mecca for full details at meccabingo.com/bingo-clubs/ find-a-bingo-club or call 0800 028 66 88 ■

Martha Lane Fox is the UK's digital champion and founder of raceonline2012.org

MOTORING WITH CONOR McNICHOLAS BABY LOVE

The new mini Range Rover is the best of modern Britain

Truly special cars come rarely, but when they arrive it's like a firework going off. The new Range Rover Evoque, arriving on our roads this month, is just such a car. The Evoque has been born in the public eye. Range Rover has never featured a little car in its line-up before, but a global shift to small, urban luxury has presented an opportunity too enticing to ignore. Could Range Rover make a Mini without screwing up their image? The answer is, resolutely, yes.

Almost unchanged from the LRX concept car revealed three years ago, Evoque is a head-turner par excellence. When I drove it, I had middle-aged men walking up to me to make "OK" signs and nod their heads. It really is stunning.

It comes as a five-door or a dramatic three-door coupe; a zippy petrol or slightly more efficient diesel; and a fouror two-wheel drive (a Range Rover first).

The coupe's looks will get you into the showroom, but you're more likely to leave with the five-door for practical reasons. With

either, the panoramic glass roof is an essential—it transforms the car. Both shapes give a luxury cabin, practical boot and offer a myriad of pretty or moody colour combinations, both inside and out.

It's almost unnerving how capable this car is. Like the kid at school who could ace sports and exams, and still listen to the right bands, Evoque is incredibly good off-road or in water, it will tackle a B-road almost like a hot hatch and deliver refined motorway cruising.

And the best thing? All this brilliance is British. Engineered in Warwickshire and built in Liverpool, there's a real sense of the Beatles' city in the car: it's feisty, tenacious, cultured and always looks like it's dressed for a night on the tiles.

All this comes at a price: it starts at £28,000 and rises quickly to £40,000, but when you're this good-looking and accomplished, you can charge what you're worth. Evoque is a car we all should feel proud of. It's certainly one the world is talking about, and one that everyone's going to want.

ONE TO BUY

BMW 1-Series 118d Snc (£23,270) With luxury cars getting smaller (or is that small cars getting more luxurious?), BMW proved bang on trend with its 1-Series back in 2004, and now here's the refreshed version. A little r bigger (certainly round the eyes), but even more lovely inside and, like the Mini, it offers more personalisation. A proper little luxmobile.

ONE TO SPOT

Ariel Atom V8 (024,850)

Supercar thrills + engineering brilliance + British eccentricity + an armful of scaffolding = Ariel's fabulous Atom sportscar. Mad before, it's even madder now that they've strapped a whopping V8 engine into it. Just 25 of these will be made and 20 have been snapped up already. It's taken a while to get the car set up to handle the new grunt, but you'll be able to spot one by the delighted screams of its driver.

ONE

(£92,480) Maserati's GT has been with us for four years, but this latest spin is the pick of the bunch, with lovely styling touches and a better gear change. But the big story is the exhaust: remapped to deliver a richer, fatter roar from the V8 engine. This car is all about the noise. And what a noise!

WHEN YOU SEE A FLASHING BLUE LIGHT?

Most of us try to get out of the way immediately, but that could be illegal—only do so when it's safe (any emergency service responding should expect this). If, say, you're at a red light with a flashing blue light behind you, pulling forward is a big no—you could put others at risk. On a country road with no stopping places? Take it easy until you get to a reasonable spot rather than driving into a ditch. For a useful video guide to various flashinglight scenarios go bluelightaware. 'i.uk ■

Conor McNicholas is the former editor of BBC Top Gear Magazine.

TRAVEL WITH KATE PETTIFER

MY GREAT ESCAPE

Rose Parker from Dorset enjoyed a "New York minute"

I love watching movies, so when my friend Audra suggested visiting New York—the setting for so many films—I jumped at the chance to go "on location".

We arrived at lunchtime and ate sandwiches sitting on the steps of the public library —featured in Ghostbusters and Spider-Man, among others. Our hotel, Thirty-Thirty, was only a five-minute walk from the Empire State Building. Despite the central location, it's cheap by Manhattan standards. Our room was pretty basic, but it was very clean and served as an ideal base. The price didn't include breakfast, so every morning we tried some of the many nearby cafes.

The Empire State Building—star of Sleepless in Seattle, and Manhattan icon—was, of course, on my location tick-list. It was well worth paying to visit the 102nd-floor observation deck—the views across the skyline are fantastic.

Down in the financial district, we found the statue of the charging bull that was

Next, we took the free Staten Island ferry across the harbour for clear views of the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge. We later walked across it with aching feet!

No trip to New York would be complete without a visit to Central Park. Seeing the Bethesda Fountain was a highlight. It's featured in two of my

MANHATTAN MAGIC

Virgin Holidays has three nights, room only, at the Thirty-Thirty from £639, including return flights with Virgin from Heathrow to New York JFK (0844 557 3865; virginholidays.co.uk).

featured in the film Hitch.

Reader Rose Parker gets into an Empire State of mind

favourite films (both romantic comedies): One Fine Day with George Clooney, and 27 Dresses, starring Katherine Heigl. It's strange to be somewhere for the first time that you already know so well from the screen.

On our last day we queued for hours to get cheap tickets to see yet another movie-inspired event—this time the Broadway musical version of Legally Blonde. It was worth the effort and provided the perfect ending to a magical trip.

Send us a photo of your favourite holiday, tell us briefly what made it so special, and if we include it on this page we'll pay you £70. See address on p4.

TRAVEL WEBSITE

GO NOW STAY NOW BOOK

NOW

Not sure about cruises? Crystal Cruises has two luxury-end "sampler cruises", starting with three nights on board Crystal Serenity from Barcelona to Monte Carlo, leaving October 13; from £899pp, including flights, transfers and full board. Stay one night in Barcelona before crossing the Med to the pint-sized kingdom of glitz. Or opt for four nights from Rome to Barcelona, from £998pp, departing November 23; 020 7287 9040, crystalcruises.co.uk

Come over all cultural this autumn.

National arts charity the Art Fund runs the National Art Pass scheme, offering savings, and sometimes free entry, to many institutions nationwide, including the Royal Academy, Portrait and National galleries in London. Book at: artfund.org/ readersdigest and receive a Love Art bag*, plus 12 months' membership for the price of nine when you sign up by direct debit; single membership from £37.50.

Harry Potter lives on with the long-awaited "Warner Bros. Studio Tour London—the Making of Harry Potter" due to open next spring and now available to book online. The three-hour tour at the production home of Harry Potter in Hertfordshire will take visitors through Dumbledore's office, the Great Hall and other memorable sets from the film. See costumes, animatronics, props and effects. A treat for Hogwarts devotees. Visit wbstudiotour.co.uk

52sunsations.com Want some autumn sunshine? Get a cheap flight to Nice and use this site to get great savings on accommodation, restaurants and attractions—all selected by the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur tourist board. There are real bargains if you're prepared to play the waiting game. At the time of writing, you could save 50% on a stay in a chateau in Aix. Use the annotated map to find offers by location. ■

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October fiction

The Impossible Dead

by an Rankin (Orion, £18.99)

After the wonderfully gloomy Rebus novels, we now have Ian Rankin's second great sleuth: DI Malcolm Fox, who investigates bent coppers. Here, he's in Fife checking out a possible police cover-up when he unearths an extraordinary story of terrorism in the Kirkcaldy of the 1980s.

Rankin is a dark realist, and The Impossible Dead

feels totally authentic, both in the procedural elements and in the characterisation of an enormous cast. The plot, too, is worked out with stupendous skill.

This is vintage Rankin, a five-star crime novel by an author at the height of his powers. After reading it, you'll never look at the SNP in the same light again.

Snuff

by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, £18.99)

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series is set in a universe that feels like the satirical fantasies of Jonathan Swift as rewritten by Morecambe and Wise. The latest instalment (remarkably, the 39th in the sequence) is Discworld's version of the country-house mystery, and, as so often in Pratchett, the basis of the comedy is social class.

CLASSICS CORNER:SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

A N Wilson travels from ancient Israel to 1980s Fife

Commander Vimes, who's solving the case, is now a duke—but looks back fondly to his working-class boyhood, when women scrubbed not just floors but doorsteps. This class obsession is part of Pratchett's prodigious appeal. That and the winningly childish jokes, which here include the Three Disgraces, Nudicia, Pulchritudia and Voluptiaand expressions like, "I've pulled more strings than an elephant's corset".

Two hundred years ago this month, a novel appeared by an author described only as "A Lady", and who'd had to fund the publication herself. Yet, as we now know, this anonymous new writer became one of the most loved in English literature—because the novel was called Sense and Sensibility. To commemorate Jane Austen's debut, Reader's Digest has 15 copies of Austen fan Victoria Connelly's romantic comedy A Weekend with Mr Darcy to give away. See readersdigest.co.uk/ magazine for details.

The Dovekeepers

by Alice Hoffman

(Simon & Schuster, £16.99)

This novel has "bestseller" written all over it—and deservedly so. The story, originally told by the Jewish historian Josephus, is that of the 900 Jews and their families who escaped Jerusalem after its annihilation by the Romans in AD70. They walled themselves up in the desert fortress of Masada and, after heroic resistance, committed mass suicide rather than surrender to Rome.

In Alice Hoffman's retelling, though, four women survive, and three

years later relive the experiences from Alexandria. (My favourite of the four is probably Shirah, the tattooed witch of Moab who secretly worships Astarte the Goddess.) The result is blockbuster Josephus. Each of the women is movingly, sensually evoked and, despite occasional moments of over-writing and kitsch, the book is impossible to put down.

The Marriage Plot

by Jeffrey Eugenides (Fourth Estate, £20)

Ever since Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey, there's been a tradition of fictional heroines who live through books, before discovering that real-life love is sometimes very different—and sometimes not. The same theme underlies this richly enjoyable new novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, whose previous books include The Virgin Suicides.

QUICK QUIZ

116011711717e

Madeleine Hanna is an English literature major, who spends two years at university writing a thesis about how all fiction until Henry James revolved around the heroine finding a husband. Then she discovers modern literary theory, abandons her safe, dull boyfriend and gets caught up in a triangle with a philosopher and a manic-depressive biologist. All the characters are beautifully drawn, particularly her parents, who made me laugh every time they appeared. Madeleine herself, as well as being a witty observer of great literary heroines, ends up joining their ranks. Highly recommended.

Can you supply the missing words here—from QI: The Second Book of General Ignorance, out in paperback this month?

a) "The dreaded 'e-numbers' listed on jars and tin cans are almost all completely benign; the 'E' stands for nothing more sinister than '

b) "The most extreme example of the way English doesn't always sound the way it's written is the made-up word ghoti. In theory, this could be pronounced ' using `gh' as in rough, 'o' as in women, and as in mention." Answer on p146

As brilliant as the sun

How a teenage maths prodigy conquered Cambridge —and what happened to him as an adult

With his first book, Alexander Masters achieved every debut writer's dream. Stuart: A Life Backwards—the biography of a homeless man he knew in Cambridge—became a bestseller, a multi award-winner and an acclaimed TV drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch. But even its most careful readers might not have noticed a passing mention of Masters' landlord—"a generous, mild man, as brilliant as the sun, but a fraction odd". Now, the landlord takes centre-stage.

Born in 1952, Simon Norton was already showing signs of being a maths prodigy as a baby (see column, right). Aged three, he had an IQ of 178. After winning a scholarship to Eton—singing for joy as he took the exam—he won three gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad and gained a London University degree while still at school. A degree at Cambridge came next, and then Simon helped to write a still-classic work on the highly complex business of Group Theory. So why is he now living in just the basement flat of his large house, surrounded by collections of old bus timetables and 1980s Tango bottles?

In seeking to find out, Masters once again makes his own relationship with the man he's writing about an important part of the book. He tries hard—if not always successfully—to show that Simon doesn't fit the stereotype of the nutty genius. He explains the maths as simply as possible (ie, it's still quite hard, but in an enjoyably mind-blowing way).

The received wisdom is that in 1985 Simon Norton mysteriously suffered "a catastrophic intellectual collapse". But after a thorough investigation, Masters discovers that the truth is by no means so straightforward. This is, after all, the biography of happy man.

Here, as they walk around Cambridge together, Masters compares Simon to the 19th-century prodigy and Group Theorist Arthur Cayley:

Simon Norton as a baby—from chapter one... "Simon was one year old, playing in the dining room, getting under his mother's stilettos. "He was unusually thoughtful. His brothers at this age pounded the toy blocks on the glass coffee table and jabbed them into the electric sockets.

"Simon picked up a pink block from the pile and smoothed it against the carpet. Carefully, he positioned a blue brick alongside. He reached across for two more

(

CGold medal for Simon, the maths wizard

THE success of the British team at the schoolboys' mathematical Olympiad in Yugoslavia has been slightly overshadowed by the individual triumph of the team's youngest member. 15year-old Simon Norton,

has to sit his A level exam In Maths and Chemistry. I n the not mint to di 9011n. moth ton w He out o

Simon, an Etonian, in th won the Gold Medal pled and a special prise for team. the most elegant and in 10, original solution. ISA Hie

Exams man

But he is still not through with Ins When he ro

,After three years of study and five days of continuous

• testing, during which crowds of cheering admirers gathered outside the examination hall, Cayley came top of the year and had his portrait engraved and distributed throughout Cambridge. He'd finished the final, three-hour paper in 45 minutes, then hurried straight to the college library and taken out Aristotle's Politics.

Cayley's nearest rival suffered a breakdown.

Yet Simon did better. According to rumour, he scored 50 alphas in his Finals exam.

For the Cambridge grading system,12 alphas get you a first-class degree. Fifty not only made Simon first in the university, but was the highest score in the history of the Mathematics Tripos—ever.

To this triumph of university top-ness, with which other men, with a quarter the success, revolutionise history, dominate governments and win Nobel Prizes, Simon has added an exquisite icing of his own: he has forgotten all about it...

'But you at least know that you got a first-class degree?' I say, beginning small.

'I would expect that, yes.'

To any genius, degree-level mathematics is like spending three years in intense private study of a foreign language, then being tested with a phrasebook—knowing how to say 'Hello,' Goodbye,' and 'Where's the toilet?' Degree exams aren't harder than that.

`So you don't know that you came top in the whole university?' I pressed.

'It is possible that I did,' he confirmed with indifference. 'But I do not remember it, no.' Abruptly remembering something he wanted, Simon dropped his bag on the pavement and yanked

"OK then lad, what's nine times six?"

The 15-year-old Simon receives a national maths award from the Duke of Edinburgh—and (left) the Daily Sketch reports on his international success

The Genius in My Basement: the Biography of a Happy Man by Alexander Masters (above) is published by Fourth Estate at £16.99

Not modest or immodest: Simon Norton today

at the zip. 'As I say, I am not saying it is not true,' he insisted, searching inside for a packet of Bombay mix he thought he'd spotted skulking there last week. 'It is possible. I am saying that I don't know it.'

Simon is not modest or immodest, just as he is not vain or unvain. That he was, at that time, one of the most promising mathematicians in the world is just a fact, and what's modesty or immodesty got to do with a state of undeniable correctness? Like Sherlock Holmes, who refused to remember whether the sun rotates around the earth or the other way round, because it was unnecessary clutter in his mind, the fact that Simon was once a prodigious passer of mathematical exams is of no interest to him. What mattered was whether or not he could continue to research mathematics after he had taken the exam. Once that fact was established—yes, he could—everything else about such teenage cockfights was unimportant.

The Genius in My Basement can be quite a slippery book, with apparently established facts—including some in that passage— changing or developing as Masters finds out more. The overall result, though, is a gripping, funny and often touching read.

...AND THE QUICK QUIZ?

a) European

b) Fish

0/: The Second Book of General Ignorance is published by Faber at £8.99

The Fight by Norman Mailer about the rumble in the jungle in 1975. "A brilliant read"

pink bricks, and slid them against the blue. With precision, he extracted another blue brick.

"Shuffling across the room on his bottom, Simon found four more pink bricks, fumbled them back and continued the arrangement.

"His mother, halfway through folding napkins, stopped in astonishment. She saw at last what he was doing.

"One blue, one pink.

"One blue, two pinks.

"One blue, three pinks.

"One blue, four pinks.

"From the disarray of Nature, her baby son was enforcing regularity."

Who, where, when and WI

The fascinating, affectionate and surprisingly funny account of a truly revolutionary movement

You might think of the Women's Institute as the most resolutely British of organisations. In fact, it was founded in rural Canada in 1897—and didn't start in this country until 1915. Which is just one of the surprises in Jane Robinson's fascinating new history of what she calls "the original social network". The book also reminds us just what a radical idea the WI was. In the class-bound Britain of the time, here was a movement, open to women of all backgrounds, that elected its officials by secret ballot. And this, remember, before women had the vote.

From the start, the WI always sought to combine education with fun—and so does Robinson, with enormous success. Her tone is admiring, but never too reverent. She does a thorough job of overthrowing WI clichés, but thanks to her sharp eye for comedy, is infectiously amused by the ones that turn out to be true. The big set-pieces—from the WI's contribution to the Home Front in the Second World War to the slow-hand clapping of Tony Blair— are delivered with impressive flair. Yet the lower-key moments along the way are often just as memorable. The book ends with the news that, since 2008, WI membership has been growing again, and that there are now Wls at several British universities. This extract is about the years immediately after the war:

t, Once again, austerity was the watchword, and the National • Federation of Women's Institutes did all it could to encourage its members to support one another emotionally as well as materially. A psychologist had been commissioned to write an article in [the WI magazine] Home and Country in 1944 to prepare women for the difficulties that would almost certainly arise when their husbands were demobbed. Remember, it warned, that those on active service have lived far more exciting lives than is possible in peacetime, and they're likely to get bored and irritable with the old routine. They will have met strange people ►

Jane Robinson grew up in North Yorkshire, where her mother was a WI secretary who "often came home from meetings with her sides still sore from laughing". Her previous books include Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education and Mary Seacole: the Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea

ane Roblizion

and tasted adventure; don't take complaints at the tedium of normal life as criticism. Try not to be too worried or offended if they seem restless, or fail to appreciate how hard you've been working in their absence. Be prepared for them to have changed— as you probably have—and begin your courtship again. And if you must complain, do it to your friends at the WI, not your husband.

An interesting meal might perk things up. Rationing was still in force— and would be until the mid-1950s—but that was no excuse for lack of imagination in the kitchen. 'Have you thought of deep-fried whale-meat pasties?' asked Home and Country's increasingly desperate cookery columnist. How about making kebabs out of 1 raw kipper, 1 cauliflower, and lib of Brussels sprouts', or trying a vegetarian menu (in a feature irresistibly entitled 'Going Gay without Meat')? Her piece de resistance, bound to win any

If you must complain, do it to your friends at the WI, not your husband

■ 1111■1=11■ husband's heart, was this recipe combining traditional English cuisine with a touch of the exotic:

Brains and Pineapple

1Ib calves' brains

1 small tin pineapple pieces

Marinade of vinegar, olive oil, parsley, salt and pepper

Batter

Soak the brains for 3 or 4 hours changing the water so as to take away the blood. Take off the skin. Put them in a saucepan with enough tepid water to cover them, a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of vinegar. Poach for 15 minutes... Take out and drain, then cover with the marinade for an hour, spooning it over the brains from time to time. Turn out the pineapple and drain it (use the juice for a sauce or jelly). Drain the brains and put both pineapple and brains in the batter. Fry in spoonfuls of deep fat.

Enjoy.

"Welcome home, darling— the brains and pineapple are in the oven." A British soldier returns from the Second World War

A Force to be Reckoned With: a History of the Women's Institute by Jane Robinson is published by Virago at £20

Books that Changed my Life

Journalist, author and radio scriptwriter

Lynne Truss is best known for her diatribe against misuse of English punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Her Inspector Steine series is back on BBC Radio 4 on October 17 with The Return of Inspector Steine.

MEN A HO HATE WOMEN t THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM DflSINAN1.1<WD

Men Who Hate Women & the Women Who Love Them

by Dr Susan FonNard

I can be a bit sniffy about the self-help genre, but reading this at the end of the Eighties was huge for me. I was a clever girl, but grew up in unenlightened times, unable to express important concepts such as "lack of self-esteem". So when my ex-boyfriend said I was stupid, I felt confused but still believed him. This book did change my life, but not in the way intended. Ideally, it should make one say, "Eureka! I now understand destructive relationships, so I'll have non-destructive ones henceforth!" Instead, I realised I'm rubbish at this relationship stuff, and am better off avoiding it. I don't know. Maybe I should read it again?

The

Style The Times ,2 Style Guide

I first encountered it in the late Seventies, when I worked for a weekly Times supplement. It was a small blue book, softbound, with thick pages, and I miss it greatly. I once lent it to a colleague, and I'm sorry to say she died.

As a young editor, I relied on this book for legislation on spellings and grammar, and on matters such as how Lloyd's (with an apostrophe) was the society of insurance underwriters, while Lloyds (without an apostrophe) was the bank. I loved it. It taught me the difference between "masterful" and "masterly"; also "continuous" and "continual". I studied it for hours, and was happy.

Golden Treasury of Poetry compiled by Louis Untermeyer

At junior school in the Sixties, they encouraged us to learn COL poetry by heart, and I used EMU lid'ou to pore over this wonderful

book in the school library. and with a a...ewary h, I knew this handsome tome LOUISUNTERMEYI1L cost an unimaginable 21 shillings (E1.05), but my mum bought it for my ninth birthday, and no gift has ever brought me more happiness.

I still recall how I felt when I realised it was mine.

I learned long galloping poems like "The Highwayman" from it; also funny short ones by Ogden Nash. I traced the illustrations. It says on the jacket that this anthology was designed to "nourish young minds". It certainly nourished mine. •

Oreck/ s lightest model

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means you can vacuum from room to room, saving time and energy. Fantastic at pet-hair removal, the XL1 upright

vacuum comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Until November 30, 2011, Oreck is offering Reader's

Concertinas urgently wanted by Britain's top specialist

Synopses and sample chapters welcome, please send to:

Austin & Macauley Publishers

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"I won £43,237in less than a fortnight"

Michael Sellwood

Just 11 days after joining Reader's Digest Bingo, Michael scooped the jackpot! He still can't believe his luck ...

YOU COULD BE THE NEXT BIG JACKPOT WINNER!

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When I saw an ad in my Reader's Digest magazine for online bingo, I thought I'd give it a go.

Little did I know that in under a fortnight, I'd have scooped the jackpot!

I love crosswords, puzzles and games, so this was right up my street. Joining up was really simple and there was even a great welcome bonus.

JACKPOT!

On this particular evening, I was playing a couple of different games at once. I was so wrapped up in it, I

Michaelsharedhiswinningswith hisfamily andisstill deciding what to buy for himself!

didn't even notice I'd won the 90 Ball Bingo jackpot of £43,237. When I saw the total amount I had to look twice at the screen. I couldn't believe it ... after all, I'd only been playing for a short time, and I'd even won with my welcome offer!

FLABBERGASTED!

My wife Beryl and I stood there flabbergasted - nothing like this has ever happened to us before. Beryl even had to speak to Reader's Digest Bingo for me on the telephone - I think I was in shock! They verified that it was all true and, amazingly, we received the full amount within 24 hours of winning. With the win I thought I'd do something special, so I treated our four children, but I haven't decided what to do with the rest yet. We might save it for a rainy day.

What began as an ordinary day finished extraordinarily, thanks to Reader's Digest Bingo!

Beat the Puzzleman!

Take our Puzzleman's challenge: answering these five questions occupies just 20 minutes of his time—can you beat him?

1 On each row, place a three-letter word that can be attached to the end of the word to the left and to the start of the word to the right to give a longer word. When done, the initial letters of the threeletter words will give a word associated with Halloween when read vertically. What is it?

3 What should be the value of the fourth column?

2 The sum of each two adjacent squares gives the number above. What number should replace the question mark? I 124 I 32 1 19 I I 9 I I 14 I I 131

In your pocket you have £8.58. It's made up of four different denominations of coins, the largest of which is 50p. There's exactly the same number of each coin. How many of each coin is there, and what are their values?

5 A man walks: north for four miles; west for two miles; south for two miles; west for one mile; south for two miles. In which direction and for how far should he walk to return to his starting point?

So how did you score? A point for every correct answer. Here's the Puzzleman's verdict:

0-2 "Another pretender to the throne vanquished."

3-4 "More practice needed, but the skills are there."

5 "It may be time for me to step aside."

The first correct answer we pick on October 6 wins £50I* Email excerpts@ readersdigest.co.uk. The following letters can be rearranged to give two nineletter words. What are they?

(answer will be published in the November issue)

Answer to September's question: "Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war."

And the winner is... Debbie Scott from Lincolnshire

The small print * Entry is open only to residents of the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland aged 18 or over. It is not open to employees of Vivat Direct Limited (t/a Reader's Digest), its subsidiary companies and all other persons associated with the competition.

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TEST-YOUR-KNOWLEDGE CROSSWORD

ACROSS

1 Exercise that increases the need for oxygen (8)

5 Madman (6)

10 Develop fully (5)

11 Fake (9)

12 Ceaseless, constant (9)

14 Fury (5)

15 Jumped on one leg (6)

18 Get over an illness (7)

21 First name of actor Wallach (3)

22 Armoury (7)

23 Removes filth (6)

26 Respond to a stimulus (5)

28 Republic in Central America (5,4)

31 White gypsum (9)

32 Intended (5)

33 Requiring less effort (6)

34 Greenland caribou (8)

DOWN

1 Scared (6)

2 Greedy or grasping (9)

3 Curves, meanders (5)

4 Country, capital Beijing (5)

6 Slide of snow from a mountainside (9)

7 Sugar frosting (5)

8 In an opposing direction (8)

9 Belonging to the past (8)

13 Institute legal proceedings against (3)

16 Sink in (9)

17 Fragile (8)

19 Expose to fresh air (9)

20 Wedlock (8)

24 Auction item (3)

25 Stocking support (6)

27 Victoria Beckham's former surname (5)

29 Dish out (5)

30 Capital of Jordan (5) •

Find the answers in next month's issue, or online now at readersdigest.co.uk/magazine

DOWN: 1 Tetanus 2 Sunbeam

3 Obsession 4 Nib 5 Bin 6 Borders

7 Impartial 10 Ace 13 Elector 16 Inebriate

18 Landscape 20 Lenient 21 Tedious

22 Element 25 Owe 28 Dye 29 Rap

ACROSS: 1 Teaspoon 5 Bobbin 8 Tennis

9 Bankrupt 11 Name 12 Sweetheart 14 Ass 15 Siam 17 Idealistic 19 Wellington 21 Tile

23 Die 24 Transports 26 Date 27 Lavender

30 At once 31 Kettle 32 Pheasant

Laugh!

WIN £70 FOR EVERY READER'S JOKE WE PUBLISH. EMAIL EXCERPTS@ READERSDIGEST.CO.UK OR GO TO FACEBOOK.COM/READERSDIGESTUK

1 I'd tell you a good chemistry joke, but most of the decent ones argon. Seen on the internet

I I don't want to believe my father was stealing from his job as a lollipop man, but all the signs were there.

Peter Bacanin, Stoke-on-Trent

1 Schredinger's cat walks into a bar`...and doesn't. Seen on the Internet

1 A beggar came to the kitchen door of a restaurant called George and the Dragon.

"Could you spare me some food?" he asked.

"Clear off," roared the

"I'll take your word for it"

cook. "We don't serve beggars here."

The beggar left, but just a few minutes later he was back again.

"What now?" the angry

cook shouted at him. Looking up at the name of the restaurant, he said, "I wonder, could I talk with George this time?"

Andre Harkin, Derry

I THINK I FIGURED OUT WHY I GAINED SO MUCH WEIGHT THIS YEAR. We moved into a new house a year ago, and I just realised there's one more box still left to unpack. A year later! No wonder someone that lazy is gaining weight. Also, the box is labelled, "Lloyd's sports equipment".

Comedian Lloyd Ravn

1 Snakes. They're like bits of rope, only angrier. Columnist Charlie Brooker

1 When I eat out in restaurants I never put a napkin on my lap. Why? Because I believe in myself.

Comedian Hannibal Buress

II The US government said they didn't want Bin Laden's grave to become a shrine for terrorists— but wouldn't that have been a great way to catch terrorists?

Comedian Glenn Wool

What happened to the spare "L" in Travelodge?

COmedian Henry Paker

I I have no concept of when the right time to start drinking is, but then I only ever drink in Wetherspoon's pubs.

Comedian Holly Walsh

1 I admire these phone hackers. I think they have a lot of patience. I can't even be bothered to check my own voicemails.

Comedian Andrew Lawrence ►

The same supermarkets are popping up everywhere now, Lidl by Lidl

Comedian Parvez Anwar, by Twitter

LITTLE EPIPHANIES

# 6:

Comedian Alun Cochrane inhabits a daydreamy world of surreal realisations and whimsy. This is his monthly moment of revelation I must get better at doing my paperwork. "Yes dear, I'll sort out the pet insurance," I said, and I meant it.

But a month went by and I still hadn't done it. The whippet we'd bought—yes, a whippet, and yes, in the north of England, and yes, to save you asking, I do also wear a flat cap, and no, I do not do any of the above things with irony, I just do them—anyway, while I was away from home for work, the whippet was out of sorts and required an X-ray and blood tests that cost nearly as much as she did. (Frank Skinner, with whom I was working, pointed out that an X-ray for a whippet seems a costly version of holding it up to a sunny window.)

Sadly the not-covered-by-the-insurance-because-I-wastardy-with-the-admin vet bill is my problem, and I had to stump up the cash.

My wife and son were not amused when I quipped that, had the vet bill exceeded the dog's initial cost, we'd have had to put her down instead. "Best quit while we're ahead, before we all get too attached to her," I said. They cried a bit, and I made a mental note to not repeat this gag to anyone. The dog's fine, but I really am trying to get better at admin.

TERRIBLE

What's the worst advice you could give a gullible visitor on their first trip to the UK?

Twitter users collaborated to make the following mischievous list.

■ British wine is now considered among the best in the world. If invited to a dinner party, a bottle of Buckfast would make an ideal gift.

■ When addressing a police officer it is considered polite to refer to them as a "nonce".

■ When meeting someone for the first time in Britain, a polite greeting is to enquire, "How much do you earn?" •

■ Camping in the UK can be fun and rewarding. It's useful to remember that all cemeteries in Britain double as campsites. And it's free!

■ If travelling by car to London, follow signs to the M25 and keep going. It'll take you directly to the centre of the city.

■ When staying in the capital, you may have the misfortune to encounter a "Pearly King". These are notorious gangland bosses. Give them your wallet.

■ Plan your journeys between the hours of 4.30pm and 6.30pm. The Tube has plenty of capacity for large luggage.

■ London cab drivers have "the knowledge", which means they know every street, person and car in London. Go on, ask them.

FOREVER YOUNG

Irina Werning's photography series Back to the Future shows participants recreating childhood snaps. Irina's now working with funding site kickstarter.com to take the project to Japan —expect more strange and charming results! •

1 I went to buy some chinos and said to the woman, "I'm looking for some chinos." She said, "What leg?" I said, "Both."

Comedian Tom Deacon

1 I'm not saying I'm on TV a lot but, during an argument, my daughter tried to put me on mute.

Comedian Phill Jupitus

1 Wordsearches are all well and good, but dot-to-dot puzzles are where I draw the line. Seen on the internet

1 Drive-thru McDonald's was more expensive than I thought. Once you've hired the car...

Comedian Tim Keys

1 Due to the economy, profiteroles will now be called deficiteroles.

Comedian Tom Webb

60-Second Stand-Up

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dave Gorman

FAVOURITE JOKE?

There's some Morecambe and Wise stuff that I just adore. The first joke is, "What do you get if you cross a cocker spaniel and a poodle? A cock-a-doodle-do"—which is awful, but they tell it so well the audience laughs. Then, they both turn to the camera and say, "And if you think about that one, it doesn't make sense."

FUNNIEST HECKLE DURING

ONE OF YOUR SHOWS?

Years ago, there was a boy I'd been at school with in the audience. He'd had a couple of drinks. I'm a twin, and he shouted, "You're not as funny as your twin brother was at school." I turned round and said, "Oh, is that you, Steve? Yeah, what was funnier about him, then?" He said, "Well, Dave was just funnier, wasn't he?" So it turned out he was heckling my brother Nick, who wasn't there.

FAVOURITE TV COMEDY?

Peep Show— particularly the episode in which Jeremy wets himself at Mark's wedding. It made me lose control.

Dave Gorman is on tour until November 30. For details, see davegorman.com

1 I forgot to go to the gym today. That's ten years in a row now, then! Seen on the internet

FAVOURITE PART OF YOUR OWN MATERIAL?

A bit of material from my last tour. I'd say, "Unlike a lot of comedians these days, I don't hAve a catchphrase...What don't I have?" Often, some of the audience just laughed, and some of the audience instinctively answered back, "A catchphrase"—and then the people who'd said it would laugh in embarrassment. But when it was perfect was when the whole audience fell into the trap; none had got the joke yet, and as they said it, they understood. When that happened, and you had a thousand people all, as one, being very silly, it was so funny to watch. ■

Beat the Cartoonist!

WIN £100 AND A SIGNED ILLUSTRATION

Think of a witty caption for this picture and you could beat the experts at their own game. The three best suggestions will be posted on our website in mid-October alongside an anonymous caption from our professional cartoonist. Visitors can choose their favourite—and if your entry gets the most votes, you'll receive £100 and the original, signed drawing. Submit to captions@readers digest.co.uk or the address on p4 by October 10. Enter and vote online at readersdigest.co.uk/caption. We'll announce the winner in our December issue. ■

AUGUST'S WINNER

In what can only be described as a thrashing, reader S N Bowry's winning caption—"He agreed we should provide accommodation for my mother"—proved three times more popular than cartoonist Royston Robertson's effort, "Tut! Men and their sheds, eh?", which came fourth.

SCOREBOARD READERS 20 CARTOONISTS 11

IN NEXT MONTH'S ISSUE...

What's Julie Walters doing in the dock?

Saving Thailand's elephants

Spy gadgets: the next generation

The Best of British... cakes (yum!)

Victoria Hislop, Jack Vettriano

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