I came across these on a recent trip to Ethiopia. It seems that, on the streets of Addis Ababa, the hip hop movement has branched out into confectionery. A six-pack of Hip Hop chocolate cream biscuits cost 2 birr (roughly 10p); a small price to pay for edible street cred, particularly when you consider that the manufacturers – Nas Biscuits – also share their name with a iconic NY rapper.

The Eurovision Song Contest is coming to Moscow this Month. Here’s where the Euro Stars – past and present – Would Stay, Eat And Drink in the Russian Capital

MOSCOW LOVES TO PLAY THE HOST.

Then 70,000 Englishmen were set to descend on the city for the European Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea last year, visa restrictions were lifted, the metro was kept open till late and the volatile police were put on their best behaviour.

This month, flags and bunting will flutter as Moscow goes all giggly and gracious as it hosts the Eurovision song contest for the first time (12-16 May). Singers from 43 countries and thousands of Eurovision groupies will come for the week-long carnival that has become a camp pop substitute for more fiercer forms of national rivalry.

Russia has been dying to host (and win) Eurovision for years, sending its most famous singers, including pseudo-lesbian pop duet Tatu, to take part in the contest but it was only last Bilan, at the second attempt, won with a very flamboyant Eurovision performance involving an Olympic ice-skating champion, a tiny rink, a Hungarian violinist and a priceless Stradivarius. Oh yes, and not forgetting the song I Believe.

The city will put on its best show – as anyone who has heard Russian pop knows, the cheesiness of Euro pop is very close to the local heart. Anyone with a ticket will apparently get their visas more quickly than usual. Check with your local embassy about the speeded-up process.

In the meantime, so that you’re singing from the same hymn sheet, here’s our (firmly tonguein- cheek) guide to the different tribes of Eurovision song contest visitors…

BE SUPER-TROOPERS LIKE…
ABBA

Vladimir Putin denied recently that he hired the Abba tribute group Björn Again for £20,000 to play a private concert for him and eight other friends. If the real Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid did visit, they would feel right at home at the Swedish-run hotel, Katerina [+7 (495) 7952444, www.katerinahotels.com], on the embankment, just a short walk from the Kremlin. After that they could retire to the summer garden of Scandinavia [7 Maly Palashevsky, +7 (495) 9375630, www.scandinavia.ru], a Swedish-run establishment that has survived almost 15 years in the cut-throat Moscow restaurant business. The hamburgers are some of the best in the city.

If, like Abba, your group splits up, boys can go to Night Flight [17 Tverskaya Ulitsa. +7 (495) 6294165, www.nightflight.ru], a legendary club run by the owners of Scandinavia, whose advertising slogan ‘Do it Tonight’ explains much more than any description of the bacchanalia inside the club could. The girls can take the low road too, off to Krasnaya Shapochka [14 Akadeimka Sakharova, +7 (495) 6078605], the city’s most famous strip club for women – there are dozens of such clubs — whose crazy menu allows you to have a shower with the stripper of your choice or get him sacked for a day.

ROCK MOSCOW LIKE…

LORDI

Lordi, the Finnish rockers and surprise winners in 2006, have faces that look as if they have just spent a vodka-fuelled night at Petrov Vodkin restaurant – where there are more than 300 types of vodka – but without trying the selection of zakuski or starters [3/7 Pokrovka Ulitsa, +7 (495) 6235350, www.vodkin.ru]. No self-respecting Muscovite would drink vodka without eating in between shots.

The hideous rockers probably wouldn’t be let through the door of the ultra-modern, spaceship-shaped Swissôtel [+7 (495) 7879800, www.swissotel.com].

Instead, they should probably find some satisfaction at Godzilla [+7 (495) 699 4223, www.godzillashostel.com], a fine hostel in the centre of town where you can get a bed for
less than £15 and a room for £50. Still it is always worth popping into the Swissôtel to see the types who grace the City Space bar on the 33rd floor.

LIVE THE NIGHTLIFE LIKE…

DIMA BILAN

Dima Bilan was one of the biggest pop stars in Russia even before he won the Eurovision Song Contest. All you have to do to see his influence is check out the huge number of mullets among young Muscovites.

Hairstyle aside, Bilan is a fabulously fashionable type with a fondness for designer jeans, expensive cars and jetting off to luxury destinations making videos of himself showing off his naked chest. He has been spotted in Kalina [8 Novinsky Bulvar. +7 (495) 2295519, www.kalinabar.ru], one of the more trendy top floor bars all round town where you can get a cocktail for £15 and sit and watch the shimmering lights of Moscow below.

After that, Dima would head off to Rai [9a Bolotnaya Naberezhnaya, +7 (495) 7671474], one of the city’s top clubs, where you can meet wild panthers, half-naked women, dwarfs and acrobats and where tables cost tens of thousands of pounds just to book.

To sleep, only a hotel like Golden Apple [Uitsa Malaya Dmitrovka, +7 (495) 980 7000, www.goldenapple.ru] in central Moscow would suit flamboyant divas. One of the city’s first boutique hotels, Golden Apple is in a refurbished 19th-century building where rooms start from £350. Each floor has a different design and the first floor has a tempting Golden Apple luring you in to the designer restaurant.

TAKE IT EASY LIKE…
CLIFF RICHARD He should have been Britain’s second Eurovision champion but it recently came out that General Franco needed a win more, and so fixed the contest for the Spanish entry in 1968.

Never known for his wild parties, Sir Cliff would probably enjoy the old-fashioned atmosphere at Metropol, with its art deco furniture and close proximity to the Bolshoi Theatre and the Kremlin [1/4 Teatralny proezd, +7 (499) 5017800 www.metropol-moscow.ru].

A committed Christian like Cliff could then drop by St Andrew’s, an Anglican church that is a tourist attraction in its own right, a slice of middle England amidst the onion domes of Moscow [8 Voznesensky Pereukok, +7 (495) 6290990, www.standrewsmoscow.org].

To get back down to earth, dine around the corner at Stanislavsky 2 [4 Leontievsky Ulitsa, +8 (903) 5890616], a small familyrun restaurant where your homemade food is cooked in the kitchen off the front room. Calming, friendly and not open too late – just right for good boy Cliff.

SPEND A MILLION LIKE…

ANDREW LLOYDWEBBER

When the composer Lord Lloyd-Webber came to Russia late last year, he was given an audience with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who confessed his love for Webber musicals and promised to vote for the British entry. High praise indeed – plus it could just save the UK from an ignominious nil points rating.

Multimillionaire Webber could spend a large chunk of his fortune staying in the Ritz- Carlton [+7 (495) 2258888. www.ritzcarlton.com], a new five-star hotel that is right on the city’s main artery, Tverskaya, and a short walk to the Kremlin. Rooms start at £600 a night and everything else, from the abundance of marble to the champagne breakfasts is luxury, millionaire style. Even the toiletries in the sumptuous bathrooms are by Italian luxury house Bulgari.

Don’t forget to have cocktails in the O2 bar on the top floor where you can sit on a huge roof terrace and look straight down into the Kremlin and Red Square.

Art lover and collector that he is, Webber could also wander off to the Tretyakov Gallery [10/12 Lavrushensky Pereulok, www.treyakovgallery.ru] to see the best of Russian art.

Who knows, he might get an idea for a musical – the Volga Boatmen show anyone?

CAMP IT UP LIKE…
GRAHAM NORTON

The sharp-tongued TV host takes over the mantle of Terry Wogan as commentator for this year’s contest. If the nerves get to him, he can settle into the Moscow Renaissance Hotel [18/1 Olympiski prospect, +7 (495) 9319000, www.marriott.com], not too flashy but a good quality four-star hotel – from under £150 a night — which is literally a hop, skip and a jump from the Olympiisky Stadium, which hosted the boxing in the 1980 Olympics and will be the venue for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest [Olympiisky Prospekt, www.olimpik.ru].

Although Moscow’s mayor Yuri Luzhkov has banned any gay parades in the city, that doesn’t mean that the city doesn’t have a thriving gay community. Three Monkeys [71 Sadovnicheskyia Ulitsa, +7 (495) 9151563, www.gaycentral.ru] is one of the oldest gay clubs in the city and its transvestite shows will reflect the spirit of the contest.

Anglepoise lamp

There’s lamps – and then there’s the Anglepoise. A byword for cool since its invention in 1934, the reissued 75th anniversary 1227 model is one of those rare items, like the Roberts Revival radio, that never dates. Using an ingenious spring-loaded mechanism, the lamp can be manipulated and moved into any position – thereby making it a favourite with designers since it first came on to the market. And when your iPhone is gathering dust in a shoebox under your bed, the Anglepoise will still be there, lighting up whatever you’re doing. A classic.


£110.64, www.anglepoise.com

Magis Garçon trolley


Shopping trollies may well be standard issue for grandmas, but with plastic bags enjoying the same level of PR reserved for knife-carrying hoodies, the trolley is grabbing itself some eco-cool points. We particularly like Magis’s sleek Garçon model, which is made from a lightweight aluminium frame and houses a generous waterproof nylon bag. Wonder if you can get it in tartan?


£175, www.nest.co.uk

Nokia 5800


Another month, another challenger has a shot at the seemingly invincible iPhone. With a generous 3.2” widescreen, DVDquality film capture and an 8MB card to store music on, this is a serious effort from the Finnish giant. It’s even got integrated stereo speakers, meaning you can really annoy your fellow citizens with your music taste wherever you are. Boasting wireless and 3G connectivity, it should have Apple’s technicians looking increasingly over their shoulders.

£249 (check with your provider for offers), www.nokia.co.uk

Polaroid PoGo


A compact digital camera, the PoGo comes – in true Polaroid style – with an inbuilt printer, which enables the user to whiz off 2”x3” pictures as soon as they’ve taken a snap. Using the same inkless technology first utilized in last year’s mobile phone printer, the pictures are sharp, full-bodied and perfect for sticking in your wallet.


£120 approx, www.thenewinstant.com

Five Things To Know About…

The Sony XEL-1 OLED Television

• The screen is a Ryvita-worrying 3mm thick, but at the moment the only model available has a tiny 11” screen.
• It uses Organic Light-Emitting Diodes, which are superior to anything out there at the moment.
• It has a contrast ratio of 1,000,000:1, meaning plasma-beating pictures whenever you turn your set on.
• All the sockets are in the base, leaving the screen wire and clutter free.
• Bigger versions will become available over the next few months, so unless you’re desperate (and rich enough) for some bedside TV chic, hold your horses.

£1,600-£2,500 (depending on whether you buy it in the US or UK), www.sony.co.uk

UNLESS YOU’RE ON a business trip and have an expenses-paid hotel room to look forward to, the chances are your biggest travel expense will be accommodation. Imagine how affordable holidays would be if you didn’t have to fork out money for somewhere to stay every time.

Well, the internet has come to the rescue. Clued-up holiday makers are rushing to sign-up to home-swap websites, which are currently doing a brisk trade thanks to the belt-tightening in the leisure sector.

Not heard of home-swapping? The idea is this: you pay an annual subscription to a company like Home Link or Home Exchange, who list details of your home (or, for the wellaboded, homes) online, with pictures, transport and location information.

You then log on yourself, surf through the several thousand other listings (in desirable locations spread across all continents), before emailing potential home exchangers to organise a week-long, month-long, even several-monthlong property swaps. End result? Your holidays are booked for the year. Total accommodation costs? Zilch.

For the truly dedicated holiday bargain hunters, there can indeed be some astonishing savings to make, as Julie Osborne, who runs the UK arm of Homeexchange.com, explains:

“To do a safari from England normally costs around £2,500. I went on one through our website and it cost me £300 for six days. Another story I heard was of a couple going to Canada to see hump-backed whales. A standard holiday to do that sort of activity costs £3,000. They just spent $80 for a day’s hump-backed whaling.’

The money-saving benefit of swapping homes with strangers speaks for itself. In addition to the savings on accommodation cost, cars are also sometimes swapped, meaning there’s no need for pricey car hire, and things like DVD libraries or sporting equipment are often thrown into the bargain. “For a family of five children, taking them all skiing could be exorbitant, unless you can exchange,” says Osborne. “And it’s not really practical having to carry the equipment so a trip with all the equipment already there is very attractive.”

Osborne launched the British Home Exchange website last year, after being asked by the company’s American founder, Ed Kushins, who had lived a few doors down from her while she was living in California, to take charge of the UK business. Kushins started his home-swap company in 1992, following a career in marketing; the web-based version went live in 2002 and soon enjoyed a massive PR coup when a starstudded Hollywood film, The Holiday – which casts Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as two women who swap homes over the internet and find love as a result – used the name of the website in the film.

“Before the film came out, we had about 10,000 listings,” explains Osborne, who runs the website from Barnstaple in Devon. “We were still at that stage the biggest home-swap site in the world, but then the movie made the listings grow considerably in the next couple of years –up to around 18,000.”

She says that after the obvious extra publicity harvested by Hollywood endorsement, she had expected the increase in subscriber numbers to taper off, but then came the credit crunch and new listings have shot up. “In the last year, it has gone up to 24,000 so it’s more than doubled in the last four years.”

The financial situation has been a friend to the home-swap industry, but Osborne is keen to stress that it’s not just about saving money – it’s also about avoiding tourist traps and seeing the destination through the eyes of a resident.

“You really do live like a local,” she says. “You see a lot of things that tourists don’t see and get to stay in lived-in homes, which offer a totally different feel to hotels.”

Home Exchange makes its money by charging a fee of £69.99 for one year’s new membership (two years costs £94.99; a renewal price for one year is £35). But you can also pay for ‘bronze membership’ (you don’t list your home, but can contact other people with homes on the site) or, for those lucky individuals with stunning properties, ‘gold membership’, costing £329 a year, including ‘mansions in Malibu and castles in Scotland’

While Home Exchange claims to be the largest home-swap website, Home Link is a UK-based rival that offers the second largest number of listings and prides itself on the service it offers (at £115 a year, it is almost twice as expensive as Home Exchange).

“Home Link has 27 different offices around the world,” explains Caroline Connolly, who runs the Winchester-based business with husband Jon. “They’re each run by an English-speaking local person: if you lose your car keys in Italy but didn’t speak Italian, then our operator over there could almost certainly help you out.”

Home Link has been growing at a steady rate of around 4% each year, but has ‘definitely seen an increase on that in the last few months’, most likely because of the global recession. There are 13,500 members in 76 different countries, with the US, the UK, France, Spain and Australasia particularly well covered. Curiously, Portugal, Greece and Turkey have not been enthusiastic about home-swapping.

Although the internet has helped the home-swap industry flourish, with the obvious ease it affords in accessing information about properties, the idea of home swapping is not new. Home Link was founded in 1953 by a group of American teachers from the East and West coasts who were spoilt for holiday time but had very little money.

Nowadays, Home Link’s membership profile falls into two distinct categories, says Connolly. “There are those who see it as an opportunity to save money on accommodation, people who often have school-aged families and who are tied to the academic year – rental house prices normally double in the six weeks over the summer. But there are also a lot of retired members who like the idea of the rapport that comes with swapping your home.”

Connolly says that many of the Home Link faithful end up swapping homes year after year and become close friends, but it has to be said that handing over the keys to your nest to complete strangers doesn’t appeal to everyone. Aren’t there some horror stories of people stealing family heirlooms or changing the locks and permanently moving in?

“Theoretically, there is the possibility of some abuse, but I think it comes back to mutual responsibility,” laughs Connolly. “If they’re in your home and you can pick up the phone and speak to them, then there’s a sense of mutual trust.” After all, presumably they could do the same back to you.

Both Osborne and Connolly claim that of the many thousand exchanges that take place every year, there are only ever a handful of complaints and they are never to do with wilful abuse. Sometimes, people cause minor damage to vehicles, especially if they’re driving on a different side of the road to the one they are used to, but mostly it’s about differing standards of cleanliness: what is clean to a young bachelor living in Paris is not what is clean to a well-heeled family from the home counties, notes Osborne.

Both websites advise their members to swap as many photos as possible and talk a good deal before exchanging to establish that you are the same kind of family with the same kind of outlook. Of course, the end benefit of a home exchange is that it could give you a whole new outlook on going away.

www.homelink.org.uk , www.homeexchange.com

Casestudy

BUSINESSWOMAN EMMA

CHALMERS admits her friends were surprised when she told them she was planning to open up the house she shares with husband Innes, a chartered accountant, and their two young daughters to complete strangers.

“Home exchanging is not for everyone. Some people can’t get their head around letting other people into your home and being in someone else’s.”

But she was totally comfortable with the idea. “The pros outweighed the cons. Ultimately, if you have something you’re really worried about, just lock it away or leave it with a friend.”

Since their first trip to Denmark in 2006, they have been on big holidays in Holland and Switzerland, and shorter UK-based breaks to Chester and Whitley Bay. Living close to Edinburgh airport has made it easy to jet away and, with two children, home exchanging via the Home Link website has proved very affordable.

“The best thing is the space. You’re getting a full house. It’s much more luxurious and more comfortable than staying in a hotel room.”

And there are added extras: “All the neighbours know you are coming so you have a ready-made network. And you just bond with the family whose house you’re living in. Even though you’ve never met them, you become friends.” Lee Cheshire

Five new arts centres are hoping to attract visitors to a long-neglected corner of Britain – the East Midlands. With their contemporary architecture, art galleries and performance spaces, they are kickstarting a cultural renaissance in these former industrial cities.

WHEN NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY, a landmark art gallery, opens this September, it will round off a number of exciting new arts venue that have recently launched in the heart of England. Here’s what to see where…

THE NEW ART EXCHANGE

Nottingham’s New Art Exchange is the first black contemporary visual arts venue outside of London. It is committed to African, African-Caribbean and South Asian arts, and reflects the multi-ethnic diversity of the East Midlands with a programme of exhibitions and performances from both nationally and locally known artists. The building includes a gallery, workshop and rehearsal facilities, plus a café.

Until 19 April, the Exchange is home to Floating Coffins, a new exhibition from French-Algerian video artist Zineb Sedira. It’s a multiscreen video installation with an environmental theme.

39-41 Gregory Boulevard, Nottingham, 0115 924 8630; www.thenewartexchange.org.uk

CURVE

Curve is the centrepiece of Leicester’s Cultural Quarter, a new home for theatre and the performing arts in a forgotten area of the city. It’s a landmark building with major international architect Rafael Viñoly opting for an opened out design: the all-glass facade draws passers-by in and lets performers look out on the world. The two auditoria allow directors to place the audience in a variety of non-traditional configurations.

April’s a busy month, with festivals of Indian music and children’s art, as well as contemporary dance and drama. And, since its opening, Leicester City Council has given the green light for a digital media centre to join Curve in the Cultural Quarter.

Rutland Street, Leicester, 0116 2423560; www.curveonline.co.uk

NOTTINGHAM CONTEMPORARY

When Nottingham Contemporary opens this September it will be the largest gallery space in the East Midlands. The landmark building will provide a number of galleries, education and social spaces and a performance area.

Nottingham Contemporary promises to put the city on the global art map, but the project is not shy of controversy. Costs now look likely to soar from the original £13m to nearer £20m by the opening, while local residents have expressed concerns of a Millennium Dome-style white elephant. To assuage fears, the directors are running a series of Nottingham Contemporarybranded exhibitions in various venues in Nottingham prior to the opening – check the website for details.

Shire Hall, High Pavement, Nottingham, 0115 924 2421; www.ccan.org.uk

QUAD

This £11m arts and media centre is the new focal point of a rejuvenated Derby with its combination of state-of-the-art gallery space, two independent cinema screens, a café bar with free WiFi, and the first British Film Institute Mediatheque outside of London – a free-touse library of more than 1,000 films and TV programmes.

Quad is run by Keith Jeffrey who, as a former deputy director of the Baltic art gallery, has helped to bring urban regeneration through culture to Newcastle in recent years.

This month Quad plays host to the international photography festival Format 09. The event will showcase new work by established and emerging photographers, including Martin Parr and Cindy Sherman. Derby was home to the UK’s first international photography festival and Quad aims to recapture the city’s love of the camera.

Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, Derby, 01332 290606; www.derbyquad.co.uk

FIRST MOVEMENT’S LEVEL CENTRED

This arts organisation works across the East Midlands to develop projects with learning-disabled people. First Movement uses new technology to bring people together and, with the opening of the new centre last December, they now have a custom-built home with fully accessible studios in rural Derbyshire. It houses workshops fitted with the latest digital arts technology, while a mobile studio can take projects to disabled people around the East Midlands.

In April one of the themes will be Arrivals and Departures, a series of events about people’s experiences of travel with video links between the Level Centre and other art centres in the region.

Old Station Close, Rowsley, Derbyshire, 01629 734848; www.first-movement.org.uk

As this year’s Formula One season gets underway, billionaire Bernie Ecclestone maintains his grip on the world’s most expensive sport. He tells Voyager how he has stayed leader of the pack for over 30 years

A PUB DOWN A central London backstreet isn’t the first place you’d expect to meet a billionaire. Diners crowd around the bar while waitresses place plates on the wooden bench tables. Although upmarket as pubs go, it’s a far cry from the glitzy hotels of Monte Carlo or private beaches hidden away in the Caribbean.

But F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone is at home here. When he is in London, lunch at Knightsbridge’s Swag & Tails has become as much of a ritual for the 78-year-old as his age-old stewardship of the blue riband motor sport. He is not about to give up either habit.

“As long as I can deliver, I will stay CEO,” the softly spoken septuagenarian tells me as he tucks into his roast chicken.

It’s perhaps ironic that a pensioner with Andy Warhol-style grey hair and round glasses is synonymous with one of the world’s most glamorous and cuttingedge sports. However, there is no doubt that F1 wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for Ecclestone.

Son of a Suffolk trawlerman, Ecclestone epitomises rags to riches. Leaving school at 16, he established one of the UK’s biggest car dealerships while dabbling in driving. Following two failed attempts to qualify for F1 races, Ecclestone realised that there was a grander prize to be had within the sport. He bought the Brabham team and won the World Championship twice in the 1980s but had his eye on the bigger picture: television. At the time, F1 races ran as ad hoc, almost amateur, events. Each team made separate deals with each event promoter and TV coverage was sporadic since races could be cancelled at the last moment if there were not enough cars to fill the grid.

Ecclestone quietly transformed this by convincing the teams to sign a contract committing them to race. On their behalf he then approached TV companies who guaranteed coverage in return. This historic contract, the Concorde Agreement, created the cornerstone of modern F1. When Ecclestone’s lawyer and longtime ally Max Mosley became president of F1’s governing body, the Féderation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), in 1993, his power was cemented and the commercial exploitation of F1 accelerated.

Ecclestone reminisces about the time when all it took to solve a problem was gathering together “all the people that had the money and having a chat with them.” He says that he and Mosley “are not ‘a kind of Mafia’. We are the Mafia.”

He continues, “In the old days it was easier to be dictatorial. But now in Formula One we have more of a democracy.” The driving force behind this was the vast sums of money which flowed in to the sport as interest in it exploded following the death of Ayrton Senna in 1994.

In 1990 Ecclestone’s company Formula One Promotions and Administration (FOPA) had revenues of just £7.6m but by 1995 this had ballooned to £83.7m and Ecclestone’s salary of £54.9m made him the world’s highest-paid executive.

Realising that he needed to hold the F1 rights directly, rather than negotiating on behalf of the teams, Ecclestone placed a bid and Mosley handed them over to him in 1997 for the paltry annual sum of £6m. It was the best move of Ecclestone’s career and handed him the keys to the billionaire’s club. F1’s annual revenues now stand at around £900m and, remarkably, Ecclestone has managed to stay in the driving seat as chief executive of the sport’s rights holder despite selling stakes in it four times.

As a result, Ecclestone has banked £2.5bn from his F1 trades (see box) and has all the toys including the obligatory private plane (complete with his own airport in the south of France), a 52-metre yacht and two hotels. However, there is little trace of an ego when speaking to him and for any investment to pass muster it must either help him do business or cover its costs.

His only known hobby is collecting miniature Japanese ‘netsuke’ sculptures and he still communicates via fax rather than email. Ecclestone’s entourage is simply his chauffeur but as F1’s boss, his stature is greater than his literal 5ft 2in height.

In 2006, private equity firm CVC bought a 69.6% stake in F1, leaving 9.4% in the hands of Ecclestone’s family trust and under 1% in his own name. The buyout took F1 in a new direction by saddling the business with £1.6bn of debt which was used to fund the acquisition. It now pays out around £175m in annual interest payments and revenues must rise for it to keep up.

Ecclestone’s solution has been to take races to countries which pay better. F1 has lost the traditional French and Canadian races but debuted Singapore and, this year, Abu Dhabi – countries which want to drive tourism through exposure to F1’s 597m annual viewers. Next destination? “We will go for India then Korea.”

However, while F1’s rights holder is motoring through the downturn, the teams have spluttered with high costs. Much has changed since Ecclestone first got involved in the sport and nowadays team budgets can hit £300m a year. Even steering wheels cost a cool £13,000 each.

“Things that the public can’t see, we shouldn’t spend a fortune on,” says Ecclestone. “They have been spending $17m (£11.5m) a year on gearboxes and it’s completely mad. The guy that goes to the race wants to see whether Massa was going to beat Hamilton. They didn’t give a damn whether he has got four gears or eight gears.”

However, the teams want more from the sport. For over 25 years, their take from F1’s spoils amounted to only around 25% of its revenues. Then, after threatening to start a rival series, their income was increased to 50% in 2006. With the recession biting, even this isn’t enough.

“They can ask for more money but they won’t get it. We have helped them drastically reduce the costs, so we don’t need to pay more,” says Ecclestone, sipping on his water. When in a serious mood, his sentences become even shorter and his stare icier.

“He is a good chap – tough but fair,” says Nick Clarry, CVC’s UK managing director. Ecclestone does not like to lose and he is skilled in steering discussions to subjects which suit him. Disarmingly, many of his responses begin with “I don’t know,” and when meetings aren’t going in his favour he has been known to call one person outside for a private discussion making the person who is being called outside feel special, while up-skittling the proceedings inside.

The politics of divide and rule seem to come naturally to Ecclestone but some of the scheming is by design. F1 is one of the world’s most secretive sports. Its holding companies are located offshore, it doesn’t have a PR department and the telephone number of its headquarters is even ex-directory. This all helps manufacture its mystique.

Ecclestone’s office is littered with artwork and sculptures but one sums him up better than the rest – a bronze work of two disembodied hands gripping each other. For Ecclestone, deals are done on a handshake.

Over the years, Ecclestone has driven through many storms – teams pulling out, threats of rival series and drivers dying on track. Even ill health has not sidetracked him. Despite heart bypass surgery in 1999, according to colleagues he still works a six-day week. Ironically, his biggest challenge may come from within.

For 24 years Ecclestone has been married to Slavica, a Croatian former Armani model 28 years his junior and nearly a foot taller than him. The couple have two daughters, Tamara, 24, and Petra, 20, but at the end of last year Slavica put into motion divorce proceedings.

This rocky time comes as F1 embarks on a new road in a recession when his experience is needed more than ever. Able to rattle off the top of his head all the key facts about F1’s frightfully complex commercial and regulatory structure, he certainly demonstrates he’s on top of the game.

Ecclestone’s contact book is like a Who’s Who of the rich, famous and powerful from decades of building up contacts. He is on first-name terms with most prime ministers and presidents around the world as they have plied him for a spot on F1’s coveted calendar. However, there’s little room for privileged influence on the F1 map now. “The contracts are in place long term. It’s all done. It’s about maintaining things,” he says.

On the face of it, it seems hard to fathom why he continues given his age and wealth but, at heart, it’s very simple. Ecclestone is a man who for a long time has had more money than he could spend, power on an international scale and it’s all thanks to his job.

“Something different happens every day. There are always new things going on. New problems to solve.” Giving that up would be an admission that the race is all but over.

Bernie’s Roadmap

1981: Concorde Agreement committing the teams to race in F1 is signed.

1995: Ecclestone pays himself a £54.9m salary, making him the world’s highest-paid executive.

1997: Ecclestone takes over the F1 rights directly for £6m per year

1999: The Ecclestone family’s trust gets £860m from a bond secured on F1’s future revenues.

2000: The trust collects £650m from selling 50% of F1’s rights holder to two private equity firms, Hellman & Friedman and Morgan Grenfell.

2001: The trust gets £680m when German media business Kirch backs an option to acquire another 25% of F1’s rights holder after it had already begun acquiring the 50% previously held by the private equity firms.

2006: The trust receives £270m from its 25% stake in F1’s rights holder which is sold to private equity firm CVC. The trust buys back 9.4% of the business.


ECCLESTONES’ TOTAL FROM F1: £2.5bn

Meet La Roux: this year’s folk-pop-electro duo

IF LA ROUX aren’t stars by the end of the year, something will have gone seriously wrong. In January, the synth pop duo were tipped for success by the influential BBC Sound Of 2009 poll of music industry taste-makers (last year they backed Duffy, Adele and The Ting Tings). As far as La Roux’s frontwoman Eleanor Jackson is concerned, it’s the best thing ever. “I’m having the time of my life,” says the chatty 20-year-old South Londoner sitting on a speaker at her rehearsal studio.

The retro synths and typewriter beats on the band’s recent second single, In For The Kill, sound like an episode of Top of the Pops from 1984, while the video is based on 1980s TV show Knight Rider. However, as a teenager Jackson was into folk. It wasn’t until four years ago when she met the other half of the band, producer Ben Langmaid, that she became interested in electronic music. She fell in love with ’80s pop such as the Eurythmics, Wham! and The Human League. “My mum used to play all those bands around the house when I was growing up,” she says. “I guess I picked it up without realising it.”

Her look comes from the same era. She wears a gaudy vintage jacket and brightly coloured leggings. The name, meanwhile, is French for “red-headed one”, a reference to her hair, styled into an outrageous quiff, which she pulls at constantly.

“The ’80s was the last time that mainstream pop acts wrote and produced their own records,” continues Jackson. “George Michael, for example. He wrote, arranged and produced everything on [his 1987 album] Faith. That’s our aim, to be that kind of artist, to be successful and do it all ourselves.”

Killer pop songs, an eye-catching singer and the critical vote: they’re most of the way there already. www.laroux.co.uk

HE MAY HAVE MADE HIS NAME playing the ultimate icon of peace, but in the course of his long career Sir Ben Kingsley has proved equally adept at portraying men of violence. Which makes meeting the man himself an event loaded with uncertainty.

While his performance as Gandhi might loom large in the popular imagination, the foul mouthed psychotic Don Logan in Sexy Beast – who so terrified Ray Winstone’s retired gangster character – proves the wicked counterpoint to the Mahatma’s beatific inner calm.

“Don Logan’s an out-and-out racist,” Kingsley smiles, as we meet in a quiet corner of a Milton Keynes multiplex while he is travelling the country to promote his forthcoming film Fifty Dead Men Walking. “I’ve played both sides of the scale.”

Yet both men are outsiders in a way, characters who live their lives by a particular set of self-imposed principles somewhat removed from the prevailing attitude of those around them. The same might be said of the way he played Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List, a Jewish accountant who becomes a concentration camp prisoner, just as it is true of Jewish Mafioso Meyer Lansky in Bugsy, both equally convincing in their way and recognised, respectively with a Bafta nomination for the former and an Oscar nomination for the latter.

It is now 37 years since Kingsley’s big screen debut as a smiling assassin in the cult thriller Fear is the Key. Then nine years later, in 1982, Richard Attenborough invited him to play Gandhi in the film that made him internationally famous and won him a Best Actor Oscar.

After adding a string of diverse movies and theatre roles to his credit in the years since, it’s tempting to wonder whether Kingsley himself sees a pattern in his work. Sipping his fizzy water, he answers this question with characteristic thoughtfulness.

“I think something is emerging,” he says. “It’s not necessarily about myself and my relationship to the character. I think it’s more my delight in exploring cause and effect. I think nature, or the universe, is constantly struggling towards finding that balance. Not that we ever, as individuals, live in a balanced state. We’re a kind of fulcrum and we’re constantly trying to find balance. I suppose it’s that thread I enjoyed exploring in Schindler’s List and in Sexy Beast. Sometimes I have to find my own cause in order to show the effect to the audience. For instance, Don Logan is an unhealed abused child, therefore tragically he will go on to abuse others. It’s a law of nature.

“And once I’m gripped by that law of nature it seems to me to be pretty immutable. It’s that pattern of human behaviour, and the struggle for symmetry that I’m fascinated by. You throw a man off a train in South Africa because he’s in the wrong compartment,” he adds, referring to the time Gandhi refused to move to a third class
railcoach when he had a first class ticket, “and you bring down a whole empire.”

Themes of cause and effect are present too in his latest film, Fifty Dead Men Walking. Here he plays Fergus, a jaded British policeman operating undercover agents in 1980s Belfast. With the Troubles at their height, the information gleaned from one young man on the inside, Martin McGartland (Jim Sturgess) proves crucial in saving several lives – the 50 men implied by the title – but Fergus maintains a professional detachment that suggests he can leave McGartland to whatever grisly fate awaits him should he feel like it.

For Kingsley the film offered a welcome opportunity to film on the streets of a city largely changed from when he last visited, at around the time his new film is set.

“I was there for the Belfast Film Festival, which was an extremely brave thing to hold in the late 1980s. I attended it, and was taken through steel cages, checkpoints – it was very tough. The film festival was not very highly attended, but there were some great stalwarts there.

“Then I came back years later to do this movie and I saw the differences. Both sides of the sectarian divide worked with us to help the movie get made because both sides were utterly convinced by [director] Kari Skogland’s impartiality, by her determination to present a balanced film about a young man caught up in a terrible circumstance.”

Although he turned 65 at the tail end of last year, Kingsley is showing no signs of slowing down, cutting back or opting for the easier option in his career. If anything, he is winning fans among a new generation of 20-somethings who never saw Gandhi and know him more for films like last year’s The Wackness, a movie that became a cult for its hip-hop soundtrack, and in which Kingsley played a radical psychotherapist getting down with the kids.

The seeds of this driven work ethic lie in the origins of his own acting career. Having auditioned for, but been turned down by, the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) the determination to prove himself provided his earliest, strongest motivation.

“I think that rejection is quite good for you, it was certainly good for me. Shortly after I steeled myself into doing a similar audition for a repertory company and they gave me a job. Then I developed another audition for another company, and they gave me a job too. I went to Stoke-on- Trent, to the theatre in the round under Peter Cheeseman and there was no hiding place there at all. You couldn’t create a lazy technique, so that was my drama school.

“And from there, thank God, I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company and I was blessed with directors like John Barton, Trevor Nunn, Peter Hall, Peter Brooke, Terry Hands, David Jones. We were being paid to work in the greatest drama academy in the world. So in the end that pang of hurt for not being allowed into RADA actually propelled me into the RSC.”

Certain things are self evident from any conversation with Kingsley. He has a deepseated respect for the craft of the actor, and he mentions his three sons with some pride, two of whom have followed him into the acting profession (he also has a daughter). But we steer clear of discussing relationships. The much-married Kingsley became the subject of lurid headlines when his third wife was photographed kissing someone else in a nightclub. He has since remarried.

More consistent has been his love of Shakespeare which, since leaving the stage behind, has yet to be indulged on screen.

“There’s a book called Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, which is extraordinary,” he enthuses. “You’re immersed in this world and are examining very beautifully defined patterns of behaviour. I found it absolutely thrilling. To be pitted against and working with such an intelligent imagination, wonderful directors and great fellow actors. I’ve been addicted to examining the geometry of human behaviour, the bizarre symmetry of those patterns, ever since.”

He will soon have the chance to express his passion for the Bard, after acquiring the rights to a book about Shakespeare with a view to producing it and starring in the lead. Before then cinema audiences will see him in Martin Scorsese’s Ashecliffe and in the video game adaptation Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.

Which is far from shabby for a man showing commendable industry at an age when others are forced into retirement. Or for an actor who found his way in the business on his own terms – he was born in Yorkshire to an English mother and Indian father and was originally called Krishna Bhanji.

“I don’t think that it was ever shown to me that it was a disadvantage,” he smiles. “Only on one occasion and it wasn’t to do with my audition or even my physicality. It was to do with my name. This director in the north of England said, ‘It’s a really lovely audition, Krishna, but we don’t know how to cast you.’

“So my Dad, bless him, said, ‘You know you can just change your name.’ He was descended from Gujarat, where the people were very pragmatic businessmen. He told me to change my name, that it was no big deal, and so I got ‘Ben’ from my Dad’s nickname, and ‘Kingsley’ from his dad’s nickname ‘King Clove’ because he was a spice trader. I did the same audition the following week, and they said, ‘When can you start?’ Since then I’ve never actually been typecast in any way because I’ve got too much of an appetite to explore.”

It may partly explain his reaction to being given a knighthood in the 2001 honours list. The last time I met Kingsley, he said of his letter informing him of his knighthood: “I read it and I was shaking. I put it in a drawer in my office and I got up at four o’clock one morning to read the letter again and make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”

For a while he insisted that he be addressed as Sir Ben – something that was an anomaly in an industry where the ennobled tend to play down titles – but his evident pride in this honour is a further sign of the outsider being entirely embraced by the established.

One assumes the consequence of having a background such as his would make Ben Kingsley open to new experiences and different points of view. The man himself does not seem so sure.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “All I know is what I know from my own experience growing up. The only way I can inhabit others is through my acting. I’ve played bigots and victims of racism, people who’ve campaigned against racism for the fundamental slur on humanity that it is. I’ve been blessed to see all perspectives and can understand all perspectives.”

No wonder the smile returns to Kingsley’s face and – knowing as he does that there’s continued demand for his services as an actor – it doesn’t falter.
Fifty Dead Men Walking is released in the UK on 10 April

“WHAT? HOW MUCH?” These are the first words you are likely to hear when you tell people the cost of the new Maybach 57 and 62 Zeppelin special editions. Property prices may be falling, but these two super-limos from Maybach, the car brand owned by Mercedes- Benz’s parent, Daimler – will set you back more than the average family house in the UK. Exactly how much? Try £419,750 (for the 57) and £488,750 (62). That includes VAT, of course.

For that bank-breaking figure you get contrasting paintwork – the one pictured here is in Taiga Black contrasted with the exotically named Rocky Mountains Light Brown – as well as a perfume atomiser, lambskin carpets and metallic champagne flutes inscribed with the Zeppelin logo. The important stuff like the walloping 6.0-litre V12 engine (tweaked to produce an extra 28bhp to take it up to 631bhp) and new 20-inch wheels almost appear an afterthought.

And just in case you’re wondering, the Zeppelin name is a historic one for Maybach. When the company was founded 100 years ago, Maybach was a subsidiary of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company who made the airships that went on to be used as bombers in World War I and eventually the ill-fated Hindenburg passenger airship.

We suspect that if you can afford this automotive behemoth, you’re in the type of business that, unlike the Hindenburg, won’t go up in smoke.

www.maybach-manufaktur.com

Stephen Worthy

The Red Pill

Could the Red Sea prove to be the Middle East’s medicine chest?

DIVERS HAVE DELIGHTED in the Red Sea bed ever since Jacques Cousteau slipped on his scuba tanks here half a century ago. Now scientists are eyeing up the undersea realm in the same manner in which they used to peer into the epths of the rainforest.

For this saltwater inlet has a remarkable diversity of creatures. Biologists estimate that between 10 to 20 percent of the fish species swimming here cannot be not found anywhere else in the world. Earlier this year, National Geographic reported that divers had discovered new species of sea horses nestling in the reefs.

Yet more interesting discoveries might lie with the less noteworthy beasts. Scientists in both Moscow and Southampton are employing the fluorescent properties of sea anemones, similar to those that thrive here, to tag and follow the movement of very small particles inside a living body. These could allow technicians to map everything from the development of brains through to the activity of cells in different regions of a tumour. Tread softly when you snorkel out there, because you could be treading on an array of future cures.

Net Gains

In Amsterdam, lattes and WiFi are the new, er, pot in coffee shops

NOWADAYS, AMSTERDAMERS SEEM to prefer coffee to coffee shops. The old Dutch ‘coffee shops’ – a delicate synonym for the city’s marijuana cafés – are vanishing. Their alcohol licence gone, customers can’t smoke tobacco inside them and about 50 will be soon forced to close, thanks to new zoning laws.

In the meantime, cafés where people meet, socialise, get their caffeine buzz and type away on their laptops have never been more popular.

“It’s the best cappuccino in the Netherlands,” says Jon, 41, about the creamy offer at De Koffie Salon (130 Utrechtsestraat, Amsterdam). Its comfy tables and free internet connection makes it the ideal office space for those deskless freelancers.

Local franchise Coffee Company (pictured above; 15 different locations around town) has also introduced free Wifiwith each purchase, handing you a password to log in on their network. The designer crowd still hangs out at De Balie (10 Kleine- Gartmanplantsoen, right off Leidseplein), with their Macs and mint teas, while a new entry on the coffee-and-Wifimap is the bar at the Lloyd Hotel (34 Oostelijke Handelskade), which is more for writers looking for inspiration. Though not the kind of inspiration that comes in eighth-of-an-ounce plastic bags. Massimo Benvegnù

Russian aerobatic aviatrix and ‘Best Pilot of the Century’, Svetlana Kapanina, believes there are no gender divides in the skies.

[MOSCOW ]

Eyes Down

Notes on Moscow’s underground: hidden rivers, hot water pipes and a secret railway system?

MOSCOW’S METRO IS on the move. That’s hardly revolutionary you might think, but its lines are expanding out to the city’s suburbs – five new stations are set to open by the end of this year and 37 miles of new track are to be laid by 2015.

Despite the progress, rumours of an entirely different line remain. ‘Metro 2’ is a mythical underground system built, supposedly, to provide Joseph Stalin with a secure transport network as the leader’s paranoia set in. One newspaper, Argumenty I Fakty, has even suggested turning it over to the public to ease congestion. The fabled tube remains a hot topic among Moscow’s citizens. “I’ve heard about a secret line,” said Denis Litvinov, a computer designer, “but I don’t know any details.”

Yet not as hot as the scorching water pipes which also snake their way above and below ground, warming citizens during winter months; they’re liable to burst during a cold spell, turning frozen streets into boiling swamps.

The Neglinka river runs under the streets too, flowing north to south, past the Bolshoi Theatre and towards the walls of the Kremlin. As development work continues, so city hall has become obsessed with all things subterranean; the capital’s urban planners are keen to push new building work below ground level. Preservationists warn that the rivers may have the last laugh. Yet, thanks to layers of Byzantine planning regulations and obsessive secrecy, until the foundations are laid, no one knows for sure what lies beneath. Kevin O’Flynn

[LONDON ]

Straight Shooting

SAPPHIC ROMANCE MEETS Middle Eastern politics this month, in the new British film, I Can’t Think Straight. Dubbing itself as ‘Just another British, Indian, Muslim, Christian, lesbian romantic comedy,’ the film follows a love affair between Tala, a ritzy Jordanian socialite, and Leyla, a shy British Muslim gal – who both have boyfriends at the start of the film. On paper, it couldn’t be more controversial. Yet on screen, the stars Sheetal Sheth and Lisa Ray leaven the heavyweight material into a lighter, laugh-andcry, popcorn-friendly flick. Just as attractive as the lead girls are the scenic backdrops of a wedding in Amman and Oxford spires.

It’s released in the UK on 3 April. www.icantthinkstraightfilm.com

[KHARTOUM ]

Ice cold in Sudan

Dry country brews first beer

BREAK OUT THE salted nuts. London-based international brewer, SABMiller, is set to launch a new lager in southern Sudan – the first mass-produced beer to be manufactured in the country since it went dry 25 years ago.

Their brewery, based in the southern capital, Juba, will come into operation this month, offering both a ‘clear beer’ and carbonated soft drinks to a thirsty population. There’s been a strong demand for alcoholic beverages in the predominantly Christian region of southern Sudan since it gained autonomy in 2005. Yet locals hope the drink could be exported, placing Sudanese lager alongside the likes of German pilsner and Irish stout.

“We will not only be consuming but producing alcohol. It’s a serious political message of one country, two systems,” the south’s agriculture minister Samson Kwaje told Reuters. We’ll drink to that.

This month: CLOTHES

THE BALANCE

[ MOSCOW ]

RUSSIAN FASHION WEEK

Moscow’s clothing industry preview week (until 4 April at the Congress Hall of the World Trade Centre, Entrance 4, 12 Krasnopresnenskaya Emb.) might be invitation only, yet any visitor should be able to capture the sartorial zeitgeist on Tretyakovsky Proyezd. Prada, Armani and Ralph Lauren have boutiques here. Look out for fashionistas flitting between flagship stores at the beginning of April, counting up the zeros on the price tags. Well-funded trophy wives won’t think twice about spending upwards of 33,000 rubles (£654) for a clutch bag if it’s by the designer of the moment.
www.russianfashionweek.com

[ CAIRO ]

SOUQ AL-GOMA’A

Held under the Al-Tonssy flyover in the Khalifa district, south of the citadel, Cairo’s chaotic Souq al-Goma’a, or Friday Market, may not be the most chic place to shop. Yet this sprawling flea market is one of the few places in Egypt that casual buyers can browse second hand and vintage clothing. Just watch out for the stalls selling venomous lizards and sheep’s intestines – you’re better off seeking handembroidered tops.

[ZURICH ]

Laws of nature

Why one Swiss canton is fining nude ramblers

RECENT EVENTS IN the sleepy canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden (about an hour from Zurich) have unexpectedly pushed Switzerland’s love of neutrality to breaking point.

While residents of the picturesque mountain area are usually live and let live, they’ve taken umbrage at the canton being a target for bare bottoms. More precisely, those that belong to the German nudists who have taken to rambling around the region in nothing more than hiking boots and a rucksack. Due to the area’s lack of rules regarding nudity a German nudist organisation had recently named Appenzell as a “paradise for naked ramblers”.

But local authorities feel it’s less heaven and more hell. “Perhaps in vast mountain areas naked people would not be much of a problem but here they simply stick out,” said Markus Dörig, a spokesman for the canton government.

So from this month a new fixed fine of CHF200 (£120) will be slapped on those showing some bare bottomed cheek. Celeste Neill

Prints of Persia

IF YOU’RE CONSIDERING investing in a little Persian culture, try browsing beyond the carpet stalls. London’s Saatchi Gallery has already piqued the market with their New Art from the Middle East exhibition, which runs until 9 May. Prices for contemporary works by Syrian, Egyptian and Iranian artists are already creeping up, leading many to believe that Middle Eastern art could make for a wise investment – after all, where collector Charles Saatchi goes, others often follow.

Last month, the London auction house Sotheby’s hosted their first contemporary art sale in Doha, listing works by Iranian artists Farhad Moshiri and Mohammad Ehsai alongside works by Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst. This month the equally prestigious auctioneers Christie’s offers pieces by the Syrian painter Fateh Moudarres (above), the Egyptian sculptor Mahmoud Mokhtar and Iranian Abolghassem Saidi at their sale on 29 April in Dubai. Perhaps it’s time to cash in that Banksy print and buy Persian.
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk, www.christies.com, www.sothebys.com