Now don’t worry – Jackie has no teeth.” I said, “Mr DeMille, I don’t even want to be gummed!” I did not do the stunt.Despite the film’s success, subsequent roles for Mature were not distinguished – they included the Grable musical Wabash Avenue (1950), a thriller The Las Vegas Story (1952) with Jane Russell, a dull transcription of Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (1953) with Jean Simmons, and a romantic comedy with Simmons, Affair With A Stranger (1953). Mature later described his co-star Hedy Lamarr as “not exactly a ball of fire – she just seemed to be loping along”. The film was an enormous hit though critically dismissed, Groucho Marx famously quipping, “I don’t like any movie where the leading man’s chest is bigger than the leading lady’s.” Mature had one major disagreement with his director:DeMille came up to me and said, “Victor my boy, we’re ready to do the scene where you fight the lion We have a real lion, but he’s very tame, a sweet old lion His name is Jackie. Time magazine said, “Mature apparently needed nothing all this time but the right kind of role.” Robert Siodmak’s Cry of the City (1948) was another fine thriller in which Mature was a cop who has to hunt down his former childhood friend.The following year Mature had his best remembered role in Cecil B DeMille’s spectacular Samson and Delilah (1949).

Mr Mature’s face is a basilisk, his eyes look inward; in detail of manner and appearance he successfully suggests the desperate remittance-man.Henry Hathaway’s Kiss Of Death (1947) starred Mature as a thief who collaborates with the police in order to get out of prison. The critic Richard Griffith wrote,Mature is hardly an obvious choice for the role of a tubercular gunman concealing under silken menace his despair at the loss of a Boston medical career But the performance comes off amazingly. He returned to the screen as the tubercular “Doc” Holliday in John Ford’s great western My Darling Clementine (1946) and received some of the best reviews of his career. “I told them, `Hell, I’m no actor and I’ve got 28 pictures and a scrapbook of reviews to prove it.’ “With America’s entry into the Second World War, Mature served 14 months of active duty prior to being cast in the service revue Tars and Spars. I picked this racket and I love it.” Later he would delight in telling of his attempt to join a country club that did not permit actors. “Directors and actors who make films with one eye cocked on the Academy Award dismiss me as ham, uncured and uncurable,” he once said, “and scripters find it hard to resist the temptation to take a poke at me by writing cute little scenes in which I am supposed to cavort as a strong boy of sorts But don’t get me wrong.

(In both this film and Song of the Islands Mature’s singing voice was dubbed.)In all four films, he played cocky, self-confident heroes, but the actor displayed throughout his career an engaging degree of self-deprecating humour. He then made four musicals, all released in 1942: Song of the Islands and Footlight Serenade, both with Grable, Seven Days Leave, with Lucille Ball, and My Gal Sal, with Rita Hayworth. He was described in the show as “the most beautiful hunk of man you ever saw in your life”, and his performance brought him a contract with 20th Century-Fox.After playing opposite Betty Grable in Bruce Humberstone’s entertaining mystery I Wake Up Screaming (1941), he was loaned to United Artists to portray the Arab lover of a gambling den-owner, Madame Gin Sling, in Joseph von Sternberg’s heavily sanitised version of the stage drama The Shanghai Gesture (1941). After two more films, Mature took a role on Broadway as one of the men in the life of a fashion magazine editor (Gertrude Lawrence) in the hit musical Lady in the Dark (1941).

Pausing in the middle of a document which I was typing, I sat back, closed my eyes and pressed into the base of my skull with my index fingers to relieve the headache that was building there. It’s not appropriate behaviour in a man you’ve known for three days.Today, I knew for certain that this is not just a figment of my imagination. Compliments: “You look nice today”; “Mmm, like the perfume”; “Lovely blouse Is it silk?” Innocuous things on the surface Things that you can only politely reply “thanks” to. But once Dirty Boss knows you’ll be passive about that, the Looks begin: part sly, part naughty little boy, part big, bad wolf. It’s amazing how a compliment about your blouse becomes something else when it’s addressed directly at your breasts. I thought: “Well, good bosses want to know about their employees.”And then, the small things started.

Physical proximity: leaning over you at your desk to point out corrections; the hand pressed into the small of the back as he follows you through a door; the finger-brush to remove imaginary fluff from your shoulder. It was a pleasant but dull occasion in a local pub but I noticed that he asked a lot of questions such as whether I have a boyfriend, who do I live with and what do I like to do in the evenings. Greg is very good at playing Nice Boss and is scrupulous about behaving himself in front of other people. It would be hard to draw attention to things that are happening when no one’s around to see it Perhaps I’ve brought this on myself, but I don’t think so. He asked me if I wanted to go to lunch on my first day, and I was delighted; it’s not often that anyone includes the temp in extra-curriculars.

I don’t look to take offence, I don’t believe in starchy formality between the genders. But there’s familiarity and then there’s over-familiarity, and I have a feeling that Dirty Boss is about to step over the line.Dirty Boss – whose name is Greg and who sports a Richard Madeley hairstyle – is skilled at his art; it took me three or four days to have my amusement replaced with unease. The sexual bully is a sneaky type who tests the water until he has established a dominance that his target, unwittingly, has contributed to.
God knows, I’m not a keep-your-distance type. The thing is, it usually starts so innocuously that, by the time it’s become distressing, you’ve already conceded so much ground that it’s hard to turn and fight. I’ve heard tales from other temps about the gropes behind the filing cabinet, the wandering eyes, the petty threats, but this is, amazingly, the first time I’ve encountered it in the flesh. So putting him in charge of someone who has no track record with the company and no employment rights is like putting a bull in a pen with a toddler dressed in a red romper suit. Dirty Boss, you see, is more interested in the power kick than a sexual thrill.

Until Jerry, we never thought we could open our mouths, or do anything except breathe Jerry made us be those people.”This is no exaggeration. He kept the Sharks and Jets apart during rehearsals to build tension and rivalry, and incited people into real fights “He asked questions about our characters. He taught dancers to do unbelievable things that none of us had ever had the chance to do before. If he told me to jump off the roof, land on my left foot and take two steps forward, I would do it.

No one did a thing to stop him.”OK,” says Rivera, “there are some rough stories, but there are also stories out there that are lies I loved and adored him. Carol Lawrence, the original Maria, remembers him as only ever working through public humiliation.One famous rehearsal story tells of Robbins addressing the company, who watched as he backed off the stage and fell into the orchestra pit. “Remember, those were the days when you finished a show with the girls on the boys’ shoulders singing a great big “O-kla-homa!!”Even just listening to the astonishing original album of West Side Story gives you a vivid impression of Rivera’s impact, much of which she credits to the legendary director/ choreographer Jerome Robbins This puts her in a minority Robbins’s bloodied enemies far outnumber his friends. So was it really such a good idea? “Look, if you can do Spiderwoman, you can make anything into a musical.”Still, as she admits, she read West Side Story, looked at the end, and – “there’s this dead body being carried out”, and thought it would never work. Rivera later asked Jerry Herman to try it, but that too never happened. She played the lead role in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo, in a converted synagogue in New Orleans.”The audience were so close, phew.

My previous PA role was at the British Standards Institution where new products, from plugs to windows, are tested before they’re allowed on to the market. Routledge’s stone-faced Bracknell works some hilarious variations on this trick, as she perfectly paces the dowager’s mounting horror at the gradual disclosure of Jack’s unacceptable origins. This involves clamping the eyelids shut and averting the cheek, as if struck, in a majestically martyred manner that suggests a soul too refined for the sordid traffic of the world. Her forte is for what middle-aged fans of Coronation Street will recognise as the “Annie Walker gambit”. Godley has a smart line in understated physical comedy – little sudden gestures, such as his seizing a croquet mallet, like some would-be dashing duellist, when confronted with Algernon’s treachery in the country – which deliciously emphasise his hapless ineffectuality.So upholstered that she resembles a piece of overstuffed mobile furniture, Patricia Routledge is a rather subdued but generally persuasive Lady Bracknell.

In the great genteel bitching-contest with Cecily, Wickham is given a real run for her money by the splendid Rebecca Johnson who, in her engaging show of girlish sugariness, is every bit as sweet as strychnine. The young men – Alan Cox’s pert, puppyish Algernon playing beautifully off Adam Godley’s very funny Jack, who is like some leggy lugubrious waterbird – are a match for the female pair. From the moment she enters with an indomitable glint in her eye and the announcement that she intends “to develop in many directions”, Saskia Wickham’s wittily redoubtable Gwendolen lets you see that Jack is underestimating badly when he wonders whether this heavenly creature may, “in about 150 years”, become like Lady B, her mother. She’ll have completed the transformation and exceeded her in a year, tops.Attired in an outfit drolly reminiscent of the armour-plated maternal style, this Gwendolen surveys Jack’s manor-house garden with lemon-flower smiles and lethal disapproval, as though nature constituted an unforgivable social solecism, and she thinks nothing of skewering roses with the tip of a disdainful parasol. It’s a refreshingly “straight” account of this incomparable comedy. The subversive subtext is allowed to gleam through the poised, dextrous delivery of Wilde’s artificial wit, instead of being “outed” and dumped on the stage in the shape of ostentatiously decadent trappings like the hookahs and oriental cushions that perved up Algernon’s flat in one version or by the reinvention of Lady Bracknell as a drag turn.
It’s also a production in which youth scampers away with the honours.

(See the Salman Rushdie row, passim.)The problem with the Levitt-Donahue hypothesis isn’t what they reportedly say. But this doesn’t mean that Jensen and Eysenck had no right to say what they did. Arguments, however difficult, should be conducted openly and in public They can then be stood up – or shot down This is what tolerance means Any fool can tolerate what he agrees with The test is to tolerate what you dislike, or even hate. So did the psychologist Hans Eysenck, when he spelt out Jensen’s arguments in Britain. Admittedly, there were all kinds of problems with these studies. A generation later there would be much more agreement, based on studies of twins, that a very great deal of potential intelligence is inherited.Arguments about any racial link would remain as contentious as ever. But hackles rise at anything that seems to deny all citizens’ God-given right perpetually to make and remake themselves.

On this interpretation, everyone is born as a tabula rasa, a blank sheet on which the future has still to be written.Arthur Jensen, in the United States, ran into a hail of anger when he tried to explain the perceived failure of the Sixties Head Start schools programme in terms of a race-IQ link. In the United States, there has generally been no such proscription of research. If they are prevented from being born, then you have cut down on crime.In Soviet Russia, the concept that everything, but everything, could be environmentally determined led to dogmatic lunacies, under Stalin and after him, which wrecked Soviet biological research This was done in the name of all-powerful Communism. In the United States especially, anything that implies that genes are more important than environment is guaranteed to cause an explosion.

The Levitt-Donahue hypothesis relies on the thought that criminals are born, not made. But I put these provisos in, because it’s always essential to know what a study really says, not what it is reported to say.We know this, most recently, from the skewed debate about what Dr Pusztai at Aberdeen University did, or did not, find out about genetically modified crops. Nor would I put any bets on the Levitt-Donahue hypothesis halting any attacks on abortion clinics. The swiftest way to bring the crime rates down, I reasoned, would be to take a large slice of the drugs offences out of the courts.I cannot claim that the argument, however libertarian, won the day. Mrs Thatcher, I noted then, had been elected on a crime-cutting ticket. Secondly, it’s unclear from the reports whether tying abortion to lower crime rates may not just be a hyper-subtle (and perhaps misguided) defence of abortion, which is a far more disputatious policy in the United States than it is in Britain.It could, after all, be a neat way to put the knee-jerk far right on the spot: which is worse – abortion or crime? I remember using a similar technique in the Eighties, to argue for reform of the drugs laws. First, this study – which no one, I think, on this side of the Atlantic, has clapped eyes on – hasn’t appeared in any academic journal, and hasn’t even been submitted to one, allegedly because of its controversial nature.

Anyone can see that it would require some very close reasoning. Years later, the potential criminals were not around to do the crimes; they had gone up in smoke in the clinic incinerator.Before you throw up your hands, remember two things. Poor and/ or ethnic minority young mothers, whose children might be expected to turn to crime, didn’t continue their pregnancies. In Michael Howard’s words, “prison works”, in the sense that, when you are in jail, you can’t be committing any crimes on the street.But abortion? Professor Steve Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, and John Donahue, a Stanford University professor of law, reportedly say that, in the early Nineties, 15 per cent of the fall in crime in some parts of the United States was due to the Seventies legalisation of abortion. Some economists link the fall to the United States’ amazing continued prosperity, which helps to explain President Clinton’s good showing in opinion polls – notably among black Americans – come hell, high water or Monica.

Happily, it seemed to me, theatre had shrugged off that phase.
There was another spectre lurking in the wings, too: history as theme park. Back then it was fashionable to bring theatre to the community, empowering people with a sense of their own history, and the ones that couldn’t act could do the costumes. Unsexy adjectives like “worthy” and “interesting” swam about me. I had flashbacks of a video I had seen of a friend’s community play where a lugubrious procession of Crucible-type extras trailed around a shopping centre singing songs about the local brewing industry

The impulse seemed at least 20 years out of date. WHEN THE RSC asked me if I would be interested in writing a play inspired by the history of village life in Warwickshire since the First World War, the answer that sprang to mind was “no”.

After all, with Henry V this “wooden O” became “a national place, a natural forum” for a debate about nationhood.`Augustine’s Oak’, Globe, London SE1 (0171-401 9919) in rep.The author is arts editor of `The Times Educational Supplement’. “There is a destructive side to human nature which uses religion for its own ends. When I was writing, I felt that the argument was a bit like Unionists and Republicans viewed through the screen of history.”Whether or not he welcomes the comparison, this viewpoint clearly aligns him with Shakespeare. The pagan Ethelbert and his Christian wife are deeply divided by their religious differences. Rather than Bede’s assumption that Tata is a Christian from birth, Oswald suggests that she is so distressed by the way religion affects her parents’ marriage that she resists conversion.Although he is a practising Christian himself, Oswald is all too aware of the negative part religion sometimes plays. Anglo-Saxon is rendered in conversational prose, Latin in verse, with the Welsh bishops employing a language, in Oswald’s words, “wilder and more mythological while the Romans are more urbanised and don’t rant about dragons and poison”.The oak of the title is a meeting place where Augustine holds a synod with the Celts to discuss their outdated practices and persuade them into the Roman fold.

The plot involves three main groups: the visitors from Rome led by Augustine, who clearly feel they are on the outskirts of civilisation; the Saxons, especially King Ethelbert, his wife Bertha, and their daughter, Tata, and the Welsh Christians with their echoes of Druidism.A play mainly in verse with a Christian theme might seem, in 1999, despite its millennial timeliness, so brave an experiment as to be foolhardy, but this is no tract and the language is never inaccessible. An epic subject – St Augustine’s mission to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in 597 and the conflicts between the Romanised Christians and the older Celtic ones, and between pagans and converts – allowing for plenty of action,including fights and visions, as well as more intimate interaction between characters.Oswald has kept fairly closely to his source, but, like Shakespeare, he has invented storylines and introduced a “clown”. Lilla is a historical character, but Oswald transforms him into someone whose earthy or satirical responses relieve the seriousness of debate. (His Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards was presented at the National in 1996 and he has translated Racine’s Phedre and Schiller’s Don Carlos.) Like the author of Julius Caesar and Henry V, who drew on historical sources – Plutarch and the Chronicles of Holinshed and Edward Hall in those cases – he has turned to an earlier text, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

Peter Oswald, an Oxford graduate in his early thirties, is, of course, quick to avoid direct comparison with Shakespeare, but Augustine’s Oak bears striking parallels in conception to the plays of his predecessor.
“I was writing for the Globe in the present moment and, like most writers, I shy away from taking Shakespeare as a model, but I like to think I came to similar conclusions when faced with that space.” Aware that there was “so much ground to break”, he put himself at the disposal of the Globe and obligingly went through seven or eight drafts, working closely with his director, Tim Carroll.Oswald naturally chooses heightened language, often verse, as his medium. Now, 400 years after the Lord Chamberlain’s Men launched the first new play there, (possibly Julius Caesar), a 20th-century playwright has accepted the challenge to meet very similar demands at the reconstructed Globe. The playhouse for which he was scribbling in 1593 was the Rose, but the Globe, built in 1599, made similar demands: a space that required a strong, possibly epic, narrative, with not much to help in the way of effects; a stage that put the actors in close proximity to their audience and an audience that included all levels of society, from the poor and illiterate groundling to the classically-educated aristocrat. But it would be understandable if he had struggled to produce plays to order.

Perhaps you should raise your game, play safe and make the target pounds 10 million…. Where exactly are they?

The eight major islands that make up the State of Hawaii lie smack in the middle of the Pacific, 2,500 miles south-west of the rest of the United States, and part of a 122-island archipelago strung in a 1,500-mile arc across the Pacific.
The islands are the tips of a chain of giant volcanoes that began forming along a split in the earth’s crust 25 million years ago. Most are extinct, but the youngest islands are still growing (Kilauea on the Big Island has been erupting for the last 14 years) and there is even a new island growing 30 miles south-east of Kilauea, although Loihi is still 10,000 feet below the sea.Of the eight isles, Kauai, Maui, Oahu, Lanai, Molokai and the Big Island (Hawaii) are open for business to visitors. What kind of pension annuity would that buy you in today’s terms?The answer is, it would get you an income worth just pounds 10,000 a year in today’s money Not exactly a jackpot to look forward to. Say you are aged 25 today and on a salary of pounds 25,000 pa. If you invest pounds 300 per month at nine per cent you will get your million at age 60.

But you will be hit by the costs of insurance, storage, and no income.The sting in the tale is, a million won’t be worth what it is today when you do hit 60, even in an era of low inflation. You get no income so, overall, you get “a pretty awful return” Mr Tracey says.How about great works of art? Railplan, the old British Rail pension fund, had a go at investing in paintings in the 1970s, and didn’t do too badly. We believe the high inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s was an anomaly.”With factors such as Internet commerce and globalisation driving down inflation, you should be looking at investments which will grow in value despite low inflation, he says.What about gold? Again, a great hedge against inflation, but not so useful while price rises are low. “Residential property has been a good hedge against inflation over the last 30 years – but you would probably still have done better with equities.

Page & Moy (0870 010 6456), for example, has 14-night, three-island deals from pounds 1,279, and Kuoni (01306 742888) offers a 14-night, four-island Hawaiian Explorer package from pounds 1,318.For written information about accommodation in Hawaii, contact the Hawaii Visitors’ and Convention Bureau in London (0181-941 4009): Alternatively, visit: www.gohawaii .Who’s this Duke fellow?If Hawaii has a national hero, it is Duke Kahanamoku, a surfer. You can find private and rental agencies and get a good view of properties on the Internet (try: www.hawaii-vacation-homes /accommodations).If you would rather travel as part of a package, Air New Zealand (0181- 741 2299) has a “Pacific Islands Go As You Please” brochure that includes Oahu from pounds 23 per person, per night, but many of the major tour operators also offer multi-island packages. Although they seem pricey at first glance, they can work out to be good value if you are travelling with a family or group of friends. More homely options include a good selection of B&Bs (mainly inland).

You can find an excellent directory of accommodation at www.accommodations.gohawaii which has an online database where you tailor your search to fit your requirements.There is also a growing number of an array of self-catering properties for rent, including some fantastic oceanfront houses. Although quite strenuous and with some alarming drops, your efforts are rewarded with stunning views.It is real edge-of-the-world stuff, spoilt only by the relentless clattering whine of helicopter tours buzzing in and around the cliffs.What about those beaches?Most of us don’t want to spend our entire holiday hiking, camping or indeed charging around the sights and, unsurprisingly, the islands cater well for those who just want to relax on the sand.Most of the major hotel chains are here, along with vast resorts, blocks of condos and a network of hostels. There are also excellent hiking and cycling excursions into the Waimea Canyon, a kind of baby Grand Canyon.If you aren’t equipped to camp, there are also some fantastic day hikes spidering out from the Kokee State Park Headquarters that will take you down to the Na Pali coast. If you’ve got time, there are some superb overnight trails with simple campsites along the way.Consistently rated as Hawaii’s most spectacular, the Kalalau Trail clings to the huge, deeply furrowed cliffs along a 13-mile stretch of the Na Pali coast.

“But more out to prove how important Davis Cup really is to me, because some people think that it’s not so important to me.
“This is the biggest win of my life so far. That’s when I knew it was going to be a good day for me and hopefully for the team.”
Philippoussis, who has not always been the happiest of campers in the Australian squad, had rarely looked so pleased with an afternoon’s work “I’m sort of out to prove something,” he said. “I felt there were 10,000 Fanatics out there and maybe 1,000 French,” Philippoussis said “It was perfect I couldn’t wait to get on court. “I felt very calm out there,” he said, “surprisingly calm, to be quite honest.”
Philippoussis was one of the few calm people in the arena, such was the passion generated for this first-ever Davis Cup final between two nations who have contributed so much to the tradition of the event.
A customary French industrial strike, this time involving firemen and public transport, made the din outside the Acropolis Expositions Complex almost as noisy as inside the arena, which took some doing as a crowd of 10,000 warmed to the occasion.
There was a harp on the court, creating the illusion of a tennis heaven, and the music of the Nice Symphony Orchestra and the singing of the choir of the Nice Opera provided a moving opening ceremony, after which the spectators took over the vocals.
Australia was strongly represented by a hearty gathering of “The Fanatics”, a band of supporters who matched the home crowd chant for chant. “I played some solid tennis.” Grosjean knew what he had to do, too, but he was not capable of executing his shots with the ferocity of his opponent, in addition to which, Grosjean’’s forehand continued to misfire.

It put him in trouble again at 2-2, 15-30, and undid him completely on the third break point of that game.
After that, Philippoussis was able to bide his time. Apart from the odd careless shot, Philippoussis remained on course, breaking a second time for 5-2, Grosjean netting another forehand on the third break point.
“I knew what I had to do,” Philippoussis said. Two forehand errors cost Grosjean the set, Philippoussis breaking for 5-4 and serving out after 40 minutes for the loss of only one more point.
So far, both players had taken their opportunities – three break points, three breaks of serve – and when Philippoussis hit the far line with a forehand at 30-30 in the opening game of the second set, Grosjean obliged with another forehand error.
Once Philippoussis had saved two break points in the second game, Grosjean struggled to survive, realising, point by point, that his prospects of hurting the Australian were limited and that he would have to rely on the Melbourne “Scud” self-destructing. Grosjean converted, making lively strides to flick a winning forehand half-volley across the court.

On that occasion Grosjean was able to at least win the opening set of a best-of-three contest. Yesterday, the Frenchman began to fade after failing to make more of his fightback in the first set.
Two double faults in the third game were indicative of Grosjean’s nervous start, Philippoussis capitalising with a backhand pass down the line and then luring Grosjean into a forehand error; one of many the Frenchman was to commit.
A break down so soon, Grosjean was relieved that Philippoussis also played a tentative service game, double-faulting twice, the second time for break point. But Forget, having stood by Grosjean, the man in possession, was too busy preparing Pioline for his contest against Lleyton Hewitt, the 18-year-old Australian No 2, to indulge in hindsight.
Grosjean had done his best to cope with Philippoussis’ power, just as he did when they met for the first time at the Monte Carlo Open in April. The Australian No 1 secured the opening rubber, 6-4, 6-2, 6-4, after one hour and 57 minutes.
Almost immediately there were murmurings that Forget ought to have selected the taller, in-form Nicolas Escude to share the responsibility in the singles with Cedric Pioline.

Guy Forget, the French captain, made a clenched-fist gesture to the home supporters as he walked on to the indoor clay court here yesterday side by side with his No 2 player, Sebastien Grosjean, before the opening match of the centenary Davis Cup final.

Then, as Forget took his courtside seat, the diminutive Grosjean was pummelled by his towering opponent, Mark Philippoussis. Guy Forget, the French captain, made a clenched-fist gesture to the home supporters as he walked on to the indoor clay court here yesterday side by side with his No 2 player, Sebastien Grosjean, before the opening match of the centenary Davis Cup final. His best year was 1992, when he reached six finals and a career-high No 11 on the ATP Tour rankings.. The pain and restricted mobility persisted, limiting him to 10 events for the year.
Washington underwent additional surgery in November 1998, but was able to play just two tournaments this year, losing in the first round both times.
In his career, Washington won four titles and reached 13 ATP Tour finals. He played just four more tournaments that spring and did not return until January 1998. “You want to go out when you think it’s time, not when you can’t play because of pain that doesn’t let you perform at the level you need to perform.”
Seven months after reaching the Wimbledon final, Washington suffered a seemingly minor injury to his left knee during a Davis Cup victory over Gustavo Kuerten in Brazil, helping the United States team reach the quarter-finals.
However, the injury lingered, curtailing his season.

Mr Martin put together some sample figures (see table). But can you make a million without subjecting yourself to the terrors of the television studio? We asked investment expert Simon Martin, a research actuary with AON Consulting, to work out how you could be a millionaire by 60, with saving and investing. Chris Tarrant has caught the national imagination with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ITV. He paid pounds 7 per night at the McLeod Street Youth Hostel in Cairns.Cairns contacts: Flecker Botanic Gardens: Collins Avenue; Royal Flying Doctor Service, 1 Junction Street; Whitfield Range Environmental Park, entrance on Collins Avenue; Red Ochre Grill, 43 Shields Street, Cairns.For more information on Australia contact the Australian Tourism Commission, Gemini House, 10-18 Putney Hill, London, SW15 or call 09068 633235 (50p/ min)for a brochure. The meat served in this modern Australian bistro was exquisitely tender and tasty, washed down with a venerable Shiraz that complemented the young flesh.No wonder that wallaby – let’s call him Swampy – looked so scared.Simon Calder paid pounds 931 for a curious itinerary to Cairns and back, via Madras, Mumbai, Singapore, Darwin, Jakarta and Feltham, booked through Quest Worldwide (0181-547 3322). I wandered into town past the backpackers’ hostel and sheltered from the rain under the awning of the Red Ochre Restaurant.

This imported species flourishes so well in Queensland that it can afford to have members flattened by the million on the highway. The creature even takes revenge from beyond the Tarmac grave: animals and birds tempted to treat the two-dimensional toad as carrion find out to their cost that the amphibian has a poisonous gland.None of which could temper a hunger induced by a day in the Outback. This whole surreal scene is made all the stranger by the occasional roar of a stray Boeing, and a series of sickening squelches.These turn out to be the fatal interaction between cars speeding along the airport road and cane toads. The mud is punctuated by “pencil roots”, sticks that allow the plants to breathe something other than saline solution, and “knee roots” that lope in double-joints along the surface while crabs scuttle sideways. But this is real mangrove swamp, as the slender trunks reveal. They are clad in fleshy bark that dries to a porcelain white because of the salt sucked in from the seawater that washes over them.Among the two dozen species of mangrove are some which sweat salt through their leaves and others which rise from a squabble of roots to form the arboreal equivalent of flying buttresses.

Cairns airport has gone one better, by creating a Swamp Trail.This does not involve tunnelling beneath the runway, but a raised boardwalk that sends you hovering three feet above the sort of gunk you find when runways are being gouged out of fields. The bouncing, bulbous creature responsible was a swamp wallaby, enjoying The Wet more than the rest of us. But he looked more frightened of me than me of him.At the Abta convention, the Manchester Airport people were joking about asking the environmental protester Swampy to open the new runway. The silly portion comprises Northern Exhausts and O’Brien Windscreens, two of the more prominent members of a motor trade that is sprinkled along Captain Cook Highway.Beyond them, man and nature tussle over the mangrove swamp that thinks it’s an airport.