I will move from this enormous dressing room number two which is like someone’s living room to a small little room number

I will move from this enormous dressing room, number two, which is like someone’s living room, to a small little room, number 21, I think. Four floors up, the radiator doesn’t work and it is freezing.”Understudies spend their time waiting. Despite the myth, and the odd exception, most are not shot to stardom when they stand in at the last minute. The actress Nancy Seabrooke understudied various parts in Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap for 15 years: she turned up for work 5,880 times but only made it onto the stage on 72 occasions. Anderson’s chance came after only three performances.He said. “I felt guilty about all this attention, but I rang my agent and she said: `It’s not your fault.

We must take this opportunity’.”Inside story, page 19Harry Enfield, page 21. RAILTRACK is to spend up to £500,000 on public relations and marketing experts, in a move to counter growing public disquiet over rail privatisation. The decision to launch a major PR campaign comes just weeks after a special meeting of a Cabinet sub-committee convened to discuss the public’s poor reaction to rail privatisation. The Government is trying to franchise off several rail services, and to float Railtrack, which owns track and stations.
A group of senior ministers including Brian Mawhinney, Secretary of State for Transport, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kenneth Clarke, and chaired by David Hunt, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, met before Christmas, providing the first evidence of Government alarm over the reception given to the sell-off.While Government sources have denied that ministers are keen to slow the pace of privatisation or even scrap it, they concede that they are concerned about progress.The Cabinet sub-commitee agreed that the presentation of policy had to be co-ordinated and that ministers and MPs should be provided with a timetable of forthcoming announcements in the privatisation process.They have also been given detailed briefings to help explain and justify the sale to the Government.Public relation industry sources said that the Railtrack contract is a separate development and standard practice in preparation for a flotation.

They disputed the £500,000 figure but refused to specify another value.The public relations world, however, is suprised that the contract is up for tender at least a year before Railtrack is due to go to the market. The move is bound to fuel Labour criticism over taxpayers’ money spent on city and PR firms in the run-up to the Railtrack sale.Companies thought to be on the shortlist include Lowe Bell – the firm chaired by Sir Tim Bell, a former adviser to Baroness Thatcher – and Dewe Rogerson.In the run-up to the general election, Conservative Central Office is also expected to spearhead a campaign to convince the public of the virtues of privatisation in general.Ministers will argue that the sale of companies like British Airways and British Telecom have brought substantial benefits to the consumer.Ministers acknowledge that Labour is winning the argument over the rail sell-off.Yesterday Labour’s industry spokesman, Brian Wilson predicted rail privatisation would enter the “poll tax league” as a vote loser.He added: “Instead of pouring still more money into communicating such a lousy message, they should pull the communication cord and stop the whole thing.”. STARTLING new evidence from satellite measurements suggests that the world’s seas are rising twice as fast as had been thought, writes Geoffrey Lean. The measurements, by the first comprehensive study ofocean expansion, will add to concern that global warming is taking place, and add urgency to calls from low-lying island and coastal nations for cuts in the pollution that causes it.
The calls will come to a head next month when 100 nations meet in Berlin to decide whether to tighten up the international treaty on climate change agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit.Scientists have long predicted that sea levels will rise as the world heats up.

By their best estimates, the waters have been rising by about one-and-a-half millimetres a year over past decades. But preliminary readings by the Topex/Poseidon satellite suggest that the seas have been swelling by three millimetres over the past two years.The satellite has taken half a million readings every day from the world’s seas and oceans, producing much more precise results.Dr Steven Nerem, of Nasa, says the measurements have “the precision we need to measure detailed sea level and climate changes”. But, he stresses, it is too early to come to any final conclusions.He added that if the same rises were found over the next few years, it would show that global warming had started This would have serious consequences. Even under the old estimates, five island nations – the Maldives, Tuvalu, Tokelau, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati – are expected to disappear under water over the next century.. CHRIS MULLIN is an MP renowned for his campaigns to secure the release of people from prison. But today the man who championed the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six has a new demand: that a hit-and-run driver be incarcerated. Joseph Dorward, a 34-year-old who has the stocky build of a man who pumps iron, has been driving without a licence since the age of 16.