For 40 years it has been sending holidaymakers to the sun from the suburbs; Cosmos is based in Bromley.This week, Mr Wright’s company claimed to have broken the mould of the traditional brochure (you can see the cover on page 8). “I thought I had come up trumps, only to be told that the so-called free flights were going to be allocated on a random basis and that I could purchase flights for pounds 60 No amount of arguing would change their mind. What a disappointment.”Tony Camacho says the culprit was a story in another newspaper that misleadingly said the first 500 callers would get a pair of free tickets. “Also, the story failed to mention that taxes were extra, so it took us a while to explain all that to callers. We in fact ended up giving away more than the required number of tickets.”Richard Madge of Sussex was not one of the lucky winners.

“Maybe in revenge for the football tickets fiasco the Scots just weren’t giving them away to anybody with an English accent,” he speculates.NIGEL WRIGHT seems a nice chap. “We had a deluge of calls, as you’d expect”, says Tony Camacho of Buzz, “And they started earlier than we’d anticipated.”
The confusion ranked alongside the telephonic chaos surrounding tickets for the England-Scotland match. After halk an hour of jabbing the redial buttons on three phones, I finally spoke to an operator at the Buzz call centre in Glasgow. “We were inundated with calls,” he told me, “and the free tickets disappeared instantly.”Sharon Berger e-mails to say that she got through on the dot of seven.

The purpose: to maximise the chances of getting through to the new no-frills airlines Buzz, which had promised to give away 250 pairs of tickets in the first hour after the phone lines opened at 7am. I set the alarm for five to seven, GMT, and dreamt of trading off an inflated phone bill against a cheap trip to Vienna, Milan or Paris. (In fact, each passenger had to pay tax and miscellaneous airline expenses, but pounds 25 return from Stansted is still an excellent deal.) Plenty of other people thought so too, including hundreds who neglected to put the clocks back when British Summer Time ended on Saturday night. CALL ME sad, but I spent a couple of hours last Saturday re-wiring the phones at home to make it possible to make three calls at once.

I didn’t used to be like this about my appearance. Back in the Forties and Fifties, before I became a zoologist, I was an artist.

I caught the tail end of the surrealist movement and my clothing was very extravagant for the period, which was rather dour. If you want to find the least colourful, least imaginative clothes, go into any laboratory. The point is, a scientist isn’t interested in himself, he’s interested in what is happening in front of him in his experiments, in his observations Look at Bill Gates. If I didn’t know who he was and I met him, I’d think he’d come to repair my computer, not that he ran the world’s largest software firm. This is a very important change, historically: information about people’s status in society is transmitted not by their clothing any more but by our knowledge of them through the media. My wife can’t get me to buy new clothes – she has to fight to get me to go to a clothing shop I spend more money on old books It dates back to when I became a scientist You just begin to dress like a boffin.

Car hire costs from 1,000 rupees (pounds 24) a day from ABC rental (00 230 242 8957). Provided I’m washed and shaved, that’s all that really matters to me about my appearance. Unable to resist a peek inside, we stumbled through the trail of incense to find giant papier- mache Hindu gods blazing out in striking primary colours.Chris Caldicott paid pounds 954 (Worldwide Journeys, 0171-381 8638) for a return flight on British Airways from London Heathrow to Mauritius via Nairobi, and seven nights’ half-board accommodation at La Residence (00 230 401 8888), a new hotel on a fine east-coast beach. We drove back via Poste de Flacq, on the other side of the island. As if to prove us wrong, just as we were lamenting the lack of cultural attractions we spotted the offshore Hindu temple, linked to the island by a causeway. The bulbous building was painted pure white and surrounded by deep blue water. The climate here is noticeably hotter than at the casuarina-fringed beaches of the east coast and, in the heat, we regretted making a special detour to the overpriced and rather dull tourist stop that is Eureka House, an old colonial building set on a hill above the town.

The limits on how much you can save are already only half those which applied to PEPS and Tessas combined Many people had both. That is only half what you could claim on PEPS and the concession will come “under review” in three years time – probably a euphemism for killing it off. But gains from rising share prices will probably still remain free of capital gains tax. Managers can still get 10 per cent tax relief on dividends coming into their funds, boosting your eventual returns.

But most plans which were tax free under the last government now offer only shrunken tax benefits under this one – and they are due to shrink further. If you still have an existing Personal Equity Plan or are saving via a Tessa, you are doing far better then you would with an ISA – an Individual Savings Account Admittedly pensions still offer big tax concessions But even they are not what they were

ISAs are the best available choice on flexible savings. This is a specialist site solely devoted to online investing in equities and offers a guide to the available broking services.Use Hemmington Scott’s hemscott as an Internet service provider and you get access to the company’s price data, financial information database and broker forecasts. Market-eye from Primark, which supplies services to City professionals, offers you free access to delayed prices, including commodities and futures as well as shares.If you want to look further afield for the niche websites which focus on particular issues you should go to the Find website, established purely as a directory of UK-oriented personal finance sites or try Moneyworld’s Start section.. SAVING and investing with help from the tax system may sound great. For example, Moneyworld’s PowerCharts allow you to generate graphs for individual shares or comparing multiple shares with indices or sectors over time periods varying from one day to 10 years. You can also see the moving average of a stock from five to 250 days.If you don’t have a stockbroker, all the websites already mentioned provide commentary on the existing online services.

One, UK-iNvest, has also announced its own plans to offer a dealing service in the near future. If you are having trouble making up your mind about which broker to choose, try e-traderUK, which was launched last month. If you sign up for the “club” services offered by these sites they will also send you regular e-mails with daily market reports and weekly diaries.All these sites have portfolio management tools allowing you to keep track of your investments as well as increasingly sophisticated charting tools. Unless you are interested only in shares rather than unit and investment trusts as well, Moneyworld may have the edge thanks to its Powersearch facility which allows you to review fund performance using a variety of criteria defined by sector and time period.If you have a clearer idea of what you want to put your money into outside the stockmarket then Interactive Investor’s various “Centres” are worth checking out but if it is an ISA you are thinking about and you want to find out what’s on offer, be it shares or cash, maxi or mini, go to MoneyeXtra.Moneyworld, Interactive Investor and the Motley Fool UK all carry share price data and regularly updated stock market reports as does UK-iNvest, the investment channel of Freeserve, which now offers live rather than delayed share prices. It is also the only website among these generalists which is regulated under the Financial Services Act. This means it can sell investment products directly from the website although it doesn’t yet.For beginners, Moneyworld or the Motley Fool UK are probably the best place to start.

But I was happy with that.Anyway, abut two years ago I got my first letter from Axa telling me that my policy was running below long-term projections and I needed to start supplementing my payments by pounds 20 a month. In 1991 he was setting up home with Marion and bought their house for pounds 70,000. It is now worth pounds 90,000.PETER JACKSON explains: I was offered an endowment mortgage by a perfectly adequate one-man band independent adviser. If your pension is released at the same time as the mortgage finishes you could ear- mark funds from the pension to pay off the shortfall.Remember, no one knows the ultimate worth of an endowment policy. For most policyholders they have ten to 15 years to run so there is plenty of time sort work out a solution.Bear in mind that higher interest rates and dividends may return, terminal bonuses may be better than projected and the problem may shrivel and even disappear.one endowment case studyPeter Jackson, 41, an insurance special investigation unit manager, or to you and me a fraud officer, lives with his second wife Marion and their two children Simon and Emma in a dormitory village called Deeping St James, north of Peterborough.

If you can afford it, you may decide to scrap the endowment as a repayment vehicle but keep it for its savings and life and insurance function and switch to a repayment mortgage.4. You may decide to do nothing at all for the moment and pay the difference from various sources when the time comes. You might like to set up a (preferably) low-cost investment ISA, perhaps tracking the share index, which should grow to pay the shortfall.3. It may be possible to persuade the broker not to charge for this.2.

That is the time the Macleods will consider moving to a smaller property, releasing equity from the family home.Predicting the long-term value of property is difficult, but sale should release enough for a good retirement portfolio. Call 0117 944 2266.The advice: A long-term strategy would tie in their existing investment, their property, Mr Macleod’s pension scheme and the children’s education. A “float” of ready cash in a building society to meet unforeseen expense is essential, perhaps pounds 5,000 to pounds 10,000. Jim is a director of his company and can buy into the business. They have a repayment mortgage on their house and they see the property as a long-term investment.When it comes to risk, Jim says: “I was taught to be cautious.” He is very cautious. Consequently they have only a few investments exposing them to the stock market.

Jim has a small self-administered pension scheme which he holds as cash, and Eileen has no pension. They have surplus income they want to invest monthly and will take more risk with this investment.Jim and Eileen are looking for a long-term strategy to see them through to retirement and ensure their children can go on to higher education.The adviser: Tim Cockerill is managing director of White-church Securities Limited, an independent financial adviser in Bristol. NAME: JIM AND EILEEN MACLEOD

AGE: 45 AND 46
OCCUPATION: SALES DIRECTOR AND CARER WITH THE DEAF BLIND ASSOCIATIONJim and Eileen will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary next year with their four children, Dominic, Shona, Vincent and Alexandra. Ferrari is less sophisticated, but exciting.Jaguar XKR: pounds 60,105 Searing pace from supercharged V8 Lacks CL’s near- perfection.. CL is technologically miles ahead.Bentley Continental R: pounds 199,750. The CL600 V12 looks cheap next to this, and is a vastly better car.BMW 840Ci: pounds 57,470 Cramped but fun to drive Benz is better.Ferrari 456M GTA: pounds 173,588 CL600 is a closer rival to the V12-engined 456M.

To complete the illusion, the CL could do with a quicker steering response, and Mercedes is looking into the possibility. Even now, though, it’s extraordinary.”There is no other car company in the world whose customers allow it to use such technology,” says a proud Mr Multhaupt. “They want the best, and they drive us to create it.” They should be happy now.SpecificationsModel: Mercedes-Benz CL500Price: pounds 70,680Engine: 4,966cc, V8 cylinders, 24 valves, 306bhp at 5,600rpmTransmission: five-speed auto-matic gearbox, rear-wheel drivePerformance: 155mph, 0-60 in 6.3sec, 16 to 21mpgRivalsAston Martin DB7: pounds 83,260 Handbuilt and exclusive – and you pay dearly for it. So the springs aren’t called on to absorb big bumps and body movements, leaving them to cope with the smaller, higher-frequency disturbances their suppleness is optimised to absorb.Sensors detect the forces acting on the body, and dictate what adjustments should be made at each wheel.The result is a car which stays flat in corners, doesn’t nose-dive under braking, responds cleanly to the steering with no sense of stodge and unwanted momentum, and feels about two-thirds of the size it really is. The CL500 rides more smoothly on the less aggressive- looking tyres with their deeper, more absorbent sidewalls, setting the seal on that remarkable ABC.Which works like this: the springs and dampers are very soft and supple, but the point at which the springs attach to the CL’s structure can be moved by electro-hydraulics up or down as rapidly as required to keep the car’s body on the smooth and level.

Only a few yards down the road from the bank is an Indonesian army barracks. Its occupants either stood by as militia began the blaze, or, as the peace-keepers suspect, started the fire themselves, determined that, if they could not have East Timor, they would leave nothing behind of any value.Bus station, DiliA child plays in the burnt-out shell of a bus. All six buses in this depot have been set alight, another example of the militia’s campaign to destroy the infrastructure of East Timor as they flee. After nearly 24 years of suffering at the hands of occupying forces from Jakarta, the East Timorese have remarkable resilience. In 1975 they wanted independence, but the world community turned a blind eye as Indonesia ignored United Nations resolutions and imposed its rule.Clinging on to orderPeace-keepers and United Nations officials look on, powerless, as Dili’s central bank on the waterfront is set alight. As the peace-keepers’ helicopters clatter overhead, the couple cuddle their children for protection.

The origins of those who joined the militia are much debated, but many are East Timorese themselves, often from the margins of society – petty criminals, thugs, those at the bottom of the economic ladder – who saw a chance to better themselves instantly and gain some authority over their fellow citizens by collaborating with the occupying forces.Taking shelterA displaced East Timorese family (above right) takes refuge in a burnt-out house in central Dili, fearful of being caught between the retreating militiamen and the advancing Australians. The corpses were later discovered by the Australian peace-keepers, who brought not only an end to such violence, but the beginnings of a supply of emergency aid.Many of those who joined the militia are East Timorese themselves, often from the margins of society, whosaw a chance to better themselves instantly by collaborating with the occupying forcesA militiaman prowls the streetsHis machete crudely hidden under his shirt, this militiaman, wearing the uniform of a municipal workman, stalks the abandoned streets of Dili in search of booty and his comrades in arms, many of whom have fled. Their bodies were then loaded into a pick-up truck which was driven to a scrap yard on the outskirts of Dili and set ablaze. But in the days before the Australian-led force arrived, this area saw some of the worst atrocities, as the militia meted out savagery to anyone who stood in their path. One group of nine refugees were attacked with machetes and killed. Medical supplies are few and hospitals destroyed, but the city’s water supply has miraculously survived the violence.Port area, DiliAustralian peace-keepers take control of the port area in Dili where, after the pro-independence vote, many people had assembled, hoping to escape by sea from the violence that erupted But few boats were available and there was no way out. The refugees found themselves stranded in the middle of a war zone, unwilling to return to homes that they knew were being burned and looted by pro-Indonesia militiamen, so they set up temporary camps around the port.

Nonetheless, these people are genuinely excited that their long struggle to be free is finally won. Whatever greets them, they say, East Timor will rise like a phoenix from the ashes. For those whose homes are beyond repair, there is a shelter at the football stadium. They have all heard stories of the militia’s wave of destruction, and there is an uneasy anticipation about what they will find. So who exactly brought East Timor to this? What was the point of it all?Richard Lloyd Parry is the Asia correspondent of `The Independent’A kind of homecomingWith Dili calm once more, peace-keepers organise trucks to bring back the people who fled the city and took refuge in the hills to the south.

Radio 5 is fine as far as its brief goes, but always gets patronising little pats from other sources so will not get one here. Talk Radio is, under the cynical and depraved Kelvin MacKenzie, even worse than it once was, as its many ex- listeners have noticed. Radio 4 has stayed about the same, the improvements cancelled out by, for example, yet another series of No Commitments; Radio1 similarly, although it would be nice if they gave Annie Nightingale a fairer crack of the whip, or stopped John Peel from appearing on any other station. Radio 2 more or less excludes itself from any award by the nature of its programming, which is horribly unfair, I know. I mean, where’s the competition? Nowhere.Most Intentionally Comic Series: The Very World of Milton Jones It just got funnier and funnier Runner-up: The Sunday Format. Cannot praise specific moments as programme took the wizz out of Sunday newspapers.Best Station Overall: Has to be Radio 3, not that there are all that many contenders.

The last two have largely and indeed frequently interchangeable panellists but as they are all funny this is not a problem, rather the reverse.Best Disc Jockeys on Radio 1 Between 2 and 4 in the Afternoon, Weekdays: Has to be Mark and Lard. Only three quiz shows should be allowed: Brain of Britain, I’m Sorry, I Haven’t a Clue, and The News Quiz. Kill them all, let God sort them out.Commissioning Editor One Would Most Like To Sleep With Fishes: The person responsible for the incredibly stupid Radio 4 quiz shows; you know, the one with lawyers, the one about antiques, the one about businesses. And they are:

Worst Promotional Gimmick Sent To Critics In The Ludicrous Hope That It Would Generate Positive Criticism In Spite Of The Quality Or Rather Lack Of Same Of The Programme Being So Publicised: A jar of Dolmio Pasta Sauce, to go with Classic FM’s evening of The Nice Bits from Puccini operas.
Most Glaring Missed Opportunities: This year, in The Archers, no one has topped themselves or had an extra-marital affair, making Ambridge the most anomalous farming community in the recorded history of the world.Most Irritating Archers Character: The judge is torn between Sid Perks and Jack Woolley And Elizabeth Ruth’s pretty awful, too As for the vicar, and the children .. Who’s the worst? I don’t know.

The results of this review of the year’s best and worst broadcasting were stuffed into an envelope and read out by me in a slurred and trembly voice. The radio industry has its own award ceremony, the Sonys, held every year at the swanky Grosvenor Hotel in London’s Park Lane. The Independent on Sunday now has its own Radio Awards ceremony, which is held in my kitchen in Shepherd’s Bush over two and a half bottles of cheap red plonk. And so, until a decent sponsor like Laphroaig or, even better, Lagavulin shows up, it is called the Plonkies. His Vienna Philharmonic concerts in the Proms were highlights of the season.

He has covered 137,397 miles in training and racing, for instance, raced in 60 different countries, and competed in 2,040 races.He has also built up a running-wear empire and written two marathon-sized volumes of autobiography Part three of the Ron Hill story is already being planned It’s title? Downhill All The Way. Not that the Lancastrian legend can see an end to his long-running saga “How long can I keep the run going?” he said “I don’t know Forever, I guess. At 61, though, he has clocked up as many momentous milestones as famous victories. “My son told me I was stupid but he waited while I did my four laps. I ran a mile every day for six weeks with the cast on.”Hill is more than just a real-life Forrest Gump. He won the European championship marathon in 1969 and the Commonwealth Games marathon in Edinburgh in 1970. It was not a very nice experience.”
Then there was the time he persuaded his son to drive him to the local track when he left hospital with a plaster cast on his foot after a bunion operation “Now that really was painful,” Hill reflected.

“I broke my sternum and was taken to hospital,” Hill told The Diary, “but fortunately I’d already run that day. They kept me in overnight but I was released the next day and when my wife went out shopping I sneaked out and hobbled a mile in 12 minutes. Since Friday 20 December 1964 – the day before the House of Commons voted to abolish hanging – Hill has run at least one mile every day. It has not, as you might imagine, been easy to keep his run going for 35 years. There have been late-night jogs at airport terminals and on railway platforms.

There was the time, five years ago, when he was injured in a head-on car crash. It has taken him considerably longer to reach the latest landmark in his long-running personal marathon. IT SHOULD take Ron Hill less than 50 minutes to complete the Coalite Saucony 10km road race in Bolsover today. The leap from sportsman to businessman will doubtless be made with the ease of all the others And, I would wager, without any dimming of the star..

A combination of an arm injury which ended his career and a succession of disappointing rides brought him to blows with his fellow Irishman Mick Fitzgerald at Ascot last season. The mellower man could only take so much.Dunwoody will pursue a career in sports sponsorship and marketing with the same sense of purpose He already has his own company, Dunwoody Pride. Trainers on both sides of the Irish Sea clamoured for his services The temper, though, was never on the longest fuse. It was widely billed as the tilt of the young turk at the old master, with Dunwoody, admired but never loved by the punters, taking the role of cold-eyed villain. At Nottingham, in a tinpot selling hurdle, Maguire’s attempt to sneak up Dunwoody’s inner – the ultimate insult – brought Maguire a crashing fall into a running rail and his rival a hefty suspension. But Dunwoody recovered to win the title and vowed never to put his body through the same distress again.Instead, having severed his connection with Martin Pipe, Dunwoody stood back from his own obsessive nature and took stock.

It’s made a huge difference in making the children more receptive to teaching and has led to a higher standard.NOANNABEL KARMELChildren’s cookery writerIT’S REALLY down to the parents to provide healthy lunch boxes for their children. We’ve now extended this to the whole school, and the tuck shop stocks only fruit The kids haven’t complained and in fact are buying more. With a dietician, school nurse, and our health co-ordinator we’ve held sessions to teach parents about nutritional values in packed lunches. They were calmer and teachers were able to spend more time teaching rather than resolving conflicts. YES

PETER WINDER
Headmaster, Wolsey JuniorI DON’T agree with “spying”, but as in loco parentis, teachers need to take an interest in everything children do and that includes what they eat. In 1996 we did a trial with a class of eight-year-olds, selling them fresh fruit instead of junk food at break times It had a significant impact. Weaving the same magic on them as the music weaved on me.I’d say it’s more important to just be than to succeed I’d describe myself as a happy hypocrite.

On the one hand I love my subject and on the other I couldn’t care less.. They wanted to see the script beforehand but my work is spontaneous and I don’t write scripts They also insisted on doing a full rehearsal before filming Invariably the rehearsal was better than the show. A performance is like an impassioned speech, you can’t rehearse something that comes directly from the heart. That’s the great thing about live gigs, you can reach both old and young. There are no rules.I’ve only ever done programmes about music.

Again, a couple of glasses of red wine removed all resistance. Whole families could be heard snoring through these contrived japes, which was often the first thing they had agreed about for years. Remember Birds Of A Feather going to East Germany, or Lovejoy going to America and meeting Cliff Barnes? Huge budgets (for the BBC) but much smaller jokes, stretched beyond imagining by ecologically minded scriptwriters. These days there’s also the double, triple or quadruple helping of EastEnders to wade through, an endurance test so stiff that even the soap’s most zealous followers are likely to be comatose by the time Beppe finally decks Phil, or Pauline Fowler is stung to death by killer bees.One trend that has thankfully passed is the feature-length episode of your favourite sitcom or comedy drama. Morecambe And Wise were the only people who kept us sane.For BBC1, then, there is the unendurable weight of expectation, not to mention Noel Edmonds. An appalling accident of birth gave Britain’s foremost light entertainment beardie a Christian name that carries unmistakeable echoes of Christ’s own birthday (a coincidence that seems to have struck him from an early age). The programmes have been made, the new films have been bought, and the BBC’s tape of The Great Escape has been dusted off for its first showing since Easter.

The BBC1 scheduler has therefore been lumbered for years past with Noel’s Christmas Presents, an emetic seasonal Jim’ll Fix It that sets the tone for the whole day. Those were the days in which terrible old westerns really were the highlight of Boxing Day’s viewing. The fact that in 1971 the only alternative programming was an On The Buses Christmas Special is conveniently forgotten. Your audience’s high expectations have been built up by years of Morecambe And Wise, which has ensured that, for the next 50 years at least, no Christmas TV will ever be quite as good as it used to be. Now it’s just a matter of putting all these delights in the right order.Unfortunately this is not as easy a task it may seem. This is because none of the TV companies has finalised their schedules when the newspapers want to print them, so the newspapers have to fill the gaps with guesses. Oddly enough they forget to mention this to their inevitably disappointed readers.The real Christmas schedules are concocted by a few brave and tortured souls sitting in small offices in the bowels of their respective television company headquarters.

“Exclusive!” they all scream, which is fair enough as most of them print slightly different listings for each of the crucial days. Some households can get through half a dozen.It’s also an explanation for all those Christmas TV schedules most newspapers print in a blaze of excitement at the beginning of December. This is because unscrupulous TV viewers go out and buy a second copy, encircle all their favourite programmes and then quietly throw away the first copy. They go on long freezing walks, and are eventually forced to read the bulky literary biographies cruel relatives have given them for Christmas. They are the sort of people who actually look forward to going back to work in January.)It’s vital, then, to be first to the Radio Times when it comes out. For years the magazine’s publishers have marvelled at the extraordinary sales figures they enjoy for their Christmas/New Year double issue. Those who mock such anally retentive behaviour and then, when no one’s looking, encircle the programmes they intend to watch with a differently coloured felt-tip pen.(Of course there are a few people who don’t watch much television over Christmas.