In turn we have upset some of their plans with our brand of cricket and we have worked extremely hard on getting our strategy right.”

The result has been that the Ashes – the female version of them – were won by England for the first time in 42 years. Their nerve-tingling victory in the Second and final Test as they chased a small target also had comparisons elsewhere.The one-day series has been just as tight. On two fronts this summer, England have been engaged in titanic struggles with their oldest adversary The parallels have been almost eerie. As Clare Connor, captain of the England women’s team, said: “As with the men, Australia have been dominant for the last 10 years, winning two World Cups and reaching the final of another and becoming extremely hard to beat.

This was a letter from Chelmsford, and its main message was that its author would be back, and often.. Bopara’s hundred, which took 184 balls, was less spectacular but barely less effective.Cook’s namesake, Alistair Cook, broadcast Letter From America for half a century. It was all so terribly un-Australian.Nothing, but nothing, should be taken for granted with this great, waning force, but if they do not win the toss on Thursday, thus allowing Warne to bowl in the last innings, they are likely to experience the worst feeling of their cricketing lives.Cook’s innings was splendid. Since the match is over two days it is not designated as first-class but his innings, lasting a mere 238 balls with 30 fours and a six, was first-class in every other respect He hit shots all round the wicket and was unsparing. At least three balls went through hands or legs, or a combination of both, to the boundary. Brett Lee, whose game, competitive spirit has illuminated the summer, whistled one past Jefferson’s bat with the first ball but was regularly struck to the boundary thereafter The ground fielding was suspect throughout. The arena and the date are booked, though Warren vows: “It won’t happen.”Hatton will be in the Shef-field ring on Friday, as corner- man to his younger brother Matthew, who has pulled out of a Warren-promoted charity tournament in which he would have met Alan Minter’s son Ross, to box on the undercard of Clinton Woods’s first defence of his IBF light-heavyweight title against a Mexican challenger, Julio Gonzalez, a fight to be screened by Sky.So the Hattons are now a family at war with Warren, with Ricky apparently listening to boxing’s ear-benders on both sides of the Atlantic.

In this summer’s series three of the matches have been of the sort that you could not take your eyes off while being unbearable to watch at the same time They were compelling without being so close in 1953 Grounds were full and a total of 549,650 watched the series. The Fifth Test of the 2005 Ashes is, at the least, the most significant played by England for 52 years.

By the time it begins, Australia will have held the Ashes for 16 years and 38 days, having won eight consecutive series. Like everybody else in the country, I can hardly wait, and I think the Ashes will come home.. In keeping with modern convention it is natural that the cricket match starting at The Oval on Thursday should be considered the biggest played in this country Ever Full stop.

Players who have not been involved for a couple of years being asked to perform in just one comeback match cannot be the answer. If it comes to it, my preference is to pick somebody who has a future and will be playing for a place.But more than anything else, hope that the oxygen- chamber treatment that Simon Jones is undergoing works. If he is not bang in form, a Test debut in the decisive Ashes match might not be ideal.Another being talked of is Andrew Caddick, but I would not be in favour of that because I don’t think it is the time to be looking back. But he might not necessarily be called up because he has not had much match bowling recently and Hampshire did not pick him the other week, though he played in last week’s game against Warwickshire. Chris Tremlett is the obvious one, because he has been around the squad all summer as 12th man. He has been a huge influence on this series, acting almost as spearhead at second change, and England will have no desire to change their formula now.Of course, they have to make contingency plans in case he does not make it, and I note that several names have been mentioned.

It will not be green, but there are some tufts about on which the seam could grip.Australia have plenty of selection issues, England will be desperate to get Simon Jones fit. The ideal would be to win the toss, put a big total on the board and make it impossible for Australia to win.But losing the toss would not necessarily be a total disaster The pitch offers some assistance early on. It seems that England cannot overtake Australia, but I don’t suppose many people will be taking much notice of that if they hold the Ashes.The Oval has yielded four runs an over in first-class cricket for most of this season, and God knows how many in one-day matches There is no reason to think it will change. Geraint Jones is a thoroughly decent chap with a steel core The worry is that he has iron gloves to match. England can do it, as they have shown in the last three matches, in which they have played the better cricket throughout What they must do is keep one eye on the prize The world championship table is irrelevant. It is probably the biggest cricket match played in this country.

Enjoys being the team’s playboy and experimenting with hair-dye. Last seen out with Big Brother’s Vanessa Nimmo.ANDREW STRAUSS, 28South African-born public schoolboy. Married Rachael, who runs a sports marketing firm, this year. They live with one-year-old daughter Holly in Cheshire.MARCUS TRESCOTHICK, 29Quiet West Country lad from Keynsham. Obsessive about cricket, spends his spare time studying his innings on video Likes golf and sausages – nickname Banger. Lives near Taunton, Somerset, with his wife, Hayley, and became father earlier this year to Ellie.KEVIN PIETERSEN, 25Native South African, caused ructions when he moved here in 2000 Now a qualified Englishman and a big-hitting sensation.

Born in Surrey, plays for Warwickshire but lives in Worcestershire, with their five-year-old son Anders and three-year-old daughter Tilly.ANDREW FLINTOFF, 27Cricket’s biggest star Big-hearted, lovable Lancastrian Enjoys walks in the country and a good old-fashioned pub. After the Old Trafford Test I could tell he was disappointed [England failed to force a victory] and I couldn’t do very much – I felt very guilty at the time.I know he’s thinking about this week’s game but we try not to talk about it too much. We try to put cricket behind us when we’re at home and get on with the everyday.ASHLEY GILES, 32Intelligent and thoughtful team man Best friends with Michael Vaughan Collects art with his Norwegian wife Stine. Even more now that there are quite a few babies popping up! We have a really good family feeling.If Ashley’s not at home, I speak to him twice a day – normally by the time he rings in the evening I already know if he’s had a good or bad day. But there’s a good set-up and the other wives are very friendly That’s the positive side We have all got something in common. I didn’t know he would be playing all day!But I really enjoy it now Even my Norwegian family are cricket nuts.

I was with the kids in Norway during the last two Tests and there’s no TV coverage, so we had to watch it on the internet.Things have changed a lot since Ashley has been playing for England He’s away so much more, especially in the winter It’s a lonely life sometimes, being a cricket wife. One morning after we’d first met he said he was going off to play cricket. I expected he’d be back by lunchtime, so when he got home late in the evening I was fuming. Last year, she had to support him through the lowest point of his career as bad press and poor form left him close to quitting the game.When I met Ashley, I didn’t know anything about cricket and I thought it was just his hobby. They met in Birmingham when she was working in a local hotel, and live in Droitwich.

It’s one more win and, if we go on like this, we will win the group.”As for the 4-5-1 system, Eriksson said: “Sometimes I think we can use it.” Owen is available to face Northern Ireland in Belfast on Wednesday in the next qualifier, so there will be no need to use it then. “I hope we can play better on Wednesday for all 90 minutes… “The second half was OK until the last 20 minutes, when we lost the ball too easily and gave Wales the opportunity to knock long, high balls in for [John] Hartson That’s not good,” the Swede said “But we defended extremely well – and that’s very positive. For Wales, there will be no trip to Germany for those finals next summer. This was a defeat that they probably expected, but there was no shame in losing only to Joe Cole’s deflected goal.

As Eriksson put it after the tense victory: “In qualification games you want to play good football, but the most important thing is to win.”

The build-up to the match was dominated by debate over England’s change to 4-5-1 from the regular 4-4-2, with Wayne Rooney cast as the lone striker in the absence through suspension of his usual partner, Michael Owen. Did the new system work? It must have done; England won.But, after another unexceptional England performance that at least was considerably better than their shambolic 4-1 defeat by Denmark in the friendly match last month, even Eriksson did not sound convinced. “We worked our socks off and it has taken a lot out of us,” he said “You can see how much we want to win under Walter. A year ago, you would never have thought this would happen.”. Another victory, three more points and moving on towards the World Cup finals was the way Sven Goran Eriksson saw his England side’s victory at the Millennium Stadium.

They have to get the game into schools and invest more at grassroots level, especially with coaching.”This series has seen record viewing figures, but next year the broadcast rights move to satellite TV. Viewing figures on satellite cannot be as high, so the ECB will be hoist on its own petard. That said, the difference in money from that deal will be £40m a year, and the game could not be sustained without that. The great unknown is whether the ECB can square that circle.”The breweries are big winners, whatever the outcome.

Next weekend, cricket fans are expected to drink an extra two million pints of beer (on top of the 28 million we drink a day). The 300,000 Australians in this country will be gripped too – with the Walkabout pub chain preparing for big crowds – but in a decidedly more anxious mood.’We’ve never seen anything like this’Stephen Khan cornered legends of the game for their views at last Friday’s Cricket Writers’ Dinner David Lloyd, former England coach”I have been astonished at how interest has spread right through the country. I was at the golf club the other day and three lady members came up to me and said, ‘We’ve never watched cricket before but now we know exactly what’s going on.’ We’re knocking football off the back pages.David Shepherd, Test umpire”Cricket is more popular than ever I have never seen a summer like this. Hopefully a lot of the people who have been brought over to the sport will stick with it after this wonderful series.”David Frith, former editor of Wisden magazine”People talk about football being the beautiful game but that’s rubbish; this is the beautiful game. We are watching it being played at a supreme level; it’s more beautiful than ever After 16 years of drought, people are flocking back. The nonsense that goes on in other sports will not blight cricket.”Angus Fraser, ex-England player and Independent correspondent”We don’t want cricket to lose the characteristics that make it great It would be awful if it became tacky We don’t want to go there. Money should be set aside to ensure cricket remains on the list of school games.”England bowling legend, ‘Deadly’ Derek Underwood”I don’t think there has been such a buzz about cricket in my life.

According to the Daily Mail, which devoted three pages to them on Friday, the latest al-Qa’ida videos (featuring one of the 7 July bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, and the chief al-Qa’ida ideologue, Ayman al-Zawahiri) are a “chilling” declaration of war.

Rituals, she says, that “serve to stabilise moments of crisis”. Politicians have an expected, unwritten part to play in those rituals, as the priests of modern ceremonies of death Clinton and Blair understand that role Last week proved that Bush does not
More from John Rentoul. It is more than 20 years since I used to go regularly to the American missile base at Greenham Common, a location where the politics of gender could hardly have been played out more starkly. People wanted to know that he felt their pain and anguish at the growing disaster unfolding on their television screens.

As heavily armed United States servicemen patrolled inside the razor wire, occasionally shouting insults at the women camped outside, it wasn’t difficult to see why one of the most popular slogans among the protesters was “take the toys from the boys”. As Jean Seaton observes in her new book, Carnage and the Media, journalists observe surprisingly strict rituals in reporting violence and disaster. As Clarke said, “I would have accepted that increased risk as the price of going to war if I had believed that we were driven to go to war for a just cause”. For Blair – and for most MPs and, at the time, the majority of the British people – Iraq was a just cause. But to go down that line of argument would get Blair nowhere, with journalists itching to write “PM admits Iraq war increased terror risk”. So it was better to leave it to the families of those killed on 7 July to respond to Khan’s video.That is the distinctive feature of empathetic politicians such as Blair and Clinton. They recognise that politics is about mood rather than argument.

It was no use President Bush, in his first statement on the hurricane, listing all the things the federal government was doing. As Kenneth Clarke ought to know perfectly well, the Prime Minister has never said that “the danger of attack on Britain has nothing to do with the war”, as Clarke alleged. The shock of those murderous sentiments expressed in the vernacular reawakened fears of undetectable killers in our midst. Yet it was left to a mere apprentice of the empathetic arts, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to offer the Government’s only comment. But it would be just as inflammatory for Blair to say emphatically what he really thinks, which is that the greater risk of a particular kind of terrorism has to be borne.

That consisted of a peevish refusal to accept that Britain’s part in the invasion of Iraq had made the 7 July bombings more likely.You can see why Blair stuck to his script about anti-social behaviour in Friday’s speech, however. Likewise, there was more form than substance to his statement at Gleneagles after the London bombings on 7 July: “It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people.” But his words helped shape the mood of defiance that was part of coming to terms with what had happened.It was all the more striking, therefore, that Blair had nothing to say last week about the video recorded by Mohammed Sidique Khan, the London bomber. He and Clinton appear to sense shifts in public opinion before they happen. Both have been accused of short-termism in pursuit of headlines, but the corollary of that is that they are attuned to the way big stories play out in the media and hence to the impact they have on perceptions of themselves.

Calzaghe’s southpaw slugging should see him through for a projected November date with the IBF champion Jeff Lacy, recent conqueror of Briton Robin Reid. This would be as much a defining fight for Calzaghe as the Tszyu bout was for Hatton. The real deal.The occasion will also give King an opportunity to watch Amir, who has his second pro bout against Coventry’s Baz Carey, 16 years his senior, winner of only nine of his 25 fights, but stopped just once. “He’s gonna shock the world,” King bellowed down the transatlantic phone. It seems short-sighted of Hatton, now he has achieved greatness, to try to dump Warren and discard the chance of becoming a national icon in the mould of Bruno, Benn and Eubank now that Britain’s top promoter has a terrestrial deal with ITV that would project him to superstar status.Hatton, a Manchester City fan, faces having all his matches away from home, as Warren has signed an exclusive two-year arrangement to promote at Manchester’s MEN Arena, where Hatton made his name and amassed the biggest-ever home-town following in British boxing.Before prising the crown from Kostya Tsyzu, Hatton was singing Warren’s praises and saying what a good move Amir Khan had made in signing with him. Now his career could be left in limbo.Hatton denies any ongoing deal with Warren (although the promoter declares he has it in black and white), saying he is a free agent. As such he is said to have agreed to a defence in a joint venture with Denis Hobson and Robert Waterman, who run Fight Academy.

Did I mention a middle-aged female drug-user with a bad hair job? Funny that. By noon my phone was receiving texts at a rapid rate urging me to read the News of the World. I stomped up to the local shop, ignored the slightly shocked expression on the face of the nice Asian lady behind the counter, and purchased a copy. It was the usual old rubbish, tits out here and there, lost children a-plenty, legs akimbo and dozens of dirty rats from Dunstable to Dundee. But as I hadn’t had a miracle birth on holiday, or shagged a gorgeous beach attendant who might have sold his story for £5.50 – indeed I spent my entire vacation with a gaggle of gay men – my chances of appearing as a kiss’n'tell victim were slim.
As my ex-husband sold his “Janet is a beast in bed” story to them only last December (cashing in on my TV exploits in the jungle), he’s going to have to wait a couple more years before he can give that load of rubbish its fourth airing. But hang on! Splashed across the centre spread was the astonishing story – and, let’s face it, there have been many astonishing stories in her life – of prototype Wild Child Courtney Love’s extraordinary fling with Alan Partridge, aka Steve Coogan.

It seemed to be the usual orgy of drugs, more drugs, sloppy sex, love notes and sorry ending to the saga, with Courtney telling the reporter that she was indeed pregnant with a baby Partridge, but wasn’t sure whether to keep it or not.She then went on to make the usual Courtney-style series of mind-boggling claims, along the lines of “I have shagged 15 out of the top 20 sexiest men in the world, including a week-long fling with Brad Pitt”. Then, the horror started: “On the flip side, there’s Janet Street-Porter, I really fancy her. She and I have been for a walk …” MEANING WHAT EXACTLY, COURTNEY???Courtney seems to imply to the readers that we’d indulged in a spot of lesbian lust out in the heather. I accept that for some unknown reason she finds me a love object, and there’s not a lot I can do about that. But as for going for a walk?Here’s the truth about my alleged ramble in the brambles with Kurt Cobain’s motormouth widow. (By the way, the “Screws” didn’t bother ringing me to check their facts; I suppose allegations of lesbian sex don’t count as libel in their neck of the woods.)A few years ago I met Courtney at a dinner party in the south of France at Elton John’s house during the Cannes Film Festival.

She arrived very late, halfway through the meal, wearing a sheer black nylon nightie with a pair of knickers and a skimpy bra, accessorised with a lot of diamond jewellery, very high heels and an ankle chain. In spite of the fake breasts, the enhanced lips and copious other bits of plastic surgery, she can look very good in the flesh, and is an entertaining, if somewhat incoherent conversationalist, switching from drugs to sex via Proust and back. She’s intelligent, no mistake about that – remember the time she fought an important court case in Los Angeles in order to get musicians a better share of their royalties? No, Courtney is super-bright, witty and totally eccentric. We arranged to meet in London.A few months later the arts dealer Jay Jopling, his wife, Sam Taylor-Wood, and I took Courtney for a fish dinner at J Sheekey. First I took the precaution of ringing the restaurant and asking for a table as far away from everybody else as possible. They were confused – didn’t I want my usual slot? No, I replied, we were bringing someone who might be a bit outrageous, someone with a very loud voice who swore and drank a lot “Sounds like you, Janet,” said John, the manager. I put the phone down.During dinner (again she arrived very late, with a man she claimed was going to produce her next movie, whom she then ignored) she didn’t eat much, but went over to the next table and asked the couple if one of them was a transvestite Luckily they saw the funny side of it.

“They taught me and my brother from a very early age that you have to earn everything you get. We were encouraged from the age of 10 to take holiday jobs and weekend jobs to earn our own pocket money.”I didn’t have A&R Idol when I was starting off. I want as many people as possible to buy my records and watch my TV shows That is a buzz.”I cannot bear snobbery I’m beginning to loathe the upper class in this country. I don’t know whether I am becoming a socialist or not, but I just find the idea of treating somebody differently because they’re born in a different way to you absolutely ludicrous.”After five years in the limelight, what is it that keeps him going? “I enjoy working.

I don’t like cultural snobbery, and record companies are a hotbed of cultural snobs.” By choice, Cowell would listen to Frank Sinatra and watch Top Gear (a car enthusiast, he owns a Range Rover, a Rolls-Royce and a Porsche).He warms to his theme “I’m not making shows or records to be critically acclaimed. “When you do this job, the one thing you can’t do is guess what other people would like You have to do things based on what you like. Luckily, I have incredibly juvenile taste at times and I also have very populist tastes.”I’ve never been ashamed of popular culture. If you walk into a French restaurant and you want to order fish fingers and chips, good luck to you. Later this year, Syco is launching a new classical quartet in the style of Il Divo, this time with two male and two female singers.It does not concern Cowell that, although many of his artists enjoy commercial success, few have earned critical acclaim. Our intention is always to look at everything as a worldwide brand and protect that brand, whether it’s an artist or a television format.”Other forthcoming projects include The American Inventor, a new series which Cowell has devised with British entrepreneur Peter Jones to recognise inventing talent, launching on ABC in March and Paul O’Grady’s Got Talent, an old-fashioned variety act contest, which Syco is making for ITV, despite O’Grady’s recent defection to Channel 4.

The single went on to sell a million copies, on the back of which he was recruited by BMG Sony as an A&R (artist and repertoire) executive.At Sony, where he remained for 15 years, he was responsible for signing acts such as Curiosity Killed the Cat, Sonia and Robson & Jerome. But success was tempered by a difficult period in his early thirties, when he went bankrupt and was forced to move home temporarily.”I started a label and probably did what every other A&R guy goes through. You start to believe your own hype, surround yourself with people who will just nod at everything you say, go through a sticky patch where you start blaming the world, then you realise that, actually, it’s you that got yourself into this situation.”Syco, which has a staff of just eight people, still works within the BMG Sony building looking after artists such as the Irish boy-band Westlife and Il Divo, the male quartet who have enjoyed No 1 hits in 13 countries.Cowell is keen that the recording and television sides of the business work together “I try to blend everything I don’t like a them-and-us attitude It’s manageable because it’s such a small staff. He had so much confidence in her song “So Macho” that he invested £5,000 in making a record and video, which he had to release three times before it became a hit. His first foray into the record industry was in the post room at EMI Music Publishing. It was not long, however, before he had worked his way up to become a record producer and then to set up his own label, Fanfare Records.Sinitta provided his first big break.

8.15am For retail watchers, there is no small irony that over on the other side of town, a retailer with very strong links to Ms Earl is having a big day all of its own. Belinda Earl is 18 months into her role as chief executive of Jaeger, the upmarket chain that is fighting to put itself back on the fashion map.
For her, today marks an important milestone in the journey to brush up Jaeger’s image, which took a battering under its old owners, the threads group Coats.Her ultimate destination is the company’s Brompton Road store where she will host its autumn/winter press show; her aim to persuade the fickle fashion press that Jaeger is a label worth noticing once more. The shares closed 4.25p firmer at 96.5p, giving the company a value of almost £1bn, less than 3 years since a market debut at 3.25p.. 7am

There is a chicly dressed woman sitting on the train from Oxted into London.

In her black-and-white striped V-neck top, black suit and ?a mode wedge-heeled shoes, the 44-year-old executive is a walking advertisement for the fashion retailer she heads. Central African Mines, which he chairs, raised another £100m via a placing of 125 million shares with blue-chip investors at 80p. Hichens has been responsible for a number of highly successful natural resources offerings, including Aim Resources, Platinum Australia and South China Resources. Horizonte, which is raising £2m of new capital, is to be placed at 30p giving the company an initial capitalisation of £9m.Finally, the Midas touch does not seem to have deserted Phil Edmonds just yet.

Instead of being a simple ladder, with rich people at the top and poor at the bottom, it is a vast cobweb of gossamer-fine social distinctions – incomprehensible to the outsider, largely baffling even to us.Most of what I know about class I learnt from my grandmother, who – though only a farmer’s daughter – has a dowager duchess’s nose for social nuance. Thirty-six per cent of builders described themselves as middle class, while 29 per cent of bank managers insisted they were working class. The few who described themselves as upper class actually had lower incomes than the middle classes.None of this should come as a surprise. The whole point about the British class system – the reason it continues to provoke such anger and fascination – is that it is complex almost beyond human endurance. The authors of this survey were perplexed to discover, for instance, that people did not always rank themselves according to the size of their income or the grandeur of their profession. The human instinct for hierarchy is amazingly tenacious, and no one does it better, or with more fiendish subtlety, than the British.

The rise in mass affluence, the increase in home ownership, and the expansion of higher education have helped to smash down the barriers, bringing us all together in one happy, homogenous, suburban melting pot.A likely story. The aristocracy is on the point of extinction already: only 1 per cent have the gumption to describe themselves as upper class.
At first glance, then, this looks like a vindication for John Major and Tony Blair and all the other politicians who have sought to level the social playing field. The working classes can still claim the majority (at 53 per cent) but not for much longer: by 2020, they will have been overtaken by the new bourgeoisie. The party won Richmond and Lakeland councils, while Islington and Winchester slipped away.

Local factors, such as the revelations about the Winchester MP Mark Oaten’s private life, no doubt played their part. But there is a slight sense that opportunities are slipping away.. So that’s it, then: the classless society is upon us. A survey published this week claimed that the old social order is melting away, as Britain becomes one vast, amorphous middle class. The report, by the think-tank Future Foundation, found that in the past 40 years, the proportion of Britons who describe themselves as middle class has risen from 30 per cent to 43 per cent.

The projected national vote share, at 26 or 27 per cent, was pretty much on a par with recent performances.Losses more or less balanced gains. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, sacked in the wake of the scandal over foreign prisoners released without being considered for deportation. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, deprived of his department, but not his rank, following sordid revelations about an affair Iraq war stalwarts Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon both demoted. Margaret Beckett becomes Britain’s first female Foreign Secretary. Ruth Kelly, a failure at education, takes on a reorganised Department for Constitutional Affairs.. Whenever a politician uses the word “consolidation” you know things are bad.

While this sustained her for much of the following decade, she also did a bit of theatre and made intermittent forays into television: there were bit parts in the crime detective series Wycliffe, in The Lenny Henry Show, and in adverts for Diet Coke. Her first role came in 1991, two years after completing a drama degree at Birmingham University, when she landed the part of Debbie Aldridge in Radio 4’s long-running soap opera The Archers. “I’m rather glad my mum and dad don’t have to watch it because I think they would have been quite embarrassed.”And why don’t they watch it?She throws me a harsh glare that’s only slightly ironic: “Well, probably because they are dead,” she says.Oops.Greig has been a professional actress for 15 years now. “And then there was the toe-fucking incident,” she whispers, cheeks reddening at having uttered the F-word. This is a reference to – well, to the toe-fucking incident (and we’ve not enough space here to go into that one).

In the first series, a 49-year-old harridan slept with a young doctor whom she realised only afterwards was in fact her son. But, oh, I think it has such heart, such a soft and beautiful heart at the centre.”She does admit, though, that even she blanches at, as she puts it, the “sex stuff”. “It’s a weird show, really weird, and many have accused it of being style over content, that it simply relies on technical jiggery-pokery. Last year, Greig picked up a Royal Television Society award for her performance, as well as a Bafta nomination for Best Actress But its success has also prompted an awful lot of flak f”I can see why some people are undecided,” she muses.

She is, I tell the actress, absolutely adorable.”Really?” she says. “But she’s annoying, too, right? She’s a right pain in the arse.”Green Wing has been a deservedly big hit with audiences and (most) critics. Among the weirdos and wackos is Greig’s character, Doctor Caroline Todd, a comparative oasis of kooky calm amid the chaos.”I suppose you have to see the world through somebody’s eyes in the show,” she reasons, “and that’s what Caroline Todd is there for.”Greig’s character is the kind of woman who is hapless at work and hopeless in love, all teeth and bed hair, and with her blouse tucked unwittingly into her knickers If there is a door in front of her, she will walk into it. It’s no great talent, if you really stop and think about it.”For the past few weeks now, Tamsin Greig has been looking exquisitely surprised on the telly because Green Wing has returned to Channel 4 for its triumphant second series. Green Wing remains the most deliciously surreal programme on the box, a warped comedy set among the corridors of a hospital in which patients are nothing but a minor aside in the dysfunctional lives of its erratic, certifiable staff.

She asks me as many questions as I do her, and at one point warns me not to misquote her – “I remember everything I say” – and begs me not to be a “bastard” when I come to write this up. She picks up her toast but changes her mind, and puts it back down again.”So, what do you want to know?” she asks, with mock seriousness “Because I don’t really do much Basically, my job is to look surprised on the telly That’s all. Sometimes, she says, she can go off on tangents and doesn’t know how to find her way back again, even when she has something to plug, like now. We are here to talk ostensibly about some Shakespeare she is doing in Stratford-upon-Avon, but this charmingly wayward woman won’t quite stay on topic. She doesn’t do many interviews because, as an actress, “it’s my job to be other people – I feel weird being myself in front of you”.