Mary Wesley went to the Cheltenham Festival of Literature and captivated her audience with a lecture on sex. Sam Taylor listened to the 84-year-old novelist who could teach Doctor Ruth a thing or two

Sex has come to Cheltenham. In a room packed with loyal fans, fed a diet of unbridled passion, heaving bosoms, handsome heroes and sexually bereft heroines, this was the moment they had been waiting for. Such is the fare of the breakfast show.Radio 1 did at least attempt to stick to music and had the Lightening Seeds’ lead singer, Ian Broudie, in the studio to play the band’s new single.At a post-show press conference just after Chris Evans and Richard Branson had sprayed each other with champagne Evans asserted, without a trace of irony, that Zoe Ball had been hired by the BBC just to garner publicity “It’s not Zoe’s show,” he said “It’s Kevin’s.

We didn’t realise how much we got for free since we came off.” He and his team had had free car loans and scooters in their time at Radio 1 and he had a Bentley at the weekend.Radio 1 was making its own bid to keep listeners – and make headlines – by interviewing two of the Spice Girls about how the England footballer David Beckham had flown to Turkey to be with his girlfriend, Victoria Adams, a member of the all-girl band. Matthew said he was having trouble fending off the press and pressure from the governors.”I said, `Between you and I, the best thing you could do now is get rid of me, because I have delivered the audience, then you can show your authority by getting rid of me’.”Evans tried to pump controversy into his show by inviting William Hague, the Tory leader, on to the show to admit he is “a raving homosexual and proud of it” – while admitting that he knows Hague isn’t gay, but saying it would be wonderful for ratings.Evans also complained about having to work for three hours a day and celebrated the new sponsor for his show by drinking a can of beer at 8.08am; “If you can’t get pissed on your own show, when can you get pissed?” he asked.In a show that saw the increasingly self-referential Evans play only five songs in his first hour, the DJ also revealed that he had returned to radio to get more freebies: “The reason we came back to the radio is because we stopped getting things for free. When Chris Evans started his breakfast show on Virgin Radio yesterday and Zoe Ball and the established DJ Kevin Greening started their new show on Radio 1 it was difficult to separate the damned lies from the publicity stunts.Round one in the publicity battle went to the BBC with a report that its radio chief Matthew Bannister had turned down a request from Chris Evans’ agent two weeks ago for Evans to return to Radio 1.Evans then made his own bid for headlines by claiming he had told Bannister to sack him so that Bannister could appear in control: “I had a breakfast meeting with Matthew Bannister. If it does then it could be important in screening for heart disease.”. The battle of breakfast time radio between Zoe Ball and Chris Evans got under way yesterday. Paul McCann, Media Correspondent, finds that the struggle of the airwaves came second to the battle for headlines.
To bastardise Disraeli: there are three types of hype – hype, damned hype and show business hype. Previous studies have shown the Apo E4 gene doubles the risk of heart disease.Professor Smith said: “Is there an interaction [between the two gene variants] there too? If not then the effect is very specific to Alzheimer’s, which would be a very important clue.

Riding a motorbike is riskier than flying in an aeroplane but many people ride motorbikes and never have an accident.”The research team, which has been studying Alzheimers for 10 years, is now investigating the gene for a link with heart disease. Bristol Myers Squibb, which funded the research, has applied to patent the test although it has no plans to develop one.”I am 59 and I would not want to be tested. Even though if you have both gene variants you are at increased risk, it is not a certainty. If it is replicated the discovery is important because it gives us a target to interrupt the disease process with drugs.”The findings are based on a study of 282 people over 65 in the Oxford area published in Human Molecular Genetics. Professor Smith said the discovery could open up a new chapter in Alzheimer’s research but it raised “serious ethical questions” about testing. Although early onset Alzheimers is the same disease, it has a different cause.Professor Smith, head of the department of pharmacology at Oxford University, said the findings were “very exciting” but had to be replicated before they could be relied on.

“We were very surprised to find the interaction between the two genes. It suggests that the two proteins somehow interact to cause the disease. People with the variant, known as E4 – about 25 per cent of the population – have a four- fold increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s.Now scientists at the Oxford project to investigate memory and ageing (Optima), headed by Professor David Smith, have discovered a variant of the gene for butrylcholinesterase, a protein, on chromosome 3, which interacts with Apo E4 to give a 30-fold increase in risk. When present alone, the variant of the gene, known as “K”, increases the risk seven and a half times Only those over 65 with late onset Alzheimers are affected. But the discovery raises questions about the ethics of testing for a disease that cannot be cured or prevented.The Oxford discovery builds on earlier American research in 1993 which identified a variant of the Apo E gene on chromosome 19. An advance in the understanding of one of the most feared diseases in the western world is reported by scientists today. Researchers at Oxford University have discovered a gene which interacts with a second, previously known gene to increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
People who carry both genes have 30 times the normal risk of developing the degenerative condition which strips the elderly of their dignity and affects an estimated 600,000 people in Britain.