The Independent - Access Interviews

Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

They started with a porn magazine. Then came a much-imitated men's style bible. As the Dutch duo behind 'Fantastic Man' launch a sister title, Caroline Roux finds out how they gave print an original gloss. This morning, I started my day in the local Pret A Manger huddled over a skinny latte and a gay porn magazine called Butt. I can't think of many porn mags, gay or straight, that I'd be happy to read at 8.30am in Pret, if at all. But then Butt, with its apparently unpretentious Courier typeface, small format and smiling cover boy isn't really like the rest. Did I mention that it's printed on blushing pink paper too?

Carly Simon

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

'But do you know what no one has ever suggested?" Carly Simon teases. "That it's a girl." It's the great, white, vain (Warren Beatty-shaped, perhaps?) elephant in the room, which happens to be a chilly hotel conservatory in west London. It's like interviewing Colonel Sanders and not enquiring about his "secret formula".

Nick Clegg

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, will be in a powerful position if the election leads to a hung parliament, but he refuses to be drawn on what he would do as kingmaker

Martha Lane Fox

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

a tool. Now I know it can change society' The co-founder of lastminute.com made a fortune in the dotcom boom – then nearly died in a car crash. Now the Government pays her to get us using the web

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

An hour at the home of a Chelsea footballer would not be most people's idea of a breath of fresh air, but for anyone tiring of Ashley and Cheryl, Terry and Toni – will they, won't they, did they or didn't they, do we care? – coffee chez Salomon Kalou is just that; and not only because the air in leafy Surrey is fresher than most.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Wes Anderson wants us to think he's weird. He would probably be very happy to find himself staring out of the page under a dictionary definition of "weird". His life and career are all about his own studied brand of peculiarity, and he's not about to change that now.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

William Trevitt, 40, is an award-winning ballet dancer and choreographer. Previously a principal with the Royal Ballet, in 2001 he and fellow dancer Michael Nunn founded the Balletboyz dance company, to take dance to a wider audience through their stage and television work. Trevitt lives in west London with his wife and three children

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Now Amy Williams had an Olympic gold aura along with her wide eyes and curly brown hair but what remained so stunning was the sense of a young woman who had conquered a hazardous world entirely on her own terms.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Is aiming for the best possible consequences for every action the most ethical way to behave? Anthony Coogan, Lim

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

David Brennan is a man with many demands on his time. Not only is he chief executive of AstraZeneca, one of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, but the group he leads, and the industry he is part of, faces some of its biggest challenges for a generation.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

James Caan, 49, bought 50 per cent of a dog treadmill business as his first investment for the BBC2 series Dragons' Den. He has recently become chairman of the board of The Big Issue magazine. The Real Deal: My Story from Brick Lane to Dragons' Den is out now in paperback.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Lee Bowyer's reputation precedes him, as he and I both know it will, into the small room set aside for interviews at the Birmingham City training ground. This is one of the reasons the 33-year-old East Ender gives interviews so infrequently; he feels the media, and consequently the public at large, have long since finalised their judgements of him, based on what is, by any standards, a chequered past.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

The house/flat I grew up in ... was a 1704 Georgian mansion with a stone pediment in Oxfordshire. My parents were ... surprisingly different for sharing the same star sign. My father led a theatrical life making bold statements and my mother was beautifully quiet and serious. But they shared a keen sense of humour.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Sachin Tendulkar's story is the story of modern India, the India that 60 years after independence is emerging as a major power and producing iconic figures for whom the tag Indian is no longer a burden but an advertisement.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Monday I'm a full-time teacher as well as a member of the Legislative Assembly of the Falkland Islands. I teach my year seven class today before doing interviews with international press, giving the Falkland Islands' view about our neighbours across the way, Argentina, and the current disputes with them about oil and ship permits.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Last November, Debbie Chazen was diagnosed with breast cancer while starring in 'Calendar Girls' – the hit West End show about a topless charity calendar inspired by the death of a Women's Institute member's husband from leukaemia. Over the weeks that followed, the irony of performing in a role that required her to bare her chest to 1,000 people every night (and twice on Saturdays) while at the same time preparing for a full mastectomy became ever more acute, until she bade an emotional farewell to the production on Saturday 5 December. The following day – 48 hours before her operation – Debbie and her partner Michael got engaged to be married.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

Sayeeda Warsi is tough. David Cameron's no-nonsense shadow communities minister belittled the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, as a "confused man" on Question Time and barely flinched when she was pelted with eggs by Islamist extremists while campaigning in Luton. But it is a warm and relaxed Baroness Warsi, barefoot with painted toenails, who opens the front door to me at her family home outside Wakefield.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

"I just ran away," John Cale says with dark, sad eyes. "But I felt guilty. That's the thing about traitors. I didn't think I'd really done my best for the place that I'd come from." It doesn't take the approach of St David's Day to get John Cale talking about Wales, Welshness and why he left it all behind. For the past 12 months, it's been the main focus of his thoughts.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

When he relives the day that his Aston Villa side recaptured the League Cup by trouncing Leeds United at Wembley, it is not the stunning opening salvo by Savo Milosevic that brings the broadest smile to Brian Little's face. Nor is it the Dwight Yorke strike that com- pleted the rout, or even the image of Andy Townsend raising the trophy. It's the motorbikes.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:08:34 +0000

John Barrowman, 42, is best known for his role as Captain Jack in the 'Doctor Who' spin-off 'Torchwood'. He is also a singer and stage actor, appearing in 'La Cage aux Folles' and as a judge on the BBC talent show 'I'd Do Anything' in 2008. He lives in London with his partner, Scott.