My apprehension depression shyness and timidity were soothed away with sandalwood quite apart from the overall detoxification

My apprehension, depression, shyness and timidity were soothed away with sandalwood, quite apart from the overall detoxification. All I can say is that it was very relaxing, especially as I listened to the ambient music competing with a raging storm outside.The next day the treatments began in earnest. First, though, I had to have my body composition analysed by a machine – Grayshott has the only one in the country – that passes electric waves through you to assess how much is fat and how much muscle, and how far you deviate from the ideal. The result was the best birthday present I could have had: it said I was 99 per cent. “I have been here many years,” said the head trainer, “and only three or four people have come out 100 per cent.” So the next time my wife complains about my waistline, I can say I am only one per cent short of perfection, and have a print-out to prove it.With so many treatments and exercise sessions going on, not to mention guests roaming from steam room to sauna to swimming-pool, Grayshott needs to run like clockwork to unite therapist and client, and it does. Next on my schedule was a seaweed wrap, which I had envisaged would leave me looking like a piece of sushi: instead you are coated in a gel, put in a hydrotherapy bath swimming in seaweed extracts and marine salts, and marinated for 45 minutes while high-pressure jets move up and down your body. But the shares are fully valued.CORUSOccasionally, a company that had appeared so troubled it looked as if it was about to go bust can transform its fortunes.

Corus, the Anglo Dutch steel-maker, this week received a little more good news when the Competition Commission cleared a deal to sell its UK hot rolled steel business to Arcelor. Buy.MCBRIDEMcBride, the Buckinghamshire-based households goods group is the force behind the supermarket own-label products, behind products such as Asda toothpaste, Tesco washing powder and Sainsbury’s bleach. The 6 per cent increase in half-year profits to pounds 17.5m on sales also up 6 per cent at pounds 268m that McBride achieved suggests it is capable of squaring up to its customers. Avoid.BRANDON HIREBrandon Hire has been renting out tools and building appliances to the construction industry for the past 35 years. Today, with 130 stores – 32 of which were acquired last year – it has a 6 per cent market share and growing Fast. Alphameric is doing well as a provider of sales software to the betting industry. If only it hadn’t taken such a gamble on providing software to the retail sector It needs a better track record before we could recommend it.

Worth a punt.ELANThree new products ought to drive growth at Elan. Tysabri is a remarkable new treatment for multiple sclerosis, which might have sales of $3bn a year when it becomes well-established Prialt, for chronic pain, was also launched last year. And then there is work on its potential new Alzheimer’s disease drug, which has suffered setbacks but could come to fruition around the end of the decade. Hold.ALPHAMERICBookies like to monitor how much cash is piling on to certain horses throughout their network of betting outlets, so they can narrow their odds. Imagination? Chambre needs to find an innovative way of spending his pounds 159m cash pile.

Buying in drugs that are already mid-way through human trials is the most obvious way forward, but so many companies are hunting for precisely the same thing so prices are high. New investors should wait.EMBLAZEEmblaze’s main activity is making mobile phones for retailers in the Far East, and it is planning to enter the European market soon. It also has stakes in software companies with products offering television over telecoms networks and picture messaging. Its customers are spending again and it has a tighter grip on costs.