With her sultry, come-hither looks, arched eyebrows, exaggerated swagger and outlandish cigarette-holder, at a time when anything remotely risqu?as considered unduly forward in women, the saucy Nadira titillated the imagination and fantasy of millions of fans, who hooted gleefully whenever she appeared on screen.
Nadira, who used one name, rarely disappointed. Florence Ezekiel (Nadira), actress: born Baghdad 5 December 1932; died Bombay 9 February 2006. For more than two decades, into the 1970s, the femme fatale Nadira enthralled a generation of Indian cinema audiences. “Even her sexiness is almost deliberate,” wrote the Daily Mail.NAN WINTONOn 20 June 1960, Nan Winton became the first female newsreader when she read the news on BBC television. The Weekly Post ran an article headed: “Girls just can’t read the news”.FIONA BRUCEThe former current affairs reporter began her career at the BBC as a researcher in 1989.

She presented the Six O’Clock News for four years before moving on to the Ten. In 2001 she was also the first female presenter to be part of the BBC’s election results team.By Karl Mansfield and Ciar Byrne. Ford, right, became presenter of BBC 1’s One O’Clock News when it restarted in 1999.SUE LAWLEYDespite her professionalism as presenter of the Six O’Clock News and the BBC’s early evening current affairs programme Nationwide, Lawley could not escape a sexist press. Best known for stepping out from behind a newsdesk to do a high-kicking dance routine on a Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show.ANNA FORDAfter working at Granada, Ford’s BBC career began in 1976 for Man Alive and she joined the BBC 1 Six O’Clock News team in 1989. Since 1987 she has presented Scotland’s general election coverage.

In 1993 she joined BBC 2’s Newsnight and, since 2001 has regularly presented Newsnight Review.ANGELA RIPPONThe first prime-time female presenter of the Nine O’ Clock News in the 1970s after joining the BBC in 1966. She added: “I’m sure Sophie will find it stimulating and will build on the programme’s success.”The veteran newsreader joined the BBC in 1976. She anchored the Six O’Clock News from 1989 and has presented the One O’Clock News since it was relaunched in May 1999.BBC head of television news Peter Horrocks said: “Sophie brings considerable experience to the team… her professionalism and warmth will stand her in good stead to follow Anna.”Women in the news hot seatKIRSTY WARKWark joined the BBC in 1976 as a graduate researcher for BBC Radio Scotland. “In news terms the One O’Clock sits in the middle of an incredibly busy part of the day, but I’m really looking forward to the challenge. Anna will be a hard act to follow, but it’s a wonderful opportunity – a prestigious job and I still get to be home every afternoon for my children.”Ford, who announced in October 2005 that she was quitting as a newsreader after 27 years to pursue other interests, described the lunchtime bulletin as “the best slot in BBC News”. Raworth joined the BBC’s regional trainee scheme in 1992 thenbecame a radio reporter at BBC Manchester.

Three years later she joined the regional television news programme, Look North, before moving to London in 1997.Married to an estate agent, Richard Winter, she has recently returned from maternity leave with her second child.”I am thrilled,” said Raworth yesterday. When Ford lost her voice halfway through the One O’Clock News three years ago, Raworth stepped into the role with ease, although she had only just arrived for work and had not had time to change her clothes or read the script. In contrast, Ford spent her early career as a student firebrand, becoming the first women president of the Manchester University Union.It is not the first time Raworth has taken over from Ford on the lunchtime bulletin. In his memoirs, The Insider, the former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan recalled an eight-hour boozy lunch with Raworth and Bowen at The Ivy and the blonde news anchor has also been parodied on the BBC sketch show Dead Ringers.Raworth grew up in Surrey, with a florist mother and a businessman father, and attended the prestigious St Paul’s school, where Petronella Wyatt was a contemporary. She has also co-presented major news events.But it is still a significant coup for a presenter who has been dismissed by some as boring and cruelly described by one critic as having apparently suffered “a personality bypass”.It is rumoured that in her early career at BBC Manchester, Raworth was nicknamed “the Ice Maiden”, but she has also shown that she has a flamboyant side. It is a coveted post – the lunchtime news is watched by an average of three million viewers and has 40 per cent of the television audience, a higher share than any other news bulletin.Raworth has won the role after three years as co-presenter of the Six O’ Clock News with George Alagiah and six years on the BBC Breakfast sofa with Jeremy Bowen.

Coming down to earth with a bump is more than a figure of speech It’s a… it’s a…”Dr Arthur Salvesen is not often at a loss for words. Hope is the hot air balloon which takes them up to Cloud Nine. But when the inevitable happens, and hope turns to fantasy, and the team loses, then the descent from Cloud Nine without a balloon or a parachute can be extremely painful. If it were not for hope, they would not bother to turn up to watch the match. He is offering comfort before it happens.”That’s right,” he grins.

“I am here to talk people through the shock and horror of England being knocked out of the World Cup Sports fans live on Cloud Nine Cloud cuckoo land They have to. He deals with teams knocked out of competitions unexpectedly early. He even handles performers who have been traumatised by failing drug tests. But this year, AD 2006, he is wading into territory never before tackled by sports therapists. He brings comfort to athletes who have been sidelined by injuries.

So I called him on the Love Detector and tried not to be sound too suspicious as I asked him if he thought things were going well and if he was happy with our relationship. If I’d have asked him straight out, I know he would have lied to me. I didn’t tell him how I’d done it but all my girlfriends knew and were very impressed.Hannah Reed, 26, from London, thinks that the Love Detector line saved her relationship I tend to get a bit insecure in relationships and started to feel that my boyfriend wasn’t as into me as I was him. I got the opportunity to use it a couple of weeks later when he said he was going to the gym, having already been earlier that day. I logged on to the site and watched on the map as he pulled out of our road, drove past the gym and to his ex-girlfriend’s house By the time he got home his bags were packed. He didn’t deny it.I don’t feel ashamed of what I did, but I would have felt very guilty if he was innocent If you have an inkling it’s better to know. He didn’t have a clue what was happening when I told him to leave, and that I knew he was cheating on me.

My techie friend told me that I should follow him using the new T-Mobile phones with satellite navigation systems that let you log on to a website and track the movement of the phone.So for a Christmas present I bought him one. He was gadget mad and loved it, and I assuaged my guilt by thinking that even if I found out nothing, at least he’d still like the present. I wanted to check it for text messages but he was really protective of it. I must admit I tried to hack into his e-mail but I couldn’t figure out the password. I know I should have talked to him about it but I couldn’t face the showdown and guilt if he denied it. It’s enough to make you stay single.Love DetectivesClaire Rimmer, 22, from Birmingham, caught her boyfriend cheating by tracking him via his mobile phone Just like all the clich?I started to suspect something was up when my boyfriend of six months became distant and started working late.

He also didn’t answer the phone when I rang him, and he always had his mobile switched off when we were together. It is amazing what people can do, and infidelity has been around for ever, but what’s even more amazing is the business to be made out of it. And as long as there’s money in it, the love detectives are here to stay. It’s amazing what people will do to each other.”He’s right, of course.

“To go to these lengths you either know that something is wrong or you’re completely paranoid,” she says. “If it’s the former you should be talking to your partner, and if it’s the latter you’d better be careful that you’re not the one dumped for being a nutter.”Relate counsellor Denise Knowles argues that these products can be dangerous and “exploit the paranoia of vulnerable people”.Not their problem, according to Brad, who says: “Guns are dangerous but it’s not the manufacturer’s fault if a crazy person buys one. Again, the manufacturer says that the product wasn’t designed for this purpose but knows the software could be used this way, although it doesn’t condone it. But at just over £60, it doesn’t break the bank of any suspicious spouse or paranoid partner.If you want to tap into your boyfriend’s answerphone, it’s not a problem. Want to open your girlfriend’s letters without her knowing? There’s a manual to show you how… but who really uses these things? According to the Garden Pharmacy in Covent Garden, most of their CheckMate kits are sold to men.So are these products the modern equivalent of the chastity belt, another way for men to keep their women on leads? According to the feminist author of Love, a User’s Guide, Jane Knowles: “When men they say they care for a woman, they really mean they control her.”It’s true that working women now have many more opportunities to meet other men and this, combined with the shift in power created by women earning more money, can make men feel vulnerable and paranoid.

We ran a trade deficit throughout the 19th century when the UK was the workshop of the world. Covering the trade deficit with exports of services is fine, for Britain has done that for about two centuries. As recently as 1997, the current account was virtually in balance.Instinctively – and to anyone who remembers the sterling crises of the 1970s or even the ejection of the pound from the ERM in 1992 – this is uneasy stuff. While 2 per cent may not sound much in itself, it adds up over the years.

Fortunately there is a surplus on trade in services and a strong flow of foreign investment income that together will cut the current account deficit to a little over 2 per cent of GDP. Just this week they “discovered” that UK software investment was four times as big as they thought and our economy appreciably larger as a result.Still, officially our trade deficit last year was £47.6bn, the highest ever in absolute terms and equivalent to 4 per cent of GDP. But we are equally not in the catastrophic situation of the 1970s, when trade deficits threatened the collapse of the whole economy.Some numbers. We only have a first sight of the current account figures for last year, and when the statisticians crawl over the accounts they usually find out that things are not as bad as they first thought. Sooner or later there are no farms left to sell.
It is a huge question, but as with most huge questions there is no simple answer. There is clearly some problem with our trade deficit, and this will tend to get worse simply as a result of our increasing dependency on imported fuel.

So are we selling solid assets to finance our taste for luxury imports, the equivalent of selling the farm to cover the dissolute son’s losses on the gambling tables of London? If we were, this would be a story that would end in tears, and the fact that the US seems to be following much the same path would be no consolation. Yet sterling remains strong and foreign companies want to buy British companies as diverse as the London Stock Exchange and BAA, which owns Heathrow airport. This was caused in part by the switch from being an oil exporter to oil importer for the first time since 1979 as North Sea output declined. Of course, if you don’t smoke, you don’t want to sit in a smoky atmosphere. But in all sorts of places, it is perfectly practicable to designate separate areas, so that no one is forced to sit in a smoking room.

More from Philip Hensher.

There was another huge trade deficit last year for UK plc. Now, following last night’s vote, such a ban is certain to take effect in all our pubs, and even in private member’s clubs too. It seems incredible that the obvious solution can’t be entertained. The latest offering from Russian state television is a dramatisation of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s epic novel The First Circle.

Joined Wolff Ollins PR firm before co-founding Hobsbawm Macaulay PR with school friend Julia Hobsbawn. “But I want to be there for him.”STRENGTHS Camera-friendly, media-savvy, knows how to handle life in the spotlight.WEAKNESSES Quick to downplay her privileged background, which may undermine her appeal. Can the public trust someone so quick to deny her past?Sarah BrownBORN 1963, father in publishing, mother a schoolteacher.EDUCATION AND CAREER Acland Burghley Comprehensive and Camden High School for Girls, then Bristol University where she read psychology. Like Sarah Brown, she’s into alternative therapies and enjoyed an aromatherapy massage while pregnant, although it’s not recommended Unlike Cherie Blair, she has no political ambitions “I am not going to tell Dave what to say,” she says.

The £875 crocodile-finish Smythson handbag she wore soon sold out. They dated while Samantha was at university and married on 1 June 1996 in Oxfordshire. They have three children – their first-born, Ivan, four this year, has epilepsy and cerebral palsy. The couple take it in turns to sleep in his room in case he has a seizure.

We want excellent people doing an excellent job in all of our supply chain. We are prepared to pay for that and if people don’t get that message, they will have to pay for it,” he said.Mr Dromey said the union was taking legal advice about lodging a claim for back pay on behalf of the workers, who had been underpaid for four months.A spokeswoman for Blue Diamond said the company believed in higher wages for cleaners but that it was under commercial pressure from clients to hold wages down.. Mr Lezala said Metronet had been working hard with its contractors and trade unions to make sure that staff were treated fairly and received fair rates of pay.”We were very clear about what we wanted in this contract. The T&G is determined to end the often shameful treatment of cleaners,” he said.Andrew Lezala, the chief executive of Metronet, which includes Atkins, Balfour Beatty and Bombardier, said the contract was signed in October but workers became aware they were being underpaid only in recent weeks.

Blue Diamond, Britain’s largest independent cleaning firm, was said to be paying employees the legal minimum wage of £5.05 an hour instead of the £5.50 allegedly agreed under a contract with the Tube infrastructure consortium Metronet.
Rentokil Initial is expected to take over the contract on Friday together with the 400 cleaners, many of whom are graduates from Ghana and Nigeria.Jack Dromey, the deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, which warned Metronet about the underpayment, said it should be praised for terminating the three-year contract, which involved cleaning 90 stations on the District, Circle, Metropolitan, Hammersmith & City and East London lines.”Metronet have done the decent thing, acting promptly and properly to terminate the contract. A cleaning contract on London Underground estimated to be worth more than £20m was terminated yesterday after it emerged that the company was underpaying its staff. MPs are demanding that all new supermarket mergers and acquisitions be halted by ministers until they can ensure the survival of small shops. After a seven-month investigation, a committee of MPs forecasts today that many independent shops – particularly convenience stores, petrol stations and newsagents – will shut by 2015, battered by the dominance of the big grocers.. Even if it did, I don’t think it would make a lot of difference to their bottom line.” The likes of PartyGaming have been signing up more players outside the US recently.. A country which espouses freedom of speech and choice ought not to be taking such a paternalistic stance in relation to online gaming.”The online gaming industry is pinning its hopes on a change of mood among US casino groups, which might prefer the option of starting their own online operations and would stop their lobbying against internet rivals.Any further stock market impact from legislative moves in the US will be closely watched by the Australian company Betcorp, which said yesterday that it intends to list on AIM on 17 March.A UK broker said internet gaming shares were hugely overvalued and any hint of a threat to the groups’ important US clientele would hit the stocks But he added: “I can’t imagine the bill going through.

The US would be far better at regulating it than prohibiting it. Excapsa Software is raising £56.2m in the float that values the business at £214.2m. The shares start trading tomorrow at 110p.Excapsa announced plans for a listing last summer at the height of the internet poker craze when PartyGaming floated and raised almost £1bn for its owners. Only two months later the shares crashed on fears that the online poker craze had started to wane, making it difficult for companies such as Excapsa to float, but they subsequently rallied again on evidence of further growth.David Collins, at Berwin Leighton Paisner, who advises Excapsa, said: “The last thing you want to do is drive [online gaming] underground. PartyGaming shares dropped nearly 4 per cent to 123.5p, while 888 was down 5 per cent to 187.75p Shares in Sportingbet fell by 5 per cent to 387.25p.

A spokesman for PartyGaming, which takes 80 per cent of its customers from the US, said: “We continue to monitor the situation in the US.”An estimated 8 million Americans logged on to gaming sites last year. Previous attempts to stamp out online gambling by Americans have run into the sand in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, but sponsors of new bills are becoming more optimistic. They hope to harness disquiet since the bribery scandal involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. As an adviser to eLottery, a technology firm, in 2000, Mr Abramoff had reportedly lobbied against a previous bill to clamp down on internet gambling.One measure currently being championed would make it illegal to pay internet gambling sites with credit cards, wire services or other banking instruments – a move that would put additional pressure on the financial services industry to take action that could stamp out online gambling.Once again, the US sports leagues have thrown their weight behind the bill, arguing that sports betting threatens “traditional American values” the team sports represent.Mr Goodlatte, Republican congressman for Virginia, failed to push through prohibition legislation in November 2001 but is believed to be planning the introduction of a bill that would amend existing legislation to explicitly outlaw online gambling.The latest threats to online gaming companies came as the Canadian company behind UltimateBet announced its debut on the Alternative Investment Market. Johnny Cameron, who runs the bank’s flourishing business banking and financial markets operations, and Mark Fisher, the head of infrastructure there, join the board next month.
Their appointments take the number of executive directors from a lowly four to a more typical six for a company of RBS’s magnitude. Bill Friedrich, deputy chief executive of the oil and gas group BG, will become RBS’ 12th independent director.RBS shares languish among the cheapest of any European bank, in part on longstanding disquiet about the perceived dominance of Sir Fred Goodwin, its chief executive, over an unusually compact board.

Durham will be boosted by the long-awaited return of Steve Harmison for the First Division game against Middlesex at the Riverside today in the Liverpool Victoria County Championship. Yesterday, on a day of unexpected labour for Warwickshire, Carberry made his first century since quitting Canterbury for Southampton in the winter. It was the fifth of his career and his third in Championship cricket and the manner in which he celebrated, punching the air with both feet off the ground as the ball sped towards the boundary, suggested it meant a lot to him.. Unable to establish himself at either Surrey or Kent, Michael Carberry is a batsman in need of a settled environment for his talents to flourish Perhaps his third county, Hampshire, may provide it. The decision would disappoint Panesar but should he feel sorry for himself he need look no further than the Indoor School at Lord’s Vaughan would just love to be in contention.. Ashley Giles is the only England slow bowler to take a Test wicket in May at the home of cricket, and these statistics may convince the selectors to play an extra batsman. “But you have to take the conditions and the balance of the team into account as well.”The start tomorrow will be earliest ever for a Test match in England and, unsurprisingly, English spinners have made little impact.

Panesar is desperate to play but the figures at Lord’s do not suggest that he will play a pivotal role in the game.”I think every cricket side should contain a spinner because they normally come into play in the second innings of games,” said Panesar. Ian Bell fulfilled the role on three occasions in the winter but the selectors now feel that Cook has a game that can cope with the extra pace and bounce on Australian pitches.Cook was not the only young cricketer to make a positive impression during England’s winter tour of India: Monty Panesar will be hoping that the selectors show a similar attitude towards their spinner. Hopefully I can score a few runs and keep my place.”England’s selectors will have had one eye on next winter’s Ashes series when they announced that Cook would bat at No 3. With Vaughan’s future uncertain, England want to find a possible replacement and give him as much practice as they can. My hundred at Nagpur has given me the inner belief that I can perform at this level. I know I am not going to score runs every time I go out, but scoring Test runs is not an unknown to me.

I am just glad to have been given another chance to stake a claim. It is still the same game and I will try and go through the same routines to make sure I am right when I go out to bat.”Obviously I knew that Marcus Trescothick would open when he returned, and I initially thought that my only chance of playing was as an opener But I am quite looking forward to batting at three. The main difference is that you sit there with your feet up when the other two walk out to bat. “I used to bat at three for my club side, Maldon, when I was younger, and I have only batted there on a couple of occasions in one-day games for Essex, but you would bat anywhere for England I do not see it as a problem There is not much of a difference.

His footwork was assured, and he looked unfazed by the challenges of Test cricket.All these runs were scored while opening the batting yet Cook will bat at three tomorrow when he makes his home debut at Lord’s. The prospect of batting out of position is not one that daunts the left-hander. Cook scored 60 and an unbeaten 104 in Nagpur on his Test debut. Later that summer the 21-year-old struck a double century in a practice match against the touring Australians.Yet his most impressive performance came in India this year when he was rushed into the England Test side. After a successful first season in county cricket he was selected to play for MCC – an unofficial England A side – against the Championship-winning county in April 2005, and he scored 120 and 97 in the match. “But if you keep scoring runs they [the selectors] cannot leave you out.” Runs are a commodity Cook has collected with ease in his short career.

Some antique lace attached to a wooden pole could be fixed to either side of the frame.You could hang strings of white cotton thread and tie on little plastic or paper flowers and insects to create a window mobile. A muslin drape cuts down on light entering a room, and increases the “blueness” of the light, making a north-facing room feel colder. Have you considered a lace blind covering the window’s lower half?
Depending on the depot’s height, this might obscure the ugly view, while still letting in enough light. I would like to plant window boxes but the window opens outwards. Have you any ideas to cheer up this aspect? Anna McDonald, by e-mail

A. I have tried hanging muslin drapes to mask the view, but this makes the room even darker.

An HFEA spokesman said the authority had raised the issue with the Government.. Q. My daughter’s bedroom window looks out over a post office depot The room faces north and doesn’t get much light. Both the medical profession and HFEA agree the discrepancy in the law is unfair – but any change will be delayed until after the Government’s review of the HFEA Act, in 2008. That will be too late to save the Manchester couple’s embryos.Dr Brian Lieberman, of Manchester Fertility Services, said the current law was “manifestly wrong” and “illogical”. The couple underwent IVF treatment to store embryos.Friends volunteered to act as surrogates but were unsuitable on health grounds, and now the five-year limit has elapsed – with a second batch of seven embryos due to be destroyed next year.The couple claim the law is unfair, as embryos created for any fertility problems other than a missing womb can be kept for 10 years. Doctors predicted he would be a big baby so she opted for an elective Caesarean.

If someone behaves atrociously, he suggested, it’s because their mind has gone haywire, and not because they’ve succumbed to the Devil. If you have two records and keep checking them, while muttering “Abba, then ZZ Top, that’s still right, thank goodness,” you’ve got something wrong. But I’ve got a room full of records, and thought I kept them in alphabetical order so I can find the one I want, but apparently it means I’ve got a problem with my arse.But like so many of the great thinkers, Freud’s significance may have been lost, partly because of the distortions of his critics and partly because of the twaddle of his supporters.From the little I know of him, it seems he was the first person to work out how the mind was made up of different layers, such as the unconscious, where all sorts of anxieties can rest, popping into the conscious mind as dreams. And if this phase goes skewiff, then we become “anal”, meaning we can’t let things go and keep things obsessively in order.It’s often said that a sign of being “anal” is keeping your records in alphabetical order, but surely that depends on how many records you’ve got. For example, he argued that as toddlers we go through an “anal” phase, where we come to terms with our rear bits.

Apart from seeming improbable, this is utterly impractical, because even if there was an attraction your mum would ruin it by saying, “Well, all right then, but only if you tidy your room first.”
And yet odd bits of Freud have crept into everyday language. Of all the historical anniversaries that pop up, you could forgive people for not bothering with Freud’s 150th birthday. This is the character whose most famous theory is that all men have a hidden desire to have sex with their mothers. We call on the Government not to make destitute, detain or deport women who are at risk of gender-related persecution.” Until our Government accepts the moral logic of such a position, it is no more a believer in the rights of women than the elders in Tasleem’s village.d.orr independent.co.uk

More from Deborah Orr. “We call on the UK Government to ensure that the persecution women face, including rape, honour crimes and female genital mutilation, is taken seriously in asylum claims.

It is a picture that has no room to display the reality of many asylum applications, which come from the people around the world who are most oppressed – women – and who have most to fear when they are sent back.The lack of leeway given to female asylum-seeking refugees in Britain is now so great that a campaign group made up of various charities, Women for Refugee Women, is gathering a petition with a modest, unanswerable aim. But it is unhappy to view such acts as a crime against humanity, because if it did so it would not be able to pack on to planes the women who reach these shores in their fear and misery, and deport them back whence they came.One of the most ghastly aspects of the Home Office deportation mess is that the idea of dangerous foreign men roaming Britain feeds into all the most primal prejudices people harbour about the foreign nationals who come to our shores. President Musharraf, displaying an attitude remarkably similar to some shown by the Home Office officials who give “evidence” at the kangaroo courts set up in detention centres to deport as may people as possible, has even declared that Pakistani women “use” rape as a “money-making concern” or to back their asylum applications.Britain (like Musharraf, who likes to advertise that he considers women’s equality “a priority”) is happy to wring its hands over the oppression of women – the honour killings, the rapes, the trafficking, the circumcision and the ritual murder. But the truth is that our adventures in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, have resulted in more and harsher oppression for women.Likewise in Pakistan, where Tasleem awaits her fate, Britain and the US are happy to accept the mere lip service paid to women’s rights, because the country is seen as the West’s key ally in the ‘war on terror’. Cherie Blair, on the eve of war with Afghanistan, may have been happy to frame her eyes with her fingers, and promise that her husband would be liberating women from the burqa. In this country, of course, we consider ourselves to be supportive of their battles, a beacon society that has carved a way forward for women and shown that however incomplete or imperfect it may be at the moment, the struggle for female liberation is one worth taking up.Except that if Tasleem, the Liberian women or even, unless things get worse for her, Marina turned up in Britain and applied for asylum, their application would be unlikely to meet with success.

But Craig has that scoring instinct.”Both Hill and Perry have been nominated for Guinness Premiership awards: Hill in the coach of the season category, where he faces challenges from Philippe Saint-Andre of Sale and Brian Smith of London Irish; Perry as player of the season. We have some good young wings in David Lemi, Lee Robinson and Marko Stanojevic and they’re all learning. “We scored only 28 tries last season, despite having lots of possession. Craig is a proven finisher with real pace; in fact, he was timed as the quickest wing in the Wales squad not so long go. His trademark chip-and-chase routine has suckered many a defence, and he will sharpen Bristol’s attacking game, which has had all the cutting edge of an elderly blancmange of late.”Craig will definitely give us some additional try-scoring experience,” agreed Hill, who exceeded expectations by keeping his newly promoted club in the ?te league while operating in a financial straitjacket.

The 27-year-old Welshman won 10 full international caps between 2002 and 2005 and was a wildcard contender for a place on the Lions’ tour of Australia in 2001. In addition, he’s similar to Shaun physically: tall and powerful, capable of attacking the fringes and quick enough to go through a gap. He’s also a few years younger, so we’re taking a long-term view.”O’Riordan made his Heineken Cup debut against Bristol at Donnybrook four years ago, but as Brian O’Driscoll and company were also strutting their stuff that day, the travelling Memorial Grounders might have been forgiven for not noticing They will recognise Morgan, however. He’s been over to Bristol a few times and proved very receptive to new ideas. “We need a half-back who can step in and perform at the highest level Brian meets that criteria. Yet at the same time, we didn’t need an individual who would come here demanding a first-team place without earning it We’ve spent time with Shaun and developed him. He is our number one.”Brian is 25 – just the right age for us to be able to work with him on his skills and help him develop his game.