Minority Students UK

Former ministers said to have been caught on camera by journalists

A group of MPs, including former ministers, have been targeted in an elaborate sting operation in which journalists set up a bogus lobbying company and offered to pay them in return for political influence.

Among the politicians approached was Stephen Byers, the former cabinet minister and arch-Blairite, who was filmed describing himself as a "bit like a sort of cab for hire". He offered to trade Westminster contacts for £3,000 to £5,000 a day.

Others who were targeted in the undercover operation included former cabinet ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt. Margaret Moran, the Labour MP for Luton, was also involved.

The party tried to limit the damage last night by saying some MPs were "mortified" by how stupid they had been. However, nothing illegal has been alleged.

Twenty MPs were invited to attend meetings to discuss joining an advisory board and 10 turned up. The meetings were mainly held at offices in London's St James's Square. An undercover Sunday Times journalist asked them how the company could go about influencing policy and how it could improve its chances of winning a government contract.

Byers told her he had saved hundreds of millions of pounds for National Express through his contact with Lord Adonis, the transport minister, and had influenced food labelling proposals for Tesco after phoning Lord Mandelson, the business secretary. The MP said that his friendship with Mandelson was one of his "trump cards".

However, the next day he wrote an email to the meeting's organisers saying he had "overstated" the part he had played in trying to secure changes to the way in which the government deals with issues. "This means that I have not spoken to Andrew Adonis… or Peter Mandelson about the matters I mentioned," he wrote.

Byers issued a statement last night saying that at an informal meeting about a potential job opportunity he had made some "exaggerated" claims. "Having reflected on my comments I knew that I should immediately put the record straight. I did so the following morning by making it clear that I have never lobbied ministers on behalf of commercial interests. I later withdrew my name for consideration. I have always fully disclosed my outside interests," he said. Byers described the set-up as a "massive deception".

The operation is reported to feature in a Dispatches programme to be aired tomorrow on Channel 4.

The journalists set up a lobbying company known as Anderson Perry Associates, supposedly based in the US. Its website described it as a "bespoke consultancy that helps organisations and individuals maximise and exceed expectation". It claimed to have 120 clients in Europe, the Middle East and the US, operating in the health and defence industries.

The exposé is likely to thrust the issue of standards back to the heart of the election campaign as party leaders battle to show they will clean up parliament. The operation, which targeted MPs who are standing down from parliament, also targeted the Lords, with Baroness Sally Morgan, a former aide to Tony Blair, reported to have been approached.

Anushka AsthanaToby Helm
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Gordon Brown's officials in close contact with union chiefs as Tories try to stoke row over party's funding

Desperate attempts to end the BA cabin crew strike were being mounted by government ministers last night as Labour battled to prevent the dispute from wrecking its preparations for the general election.

Gordon Brown's officials were in close touch with Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of the Unite union, throughout yesterday amid hopes that a settlement could be reached that would prevent the action spreading into next weekend. But sources close to the dispute said last night there was no basis for a deal and that no further talks were scheduled.

Yesterday the Tories turned up the pressure on Labour over the strike and its links with Unite by launching a new advertising campaign showing Brown dressed as a BA pilot under the headline "Gordon is doing sweet BA".

The political row surrounding the dispute deepened last night after it emerged that Unite is to give the Labour party £4m to help fund its general election campaign. The union agreed the deal with the Labour leadership a few weeks ago as Labour desperately sought the cash to mount an effective campaign against the Conservatives. The £4m represents half of the money that the unions have been asked for by Labour. Up to £2m is said to have been requested from Unison, the public services union, and another £2m from the GMB general union. Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, told the Observer: "When travellers are facing the effects of Unite's militant action it is beyond belief that Brown can have the brass neck to keep his crumbling Labour government afloat with cash from these union barons."

Labour concerns about the strike will be reinforced by an ICM poll for BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House, which shows only 25% of people say the action is justified, 60% say it is unjustified and 15% are undecided.

BA launched a strike-breaking operation of unprecedented scale yesterday, although Unite claimed that the airline had managed to fly only a third of its normal scheduled departures.

The airline claimed that half of the cabin crew rostered to work yesterday had turned up for their shifts and announced the reinstatement of more flights.

But one Unite official said the disruption caused, with hundreds of flights cancelled over the weekend, would be a wake-up call to BA's chief executive, Willie Walsh. "The next three days will determine whether or not we get back around the table," the official said.

Passengers at BA's Terminal 5 base at Heathrow airport were greeted by an array of unusual airline names on departure boards, as the likes of Transavia, Astraeus and Titan were brought in to carry passengers to their destinations.

The airline expected to fly 65% of passengers, or about 120,000 people, over the course of the weekend. A spokesman said that operations at Heathrow were "continuing to go well", with a full schedule operating at Gatwick.

BA customers at Terminal 5 were divided about the strike. "I am not anti-trade union – I have been a member of one for 20 years – but I don't understand what Unite is trying to achieve at a time when so many people are losing their jobs," said Barbara Bond, a consultant waiting for her flight to Hyderabad. Her return flight next week could be cancelled due to the next wave of strikes, with a four-day walkout scheduled to start next Saturday if no agreement is reached by then.

Hundreds of BA cabin crew attended a rally yesterday at their temporary strike headquarters at Bedfont football club, a few hundred metres away from Heathrow's southern runway.

The mood at Bedfont's packed social club was defiant and upbeat. One air stewardess, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: "This can continue. It will go into the summer if necessary, until we get back round the table."

Unite's assistant general secretary, Len McCluskey, accused Walsh of behaving like an "industrial dictator" in the dispute over reductions in staffing levels on board British Airways aircraft. "He is more like a 19th-century mill owner than a 21st century chief executive."

Police said that the protests, including four picket lines at Heathrow, had been peaceful.

• British Airways
• Trade unions
• Gordon Brown
• Labour

Toby HelmDan Milmo
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Survey shows that patients face long waits for psychological 'talking' treatments, with children worse off than adults

Britain's GPs are increasingly angry and frustrated at not being able to get the right therapy for people with mental illnesses – especially for children, who face unacceptable delays in receiving help or do not get it at all, according to a new survey.

An "overwhelming" response to a survey sent out to family doctors by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has painted a picture of patchy availability of adult psychological services across the country and an even poorer availability for children. Family doctors reported shocking cases of critically mentally ill people having to wait months for help, or not getting it at all, in breach of national guidelines.

The situation of children was worse than for adults, with 78% of doctors saying that they could "rarely" get help for a distressed child within the recommended two months' waiting time. One doctor reported the case of a 16-year-old rape victim who had started self-harming after being refused help, while another said a girl who had seen her sibling burn to death in a car was offered an appointment with the mental health service in six months' time. "Our service is appalling unless the kids are actually slitting their wrists – I see this as an area of huge need," said one GP.

Professor Steve Field, president of the royal college, wrote to members asking whether adult patients suffering from depression or anxiety disorders and requiring specialist psychological therapy were able to get treatment within two months. Some 1,150 doctors replied, with 65% answering "rarely". Only 15% of them answered "usually", with 20% responding "sometimes".

When asked about children suffering from emotional or behaviourial problems who needed such therapies, 78% of the GPs replied that "rarely" could they get the child help within two months with just 5.8% saying they could "usually" access treatment within the Nice (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) guideline of two months. "We were overwhelmed by the responses. It is shocking," said Field. "There is a strong sense of frustration coming through in many parts of the country and patients clearly deserve better. People should have access to approved treatments, and this has to be a wake-up call.

"If patients can't get access to talking therapies, then they will be on medication. Investing in mental health services will save the NHS and the economy a lot of money, and save it very quickly."

The survey was carried out as part of a campaign launched this month by the RCGP, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the mental health charity Mind calling for all political parties to make a manifesto promise to back a new deal for children and adults with mental health problems. The government began its Improved Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme in 2007 after repeated clinical trials showed that "talking therapies" – where people are helped to challenge their own negative thoughts – are as effective as drugs in the short term and better in the long term at preventing relapses. That evidence led Nice to issue guidelines stating that people with depression and anxiety disorders should be offered the choice of cognitive behavioural therapy – a talking therapy.

The chief executive of Mind, Paul Farmer, says talking therapies save lives. "When someone is assessed as being in need of counselling or CBT, it is crucial that they can start treatment as soon as possible. Waiting months and months for urgent treatment would not be acceptable for patients with other health problems, and it should not be acceptable for patients with depression."

But while extra money has been given to health trusts around the country, it is now no longer ring-fenced and the campaigners want a political commitment to the IAPT programme from whoever wins May's general election.

"There has been some great work from the government and they deserve credit for being the first British government to take mental health seriously," said Richard Layard, of the London School of Economics.

Layard led a research team who in 2007 published a cost benefit analysis of psychological therapy. It found that the costs of providing psychological therapies would be recouped within two years in savings made on paying out incapacity benefit and lost taxes from more than a million people who are unable to work because of their mental health issues.

Layard said strides forward had been made but the service was spread too thinly. "IAPT has made very good progress, but it is still at a fragile stage if the political will is not behind it. We need to get mental health raised up as a national priority and see significant pressure brought to bear on primary care trusts to invest."

• Mental health
• GPs
• Health
• Children

Tracy McVeigh
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Surgeons say the recession has cut demand in America for cosmetic procedures that are not covered by health insurance

Americans appear to be finally falling out of love with cosmetic surgery after a new report revealed that the number of operations dropped by 18% last year.

The new reluctance to have a facelift, a tummy tuck or a breast enlargement marks a dramatic turn away from procedures that a few years ago seemed almost commonplace.

Figures collated by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that 1.9m operations took place last year, down from 2.1m in 2005. One big factor cited by many plastic surgeons is the recession. The biggest downturn since the Great Depression has hit many high-end consumer industries; plastic surgery certainly qualifies as a luxury commodity for many Americans. Purely cosmetic operations, such as nose-shaping or breast enlargements, often cost thousands of dollars and are not usually covered by health insurance.

"I believe one can credit the downturn of the economy for the decline in surgical procedures that obviously are more costly than non-surgical procedures," said Dr Elliot Jacobs, a leading New York plastic surgeon whose private surgery is on Park Avenue.

But some say there could be something in the zeitgeist, too. Over the past decade, plastic surgery saw a massive boom. Something previously seen as the province of Hollywood royalty and the very rich trickled down to the merely wealthy and then the middle class. It became the subject of numerous TV shows, such as Nip/Tuck, which followed the antics of a pair of Miami plastic surgeons and famously opened its first episode in 2003 with the controversial line: "Tell me what you don't like about yourself."

It was not just soap opera that fell under the surgeons' spell: reality TV shows got in on the act, too. Programmes such as Extreme Makeover and The Swan gave ordinary people a chance of free operations to improve their appearance. The shows were not without controversy, especially The Swan, whose premise was to transform a contestant into a more beautiful person physically. However, both shows have been cancelled, and this year Nip/Tuck also broadcast its last episode.

Nor are celebrities immune from criticism about the plastic surgery they have undergone. Many stars receive frequent sniping in gossip columns for having operations deemed too obvious.

Recently reality-TV star Heidi Montag was on the end of an avalanche of criticism – even from her husband – after she revealed she had had 10 plastic surgery procedures in one year.

Dr Michael Hall, a plastic surgeon in Miami Beach, said that an age of excess in the industry had come to an end, mirroring wider society. "When it comes to plastic surgery, people are now using more common sense. They don't want radical procedures," he said.

But while full-on surgical operations might be falling, the number of non-surgical cosmetic procedures is steady or rising. Many plastic surgeons say there has merely been a shift in taste and treatment. Non-surgical operations, such as Botox, lip injections or lasering, are cheaper and becoming more effective. "Women are looking for non-invasive procedures," said Hall.

There are other changes, too, reflecting both cultural and economic trends. Dr Richard Baxter, a plastic surgeon in Washington state, noticed a marked decrease in the size of breast implants as the economy started to go downhill. Before the recession, fewer than a third of Baxter's clients chose a B cup implant; now about half pick a B. "People have turned to more natural-looking things," he said.

The question concerning the industry now is what the longer-term trend will be. Some predict a permanent shift, while others say there are already signs of a renewed up-tick. One thing most doctors agree on, though, is that there is still no shortage of demand for changing one's body, just a change in preferred methods. "Has the plastic surgery bubble burst? I doubt it. As long as a woman or a man has a mirror available, there will be a continued interest in plastic surgery," said Jacobs. Hall put it another way, pointing out that some human emotions and desires are both recession-proof and fashion-proof: "There is no lack of vanity. There is just a little more hesitation."

• Plastic surgery
• US healthcare
• United States

Paul Harris
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Letter accuses leading Catholics of 'grave errors', but campaigners say it is not enough

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday rebuked Irish bishops for the negligent way they have handled sexual abuse cases in the Catholic church and issued an unprecedented public apology to the victims of paeodophile priests.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," Benedict wrote in a pastoral letter released yesterday, which will be read at Catholic masses in Ireland. The letter also announced the setting up of a Vatican investigation team. "Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen," he added. He accused bishops in Ireland of "grave errors of judgment" in their handling of thousands of "sinful and criminal" cases of abuse spread over decades.

Split into sections, the letter addresses victims, Irish bishops, abusive priests and parents. "There has never been a letter like this," said the pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi.

The letter does not admit any responsibility on the part of the Vatican in relation to the scandals, nor does it specify punishments for Irish bishops who covered up for paedophile priests, moving them from parish to parish.

Following revelations that he swore abuse victims to secrecy in 1975, Cardinal Seán Brady, the head of the Irish Catholic church, has said he will seek guidance through prayer before deciding on his future. Benedict has yet to accept the resignations offered by three Irish bishops. Following the release of the letter, Brady said that all Irish Catholics should reflect upon it. "I welcome this letter," he said. "I am deeply grateful to the holy father for his profound kindness and concern."

It is evident from the pastoral letter that Benedict is deeply dismayed by what he refers to as "sinful and criminal acts and the way the church authorities in Ireland dealt with them".

Lombardi said yesterday there were no pointers to be found on Brady's future in the letter, which did not have an administrative or disciplinary function. "This is a pastoral letter... That is not touched on here," he said.

The letter comes as a new tide of sex abuse allegations threatens to engulf the Catholic church. Benedict himself has come under pressure over the explosion of abuse revelations in his home country, Germany, following a wave of cases in the US. Maeve Lewis, the Irish director for the campaign group against child abuse, One in Four, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the letter. "It falls short of what victims want, since it only tackles failures in the Irish church and not the failures that go right to the top of the Vatican, such as the 2001 ruling on secrecy," she said. "The church is still in denial."

Reports on abuse commissioned in Ireland have singled out a letter written by the current pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2001 instructing bishops to report all abuse cases to his office at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for confidential handling. Vatican officials have said the measure was designed to prevent cases being covered up at local level, but Irish bishops reportedly understood the letter to mean they should not report cases to the police. In yesterday's letter, Benedict urged Ireland's bishops to "continue to co-operate with civil authorities".

"That could be interpreted as an instruction on mandatory reporting of abuse to the police, and this is welcome, although it is not clearly stated," said Lewis. "But where the pope goes on to deal with the proper application of canon law in these cases, it suggests he has no idea that civil law supersedes canon law, that bishops should abide by civil law like any citizen."

The letter announces that a Vatican investigation, or apostolic visitation, will be carried out at a "certain diocese" in Ireland, as well as in seminaries and religious congregations. Such investigations are carried out when the Vatican believes a local church is unable to put its own house in order.

"A lot of people will be quaking in their boots in Ireland as they wait to see which diocese the pope means," said one church insider in Ireland.

But Benedict also sympathised with Irish bishops, telling them: "I recognise how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice."

Rather than blaming abuse on an oppressive, conservative environment within the Irish Catholic church, Benedict singles out the creeping influence of liberal, secular society for weakening resolve against it. "In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations," he writes.

Lewis added: "We are astounded that the pope links the problem to secularisation. It shows a misunderstanding of the dynamics of sexual violence and suggests there is little hope the church will ever know how to respond."

• Pope Benedict XVI
• Ireland
• Catholicism

Tom Kington
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• Liberal Democrat 'ready to be chancellor'
• Whitehall mandarins prepare for coalition

Vince Cable has held unprecedented and detailed talks with the top official at the Treasury about the Liberal Democrats' economic policies – and declared himself willing to serve as chancellor after the next election.

As Whitehall gears up for a possible hung parliament, Cable told the Observer that he had been questioned by Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury's permanent secretary, about what the Lib Dems' demands would be in a coalition with Labour or the Tories.

Cable was unaware of such meetings having taken place with Lib Dem shadow chancellors before previous general elections. The talks were a sign that the Treasury was "taking seriously" the prospect of his party playing a leading role in economic policy in what could be the first hung parliament since 1974.

"He wanted to know what we attached priority to. He wanted to know what we felt strongly about," Cable said, adding that his ideas on tax and spending were well received. He didn't say to me: 'Yes, minister, but you can't do that'."

Cable, whose credibility has grown throughout the economic crisis, made clear that, if he was to be offered the chancellorship in a hung parliament, he would jump at the chance. He did not want to be "the most unpopular person in Britain" as public spending is slashed, he said, but added: "I wouldn't be in this business if I wasn't willing to take the responsibility if it was to come my way."

It comes as two more opinion polls point to a hung parliament. An ICM survey for the News of the World puts the Tories six points ahead on 38%, and research by YouGov for the Sunday Times suggested the party enjoyed a seven-point advantage.

David Cameron and his shadow cabinet have already held talks with senior Whitehall mandarins in preparation for a likely handover of power. But talks with a third party take place only where there is a serious prospect of it holding the balance of power.

Downing Street and the Treasury said Alistair Darling would present a "budget for growth" on Wednesday, portraying Labour as the party to nurse the economy back to health, with investment in jobs and industry, and warning that the Conservatives would jeopardise that with premature spending cuts.

The chancellor has little room for manoeuvre in pre-election giveaways, but one idea being seriously considered is to delay a 3p rise in petrol duty. Darling will announce a £1bn green infrastructure fund to invest in low-carbon technology and extend job schemes to help unemployed young people into work.

While the deficit is expected to be as much as £10bn below the £178bn forecast in his December pre-budget report, the Treasury stresses the focus will be on the chancellor's commitment to halve the deficit within four years. "It's a boring budget," said a No 10 source. "He may extend the odd payment here and there, but it is about stability and jobs."

In his weekly podcast, Gordon Brown states today that the recovery remains "fragile and in its infancy". The prime minister says that Labour's commitment to cut the deficit is "non-negotiable", but stresses that investing in jobs and programmes for industry is a way to reduce it in the medium term.

"It means not taking away the extra support too soon, which risks setting back the recovery and tipping us back into recession… If we allow unemployment to run riot, as happened in previous recessions, that will cost us more and add to the deficit," he says.

Cable made clear he would have serious reservations about working with either Labour or the Conservatives. "I'm worried about both," he said. "If either of them came back, Gordon, given his history, will be in denial about difficult decisions, and the Tories are in danger of doing foolish, precipitate things that could make the situation a lot worse."

Cable was noticeably more critical of the Conservatives' response to the financial crisis, saying that they should score "nul points" for failing to grasp the seriousness of the situation. "They haven't done anything to attract praise, because they completely and totally misunderstood the problems."

By contrast, Labour had had a "purple passage" in the autumn of 2008, when Brown led international efforts to recapitalise the banking sector after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

The Conservatives sought to seize the initiative on reforming the bloated financial sector this weekend, promising to implement a US-style tax on banks if they win the general election, instead of waiting for an international consensus to emerge, as Labour has promised to do. Cameron spelled out the measure in a speech about taking on the "vested interests" in society, comparing the battle to constrain the banks today with Margaret Thatcher's attack on union powers in the 1980s.

Lord Myners, the City minister, said: "This ill-thought-out Tory briefing has all the hallmarks of a plan made up on the hoof."

• Vince Cable
• General election 2010
• Liberal Democrats
• Budget
• Economic policy
• Conservatives

Toby HelmHeather Stewart
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Protest groups that were targeted by infiltrators plan legal action to obtain access to police files after disclosures by Officer A

Political activists have reacted with anger to revelations in last week's Observer that their organisations were infiltrated by an elite undercover unit of the Metropolitan police.

Members of one of the groups demanded a public inquiry after the Observer disclosed that a former member of Special Branch, known as Officer A, had infiltrated far-left organisations in the mid-1990s to gather intelligence about potentially violent demonstrators. He was regularly involved in brutal confrontations with uniformed police officers and activists from the extreme right. On numerous occasions he engaged in violent acts to maintain his cover.

Many activists suspected they were being infiltrated by the state at the time, but it is only now that their suspicions have been confirmed. One target of Officer A, a former student union leader who has asked not to be identified, told the Observer: "I suspected that my phone might have been tapped. I believed that there might have been some police spies at the demonstrations that I attended. But however paranoid I was, I never imagined they would go so far as to invest the level of resources needed to give someone a completely new identity for five years and have them spy on someone like me. It really is astonishing."

Officer A was part of a secret unit of the Met known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which since 1968 had 10 full-time undercover operatives inside so-called "subversive" organisations to disrupt their ability to create disorder on the streets of London.

While Officer A targeted the far left, other SDS members were simultaneously infiltrating the far right. By the end of his four-year deployment he had become a branch secretary of a leading anti-racist organisation, Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE). He used this position to assist in making contact with smaller groups that had a reputation for being involved in violence.

Hannah Sell, national secretary of the YRE at the time of Officer A's deployment, remembers him well but is furious at the implication that the group was involved in violence. "We organised mass peaceful protests against racism and the BNP. In doing so we often faced violence from the far right and the police."

The Observer understands that many of the tactics now used by police in public order situations were developed in response to SDS intelligence about the best way to control potential troublemakers. This includes the controversial tactic known as "kettling", in which protesters are hemmed in on all sides by police, a technique many believe only heightens tensions.

Lois Austin, YRE chair at the time of Officer A's infiltration, told the Observer: "We believe there should be a public inquiry into police tactics at demonstrations. It should be independent, not one where the police investigate themselves. We want to know about their use of spies and whether this unit is still operational."

The calls for an inquiry come amid fresh criticism of heavy-handed police tactics at the G20 protest in London last April, when newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died of a heart attack soon after being struck by a police baton and pushed to the ground. It has emerged that plainclothes officers from City of London police mingled with the crowd to gather intelligence. Many former activists who believe they were SDS targets intend to take legal action in an attempt to obtain any police intelligence files about their activities.

• Police

Tony Thompson
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With a new collection of short stories to his name and two of his plays currently showing in New York, the notoriously private Pulitzer prize-winner discusses masculinity, his battle with drink and his 'tumultuous' relationship with Jessica Lange

Where do you even begin with Sam Shepard? With his Pulitzer prize? His Oscar nomination? The fact that he's routinely described as "America's greatest living playwright?" Or if you're going to be superficial about it – and I am, just for a moment – maybe the place to start is with the image of him as the tall, taciturn test pilot, Chuck Yeager, the cowboy-ish character he played in The Right Stuff; a man whose life was spent exploring the outer edge of what is and isn't possible.

But then I speak to Patti Smith on the phone and ask her what her impression was of Sam Shepard the first time she met him back in 1970 (shortly before they began an affair), and it's the first thing she says too: "He was just everything that one could want. He was – still is – a very handsome man. And he had this animal magnetism. It was almost visceral. He was so high energy and had a real glint in his eyes. He was born for rock'n'roll. I had no idea who he was when I met him. He was a drummer in a band, the Holy Modal Rounders, at the time and he just had something in him that made him a great, great performer. I just thought he was the future of rock'n'roll. I had no idea that actually he was this great writer too." If you had to invent an all-American literary hero, he'd be something like Sam Shepard. With his slow, western drawl, and his love of the open road and the empty badlands way out west, he's always seemed like the authentic voice of a certain sort of American manhood; telling stories – of suffocating families and wretched lovers – from the forgotten, inbetween places of the American outback. He wrote the screenplay for Paris, Texas, the great, atmospheric Wim Wenders film, and played another cowboy-ish character in Robert Altman's adaptation of Shepard's stage play Fool for Love, fixing an image in the public imagination of both him and a remote, fly-blown America a world away from the metropolises on either coast. But then Sam Shepard is that man. He comes to New York for work but his heart is with his horses back at the ranch in Kentucky that he shares with the actress Jessica Lange, his partner now for nearly 30 years.

All this, then, and a literary reputation that it's hard to overstate. According to Christopher Bigsby, professor of American literature at the University of East Anglia, who I consult on the matter, he's simply the most significant playwright of the past 50 years. His biography groans with accomplishments, he's written nearly 50 plays, acted in dozens of films, directed others, and written the screenplays for still more. And then there's the books about him, the academic treatises on his art, a Cambridge companion to his work, critical exegeses of his themes, analyses of his stagecraft… oh, the list goes on and on.

The one thing he isn't, though, is much of a talker. He doesn't often give interviews but when he does he's routinely described as "taciturn" and "private"; his answers are "curt" or "terse". He's "famously press-skittish". Worse, I read time and again of how he's "notoriously protective of his privacy" and won't answer personal questions. Which is a shame because there are so many personal questions I want to ask him. About his relationship with Jessica Lange, and his time with Patti Smith, and his three children, and being on the road with Bob Dylan. He's spoken extensively about his relationship with his alcoholic father before, but not about his own drinking: last year he was arrested for driving under the influence and ordered to attend an alcohol rehabilitation programme.

He'll talk about the work but there's nothing I read which gives much sense of him as a man. I can't help but feel a pang for the journalist who asked him if, one day, he might turn their conversation into dialogue in one of his plays. "We're not having a dialogue, this is question and answers," he says curtly. "Dialogue is like jazz. Dialogue is creative.'"

I am prepared for the worst, then, and when he ambles into the restaurant he's chosen near New York's Times Square, it seems this is probably just as well.

How long have we got, I ask, while fumbling with my tape recorder.

"Well," he says sitting down and ordering tea, "that all depends on the questions."

It's a heart-sinking moment and, as it turns out, a completely misleading one. Because it transpires that Sam Shepard isn't actually cold or taciturn or intimidating at all. Or at least the Sam Shepard I meet isn't, because it turns out that there seem to be several different Shepards co-existing side by side. At one point, he says of Jessica Lange that her greatest quality, or the one that struck him most acutely when he first met her, was her modesty. "I'd never met anybody like her," he says. "She was astounding. One of the great things about her, aside from her natural beauty, which was remarkable, was her humbleness."

But he has it too. He's dressed in country clothes – a checked shirt and a nondescript jacket – and, unlike most writers, he has an outdoors complexion; a lived-in face. But what's most noticeable is his sense of humour. It's a lovely, gentle thing; he pokes fun at me, at himself; and when I listen back to the tape, I realise something more shocking still: he doesn't just laugh, and on occasion guffaw, he actually giggles. Sam Shepard is a giggler.

The private, difficult Sam Shepard is nowhere to be seen. Or at least not for a good three hours of tea drinking and conversation that is remarkably relaxed. The restaurant, an unpretentious place he's chosen, is deserted when we arrive. It gradually fills with the pre-theatre dinner crowd, becomes loud and noisy, and has started  to empty again by the time I finally blow it and ask a question too far. Nice, easy Sam vanishes instantly, replaced in a second by cautious, wary Sam. "Oh, he's a very charming guy," Patti Smith tells me. "Very compassionate and thoughtful about other people's feelings. But he's not one for bullshit either."

But then I ought to know something of the idea of two Sam Shepards, existing side by side, because it's how he wrote himself in his most famous play, True West: as two warring brothers, Austin the Hollywood screenwriter, and Lee the desert drifter, two sides of the same Sam Shepard coin, intellect versus instinct locked in an eternal battle for supremacy.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all about Shepard's talent is the sheer range of it. He's risen to the top of his field in almost everything he's tried his hand at, but, despite all the diversions, the acting and the directing and the music playing, he is, at heart, a writer. Who simply can't stop writing. Not one but two of his plays are currently playing in New York – Ages of the Moon, a new work, and A Lie of the Mind, a modish revival directed by Ethan Hawke. On top of which, a new collection of short stories, Day Out of Days, has just been published. It's the kind of success that most writers would maim and kill for, although it's largely beside the point, says Shepard.

"The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness. All this stuff is happening. And yet it is not what you are after as a writer. Even though they are relatively successful. Ages of the Moon has sold out, the book is doing well, and yet it's not The Thing. And then you're left… there's this feeling… what is it, then? And, I guess, it's the writing itself which is important."

His sheer output is evidence of Shepard's drive to write. He burst on to the off-off-Broadway scene in 1964, writing in his off-duty hours from waiting tables in the Village, enthralling his audience with his exotic tales of the badlands way out west, puncturing the greatest American myths, and he hasn't stopped writing since. It's the process, I say, not the results, that makes you happy?

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although happy isn't the exact word. It makes you feel that you're not useless. That you're at least putting your hand in. I think without writing I would feel completely useless."

These days he seems to have it all: as much professional success as he can handle, a long and steadfast relationship, three children, the ranch in Kentucky and bolt holes in New York and New Mexico. And, in some ways, he's the American dream personified: he was born Samuel Shepard Rogers in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the son of a second world war bomber pilot. As a child he was "Steve Rogers" but after a short stint at college studying animal husbandry he lit off across America, finally landing in New York, where he emerged as "Sam Shepard". His life is the ultimate act of self-creation; he came from nowhere, was little-read and poorly educated, and he turned himself into one of America's leading literary lights.

"And yet still feel so unfulfilled?" he says, and ponders on it for a moment or two. But then anyone with even the slenderest acquaintance with Shepard's work knows that "the American dream" is to be treated with circumspection; in Shepard's universe it's a false concept to be blown wide apart and splattered across all surfaces.

"The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is."

He writes on a manual typewriter, and refuses to so much as look at the internet. "I have a cellphone but I have no Google, I have no gaggle."

Really? But everything you've ever wondered, ever, is out there, I say.

"No, no, no! The things that I wonder about most are not on the internet, I promise you that."

He's still, even after all these years, he says, an outsider. "I'm inhabiting a life I'm not supposed to be in… and at certain times in my life I have felt a wrongness. And not a moral wrongness but a sense that this isn't what I was born to be doing." The writers who he responds most to are those who seem to share a sense of "aloneness", and "writing is almost a response to that aloneness which can't be answered in any other way".

For Shepard, the heart of this, seemingly, and a recurring theme in his work, is bound up with the relationship he had with his alcoholic, abusive father. It's there in True West, Fool for Love, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and A Lie of the Mind, and even now, at the age of 66, it troubles him still. In Fool for Love, written almost three decades ago, the main character is haunted by the chilling possibility that he is turning into his father. Back then it was a fear; now, he says, it has become a fact.

"You think about it, you talk about it, analyse it, and then all of a sudden you have become the thing that you were most vehement against. It's very Greek. They invented this shit. Or at least gave it a name."

He's been sober, he says, since the drink-driving incident a year ago. "And prior to that I was sober for four years and then I relapsed. It's a constant struggle. It's such a knucklehead disease because you refuse to see it. It wasn't until the 90s that I actually started going to AA and made a real compact with myself to quit. And I did quit for four years. And then I picked it up again. It's like being a junkie. I think I have that sort of thing in my blood, in my psyche. I can become addicted very easily, although the curious thing is that I have two sisters who are not. So I don't know. Maybe it's just a toss of the dice."

It's the sort of thing a Sam Shepard character might say. In the new book, Day Out of Days, characters wander through the pages, lost within their own lives (one of the most memorable features a man trapped in a public toilet who is literally driven mad when he's forced to listen to Shania Twain on an endless loop). They struggle for personal agency or a sense that they're in control of their own lives.

"And they never are," he says. "That's the one thing about being an author as opposed to being in one's life is that you have the illusion that you can bring some form to it. Which is the beautiful part of it. You don't feel that you are so much in chaos. I don't know what it would be like if I didn't have some form, short stories or plays or whatever."

He feels "blessed", he says, to have discovered writing. "It fulfils something in me that I don't know how I'd serve otherwise." His father was a bright man, the winner of a Fulbright scholarship, a fluent speaker of Spanish, but he never found that outlet. Or at least the outlet he found was drink. He struggled with the return to civilian life after the war, moving his family from airbase to airbase, training as a Spanish teacher, until he was sacked for drinking, and then moving the family to Duarte, California, where he attempted to farm, his drinking increasing year by year. "The alcohol just completely deranged him," says Shepard.

Roxanne, his younger sister, told People magazine back in the 80s: "There was always this kind of facing off between them [Shepard and his father], and it was Sam who got the bad end of that. Dad was a tricky character because he was a charismatic guy when he wanted to be. And at the other side he was like a snapping turtle. With him and Sam it was that male thing. You put two virile men in a room and they're going to test each other."

It's this quality, of a simmering, barely controlled violence that disrupts and distorts all of Shepard's families, that is at the heart of much of his best work. In Shepard's world, romantic love as the meeting of two souls and the family as the nurturing heart of American life are nothing but delusions. "They're wonderful retreats from the illusion of being protected from spinning off the planet. But I don't believe it. And I never did."

So you didn't celebrate Valentine's Day then?

"Oh yes. We just did. I bought her a couple of bottles of wine. I don't drink."

It's not the most romantic gift, I say.

"They were two really good bottles of wine. Really good ones. Oh, and a tape measure. Because she was putting up a painting."

Love in Shepard's universe is never straightforward, never wholly life-enhancing; it's life-destroying, too, a struggle for power or control; a curse as well as a blessing. He and Lange have survived but the relationship was "tumultuous" from the outset. "I mean, we have long periods of relative calm. But then you know…"

But you've always seemed like such an incredible match.

"Yeah, well, we're definitely an incredible match. But, you know, not without fireworks… although at this point, you know, she's the only woman I could live with. Who could live with me! What other woman would put up with me?"

She is, he says, the most honest person he's ever met. "I've never known her, ever, to lie about anything. And I couldn't say that about…"

Yourself?

"About myself. About anybody. Men lie all the time."

Really?

"You don't know that?" he says and raises his eyebrows. "Whereas Jessica has this absolute honesty. I think it's a direct quality of the midwest, of that background that she's from."

While the children were growing up, that's where they lived, in Jessica's hometown in Minnesota, down the road from her mother (and with Jessica's daughter from her relationship with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Shura). It's the equivalent, today, of Brad and Angelina deciding to settle in a suburb of Wisconsin. But then, although Shepard and Lange have both appeared in movies, and been nominated for Oscars – Shepard, one; Lange, six (and she's won two) – they've always refused to be movie stars.

There's a couple of great quotes from Jessica about you, I say.

"Is there? My God. What? Actually, no. Just give me the good ones."

She said: "No man I've ever met compares to Sam in terms of maleness."

"Well, that's a double-edged sword."

Really? I took it as a compliment.

"This morning she had a conversation with me about France, because she was in Paris in the 70s, about the gay scene in Paris, which she was very enchanted with. She was talking about a couple of incidents, and at the end of it I said: 'Well, that's very charming.' And so I think she now thinks I'm a homophobe because she said: 'Asshole!' and stormed out of the room. I thought, 'Oh my God, well obviously I'm not sophisticated enough to talk about the gay 70s in Paris.'"

He was married once before, to another actress, O-Lan Jones. She was 19 at the time, he was 26. Their son, Jesse, was born shortly after the wedding, and then Shepard met Patti Smith. The attraction was instantaneous, as was their affair, an intense, full-throttle romance, conducted mostly at the Chelsea Hotel. It was Shepard who encouraged Patti Smith to become a performer. "She already had this incantatory, lyrical, chanting way of talking, all she needed was a little shove. She was inhibited by not knowing guitar. I said: 'Guitar is just a back-up for your voice. You're not going to be Jeff Beck, don't worry about it. Just learn these chords and you'll be able to back yourself up.' And then it turned out she has this extraordinary voice too."

Reading about the Jones-Shepard-Smith triangle, it all seems very 60s somehow, an amicable bohemian ménage à trois. When I speak to Patti Smith, though, she puts me straight: "It was the early 70s. And it wasn't that amicable."

Shepard had decided to return to his wife and baby. "And it was painful," says Smith. "We knew it was going to end and we were in a room at the Chelsea Hotel. And instead of sitting around and moping, Sam said: 'Let's write a play.' And I said: 'I don't know how to write a play.' And he said: 'I'll be one character, and you can be the other.' And we just sat up all night, him writing a line and then pushing the typewriter across the table to me, and then I'd write a line."

The result was Cowboy Mouth, which opened at the American Place Theatre with Sam Shepard and Patti Smith playing themselves, in a double bill with Shepard's play Back Bog Beast Bait in which O-Lan played a character based on Patti. It was too much, and without warning, Shepard quit, and fled with O-Lan and Jesse to London.

There are so many of these ruptures in the story of your life, I say to Shepard. You're doing one thing and then suddenly you're doing something else.

"I know. I don't why it had to be so traumatic. It very definitely felt like these were earthquakes when they happened. They're terrible and yet on the other side of the coin they're ecstatic. Like when I met Jessie. It was terrible leaving my oldest boy at that time. He was 13, which is a really hard age. And, in one way, I can't forgive myself for that. And, in another way, I'm glad of the life that I've had with Jessie. What's the trade-off? It's always felt like that. The other thing that's kind of amazed me is that I've had absolutely no qualms about setting off into unknown territory. I've never been afraid to just start something new."

It was on the set of the film Frances that he met Lange. I tell him that one critic I read claimed that after meeting Jessica his depiction of male-female relationships became more complex and interesting. He says that you started writing meatier parts for women.

"Hmm. I guess that's true. Fool for Love came out of my relationship with Jessica and that's pretty powerful."

Fool for Love features a tumultuous relationship between two characters, Eddie and May, who both attract and repulse each other. And who, it turns out, are half-brother and sister.

I was looking at photographs of you and Jessica next to each other and I was struck by how similar you look, I say.

"We do, kinda."

Is the theme of incest in Fool for Love in some way borne out of that?

"I'm sure there's something about that. I'm sure when you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it... What we're searching for is what we lack. You lack something and your hope is that it'll be fulfilled by who you find."

His relationship with his father has had such a profound effect upon his life, his work, it's inevitable that he must have reflected upon his own effect upon his children, Jesse, 39, Hannah, 24, and Samuel Walker, 22.

He hesitates when he replies. "I would like to think… you can never determine how you are going to influence someone, particularly your children. I mean, they are all musicians in some way or another, so I feel as though… I think that's a result… And my daughter is also a really good writer. Really good."

The thing about your children compared to you, I say, is that they had a very stable…

"Stable?"

Oh, is that the wrong word?

"Well, relatively stable."

They haven't had the childhood that you had...

"They haven't had an abusive childhood. On the other hand, they have a different set of problems."

Having a father who is very successful…"

"And a mother," he says. "Yeah. There's a lot of stigmas. My youngest boy is very, very shy. He doesn't want anything to do with celebrity. And my daughter, she's not crazy about it. None of them covet fame."

He shies away from speaking about his sons but he seems happy enough to talk about Hannah, his daughter, currently studying for a PhD at the University of Galway.

"I never thought about having a daughter and then I had a daughter and it was a remarkable thing. It was very different from having a son and your response to it. With a son, it's much more complex. And it's probably because of my stuff in the past. With a daughter, I was surprised at how simple it is."

It's to her, he says, that he intends to leave his notebooks, "because she's the one who's asked for them."

He's obsessed with his notebooks, he says; they travel with him wherever he goes, "like gremlins". And he fishes his current one out of his coat and shows it to me. On the inside back cover he's written the places it's been to with him over the year – Sicily, Kentucky, New Mexico – and then he flicks through the pages and says, "Look at this! Look at these drawings." And he shows me some stick men, riding the sort of horses I drew aged eight. "You know, I was sitting in the University of Texas where they have the original manuscript of Watt by Mr Beckett and it was amazing because there were all these drawings on them, so I sat there one afternoon and copied them!"

It's almost as if Sam Shepard has spent his life circling around Samuel Beckett. It was discovering his plays as a young man that first inspired him to write, and Patti Smith says that in those days he never went anywhere without a copy of one or other of his plays on him. "Of course, now he's read everything. He's always discovering something new, whether it's Japanese death poetry or some new Venezuelan writer or whatever."

Not meeting Beckett is his greatest regret, he says. "My greatest literary regret."

Do you think you're starting to look like him, I say, tongue-in-cheek, although there's an element of truth to it; he's still recognisable from his cinematic glory days but his face is craggier now, crisscrossed with experience. He guffaws, enjoying the joke.

"No! It'd be flattering if I did but I think my features are a little bit more savage."

Themes of regret and remorse, of time passing and humans ageing have started to creep into his work. "I don't believe people who say, 'I have no regrets'. How can you not have regrets?"

Death, he says, changes all perspectives. When I ask him how old his father was when he died, he replies immediately. "A year older than I am. He was 67."

Does that weigh on you?

"I think about it. But it doesn't weigh on me because of the way in which he died." His father was run down by a car while drunk. "So I don't worry about it that way. I don't worry about the way I'm going to die…

But do you think about death?

"Yeah. There's not a day goes by. But that has always been the case. We're all haunted by it in one way or another. And it's the easiest thing in the world to push it away, you just get a cappuccino. But, yes, you're haunted by it in a different way [as you get older]. I feel its presence. I feel it in sleep, in dreams, in waking. Particularly in the morning."

Do you think about the things that you would lose?

"No. You feel that you're diminishing in some way. You feel that your senses are diminishing. I don't see as well. I'm not as quick as I used to be. Things like that. Knock on wood, I'm not sick. I don't how people deal with that… I mean life is tough enough. And now you're going to die! Wow!"

In Ages of the Moon his central character, Ames, has been unfaithful to his wife. "She discovers this note, this note from this girl, which to this day I cannot for the life of me remember," says Ames. "Some girl I would never in a million years have ever returned to for even a minor blow job."

"Minor?" asks his friend, Byron.

In his earliest plays, Patti Smith says, his characters had to act. "They had to do something, kick a door down or whatever. Now they tend to be more introspective. They're more likely to examine what they're doing and why."

And Shepard too. His life is in his plays, he's always said that. And so I ask him. About Ames's infidelities. About whether that's been a source of regret for him too.

"I'm not going to talk about that. You're not going to sucker me into that one! When did you think I was born?"

Oh dear. It's a classic interview mistake: the question too far. He's amicable enough, and we carry on for five or so more minutes, but I've got the other Sam. He looks the same but I can tell he's scanning the horizon for an escape route; it's Sam Shepard, the cowboy, the character in all his plays; the desert drifter, shifty, cautious, suspicious of strangers. The giggles are over. And then he's gone, with the briefest of handshakes and a rush to the door. It's not an entirely inappropriate ending. Shepard's world is a place of blundering people and blundered words; where plots are never neatly tied up and truths are only ever hinted at, never fully revealed, least of all to the characters themselves.

Day Out of Days is published by Knopf

• Sam Shepard
• Fiction
• Theatre

Carole Cadwalladr
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Never mind that Stoke played the second half with 10 men, Tottenham came through a tough test here to claim their fourth Premier League win in a row, particularly after Roman Pavlyuchenko's hamstring joined Jermain Defoe's on the sick list.

Harry Redknapp must have been rehearsing his 'down to the bare bones' routine until, would you Adam and Eve it, Eidur Gudjohnsen came on and visibly lifted Spurs with his first goal for the club and a generally composed display.

"I'd like to keep Eidur here. He's a top, top player," Redknapp said of the striker he beat West Ham to sign on loan from Monaco. "He only began talking to West Ham because he thought we'd lost interest, but I always wanted him.

"Monaco's a place you go to retire, anyway. I think he knew he'd joined the wrong club. I'm going to need Eidur now, too. I'm not going to sit here complaining again, but you could make a terrific team out of all the players we have out injured or on loan. It's just unbelievable."

This was a game of one half, the first 45 minutes being completely forgettable. Gudjohnsen got the second off to a cracking start after 22 seconds, muscling Abdoulaye Faye out of the way to fasten on to Peter Crouch's excellent pass and complete a strong run with a finish that gave Thomas Sorensen no chance.

When Dean Whitehead was sent off, three minutes later, for a second foul on Luka Modric and a second yellow card, that should have been that, especially with Gudjohnsen looking likely to score another at any moment.

Yet, even with 10 men, Stoke came back and when Benôit Assou-Ekotto wrestled Dave Kitson to the ground to prevent him reaching Matthew Etherington's cross, the winger equalised from the penalty spot. Then Ricardo Fuller missed a glorious chance to put his side ahead when Danny Higginbotham mis-hit the ball to him, six yards out, and he wafted a hasty shot over the bar.

It was now up to Spurs to show what they could do in adversity – and the answer was to score a stylish winner. Assou-Ekotto earned some atonement by overlapping down the left and sending in a low cross that Gudjohnsen dummied to allow Niko Kranjcar a chance, a difficult one that the Croatian managed to make look easy with a controlled drive from close to the penalty spot.

Even then, there was a half-chance for Mamady Sidibé at the end, but the substitute slipped at the crucial moment.

The first half was as grey and wet as the weather. Nothing happened to raise the pulse rate, unless you count Joe Jordan being spoken to by the referee for his outspoken objections to a series of early Stoke fouls on Gareth Bale.

In stoppage time at the end, Stoke could have scored when Huerelho Gomes stranded himself in a tangle with Kitson and left Fuller an opportunity. Unfortunately, the striker wanted it for himself. A quick ball to the left would have given Etherington a chance with the net empty, but Fuller never considered a pass and by the time he had worked space for his shot, the goalkeeper was back in his ground.

So while Spurs were value for their win, Stoke had their chances. "We probably created more clear-cut ones, so that was disappointing," Tony Pulis said.

The Stoke manager also revealed he had tried, without success, to have the referee, Mike Dean, switched from the game. "He's not been great for us this season and that's the third of our players he's sent off," Pulis explained.

"I've no problem with the first booking, but I didn't think there was much in the second. I'm not sure it was really worth a second card and a sending-off.

"I watched the earlier game at Villa and when [Stilian] Petrov committed a worse foul when he was on a yellow, the referee just had a quiet word. That's the difference between referees. Some can apply a bit of common sense."

Pulis is normally more reasonable than ranting, and his old mate from years ago at Bournemouth was willing to back him up. "I did think it was a bit harsh," Redknapp said. "I'd have been disappointed if one of my lads had been sent off for that."

THE FANS' PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT

RICHARD MURPHY, Author, Stoke City On This Day I thought we were very unlucky. We need to take our chances and have a referee other than Mike Dean: Whitehead's second booking wasn't a booking. The first half was very even, but Spurs scored early in the second, then Whitehead got sent off and they were all over us for about 15 minutes. But we were the better team for the last half-hour, got a penalty and then Fuller missed a sitter. Their winner was a good goal, but it was against the run of play. Dave Kitson was excellent. He hasn't started for us for a long time because he's been on loan, but he looked like he wanted to play – he was everywhere.

The fan's player ratings Sorensen 7; Huth 7, Faye 6, Higginbotham 7, Collins 7, Delap 6, Whelan 7 (Sidibé 84 5); Whitehead 6, Etherington 7 Fuller 6, Kitson 8 (Tuncay 84 7)

DAVE MASON, Observer reader It was a good result, although we looked like we were going to throw it away, with giving away the penalty. Stoke were very physical, but we knew what to expect and were geared to how they were going to play and had some big players in the side. Gudjohnsen has been a bit limited for us since he came, but he did well and muscled their centre-half out of the way for the goal, which was good to see. The sending-off put us in the driving seat, but Modric ran the game in the second half and Bale was a threat – they targeted him. The back four were also very strong and Dawson was excellent again – he leads by example.

The fan's player ratings Gomes 7; Corluka 7, Dawson 8, Bassong 7, Assou-Ekotto 6, Kranjcar 7 (Livermore 90 n/a), Modric 8; Kaboul 7, Bale 7, Pavlyuchenko 6 (Gudjohnsen 36 7), Crouch 7

TO TAKE PART IN THE FANS' VERDICT, SPORT@OBSERVER.CO.UK

• Premier League
• Stoke City
• Tottenham Hotspur

Paul Wilson
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When Terri was diagnosed with cancer, Lionel Shriver was doting – at first. But as her condition worsened, there always seemed to be a reason not to call…

I met Terri in the early 1980s at an arts camp in Connecticut. We were both in the metalsmithing workshop, and this sharply featured, appealingly surly Armenian taught me some new tricks. Her speciality was rivets and other "cold connections", an apt expression in her case. She was a wilful, stubborn woman, more fiercely so than I first realised; 25 years later, I'd discover just how defiant my closest girlfriend could be, even in the face of the undeniable.

Terri was full of the contradictions that always captivate me in people: inclined to bear grudges but incredibly generous (often rocking up with gifts for no reason – why, I still have half a dozen pairs of her shoes). Harsh but warm. Prone to depression but with a knack for festivity. I conjure her scowling down the pavement and rolling in laughter with equal ease. She was tortured and brooding; she was terribly kind. And she was a serious artist in the best sense: not pretentious, but determined to craft interesting work well.

Back in Queens, where we both lived in our mid-20s, we found common cause in our improbable aspirations. She wanted to become a famous artist, I a famous novelist – but Terri had then sold next to nothing and I'd not published more than my phone number. It was a big, indifferent world out there, and an ally was crucial. We'd conspire over a six-pack in my tiny one-bedroom flat, jovially certain that we'd still be best friends when we were "cancerous old bags". It was a running gag. We thought it was funny.

Beware the jokes of your heedless, immortal youth. Fast-forward through two and a half decades, during which Terri and I survived abusive boyfriends, marital problems, professional setbacks, my expatriation to the UK and her exile to New Jersey, Terri's painful endometriosis and four failed IVF treatments, as well as, of course, each other. During my regular summer migration to New York, in 2005, Terri shared her perplexity that she'd been running a low-grade fever for weeks. I said it sounded like a tenacious virus. But shortly thereafter she rang from hospital.

She was being tested for a range of ailments, the most far-fetched of these a rare disease called mesothelioma. Thus it was quite a shock when the doctors confirmed that peritoneal mesothelioma was exactly what she had – almost certainly caused by exposure to the asbestos that laced metalsmithing materials when she was in art school. Her husband Paul reported grimly that the average survival rate for this ravaging cancer was a single year.

Terri was only 50, and the timing was tragic for other reasons, too. From frustration, malaise and exactingly high standards, through most of her career she had underproduced. Yet in recent years something had loosened up, and her output had accelerated. Better still, she was at last imbuing her creations with the feeling they'd sometimes lacked, the most moving of which was an elegy to her unavailing IVF treatments. She was finally pulling in big commissions, one of which was about to go on display at the V&A. At the same time, her brooding demeanour had brightened; she'd grown more outgoing, energetic and relaxed. Almost... happy. Well, so much for that.

On the heels of her diagnosis, I was doting. I'm not tooting my own horn. I suspect being a paragon at the very start of a loved one's illness is pretty much the form. We're on the phone daily. We stop by regularly, and bring freshly baked scones. We follow every medical twist and turn. And we're inclined to rash promises. With a flinch, I recall declaring before Terri's surgery that I'd be willing to move into their house in New Jersey for weeks at a time! I'd be at her beck and call, running errands, preparing meals and filling prescriptions.

Useful tip: if someone close to you falls gravely ill, at the outset, in the first flush of anguish and desperation to help? Watch the mouth.

For the timing of Terri's cancer was terrible for me as well. A month after her diagnosis, I was intending to return home to London, where a host of professional commitments could not (or so it seemed) be reneged upon. Although for most of my literary career I'd scribbled in obscurity, my prospects were suddenly looking up. My seventh novel had inexplicably hit the bestseller list in the UK, and subsequently won the Orange prize earlier that summer. (I still have the droll good-luck package Terri and Paul delivered when I made the shortlist: orange marmalade, orange candles, orange oil.) For the first time, I faced a smorgasbord of opportunities – festival gigs, bookstore appearances, feature assignments – and I was in the middle of a new book.

So, however reluctantly, I flew back to London. After Terri's surgery, Paul phoned with the lowdown: the surgeons had discovered a patch of aggressive "sarcomatoid" cells, which meant Terri's prognosis was bleak.

I will give myself this grudging credit: I did fly back to visit Terri for Thanksgiving that November, and for a while I kept in faithful touch, ringing weekly and following every grisly detail of her punishing chemotherapy. But this is not a boast about what a wonderful friend I was in Terri's time of need. This is a mea culpa.

Little by little, I'd notice that it had been a fortnight since I'd rung New Jersey. I'd kick myself. But some book review would be due that afternoon, so I'd vow to ring tomorrow. Time and again some immediate task would seem more urgent, and I'd tell myself that I should ring Terri when I'm settled and concentrated. Watch out whenever you "tell yourself" anything; it's the red flag of self-deceit. Long hours of being "settled and concentrated" mysteriously failed to manifest themselves.

I stuck a Post-it note on the edge of my desk: "RING TERRI!" Over the months, the note faded, much like my resolve. On the too-rare occasions I acted on the reminder, I had to put a mental gun to my head. But why? This was one of my closest friends, and she was dying. While she was still on this Earth, why was I not battling to maximise every moment? Surely the problem should have been my ringing too often, whizzing back to the States too many times, making a pest of myself.

Granted, our conversations were sometimes awkward. My own life had never gone more swimmingly, while Terri's was circling the drain. I was embarrassed. I found myself editing from our discussions anything I'd done that was exciting or fun. When I returned from an author's tour of Sweden, I portrayed the trip as a drag. This  sort of cover-up reliably backfired. So apparently I felt sorry for myself – for going to Sweden! When Terri could rarely leave the house.

I make no apologies for this, since this is what novelists do: at some midpoint in Terri's decline, I decided that my next novel would draw on this encounter with cancer. At least I had the humanity to refrain from taking notes during our phone calls, thus relinquishing many a "telling detail" and much "great material". Consequently, I had to do an enormous amount of research on mesothelioma later, and this is what I do apologise for: not having done all those web searches on her treatments – the surgery, the drugs, the side-effects – when Terri was still suffering through them. Now, I'm mortified to have Googled "mesothelioma" only once the search was for a book.

When I returned to the US that second summer, Terri had alarmingly deteriorated. Thin to start with, she'd lost weight. She was gaunt and weak, her skin tinged a dark, unsettling orange: a chemo tan. It was obvious where this was headed. But whenever anyone acted as if she wasn't going to make it, Terri grew enraged. She resented the "sentimental" testimonials her friends and relatives recited at her bedside; she thought they were delivering a death sentence. Though she wouldn't have put it that way. I wonder if throughout her illness I ever heard her say the word "death" aloud.

Thus on one count only could I blame Terri herself for my increasingly deficient friendship. Her refusal to admit she was dying meant we couldn't ever talk about the elephant in the room. Pretending that the treatments were working and she was going to come through this injected an artifice in our relationship at odds with the confidences we'd shared for 25 years. Days I did visit, afternoons I did ring, we'd end up talking, lamely, about recipes. Indeed, on a brief trip in November 2006, I visited Terri in New Jersey; it was the last time I'd ever see her, and I knew this instinctively at the time. Yet we spent an appalling proportion of that final visit talking about mashed potatoes.

When her husband rang me in London a few days later with the news, he was consumed with a steely rage. Obviously Paul was angry that he'd lost his wife. But he was also angry at other people. Oh, he expressed his disgust in general terms, as a disillusionment with the human race, a good-riddance to our whole species. But I knew what he meant. Paul's fury was aimed at Terri's friends and family, who had almost universally made themselves scarce for months. His fury was also aimed at me.

I thought I deserved it. I had visited, some. I had rung up, some. But not nearly often enough, and in truth one of my best friends perishing before my eyes had instilled a deep aversion, an instinctive avoidance, a desperation to flee.

It would be a far better thing if I were a lone shithead amid an ocean of altruists. And surely some folks really do step up to the plate when a friend or relative falls mortally ill – wonderful people who keep popping by with casseroles to the very last day. I have a new admiration for such stalwarts, as well as a new appreciation for the Christian duty to "visit the sick". Yet I fear this suddenly-remembering-somewhere-you-gotta-be is a common failing of our time. In fearing and avoiding death, we fear and avoid the dying.

I'll risk sounding preachy, since I've paid for my sermon with a regret that never leaves me. Most of us will experience the afflictions of our nearest and dearest perhaps multiple times before we're faced with a deadly diagnosis of our own. So be mindful. Disease is frightening. It's unpleasant. It reminds us of everything we try not to think about on our own accounts. A biological instinct to steer clear of contagion can kick in even with diseases like cancer that we understand rationally aren't communicable. So the urge to avoid sick people runs very deep. Notice it. Then overcome it. There will always be something you'd rather do than confront the agony, anxiety and exile of serious illness, and these alternative endeavours seem terribly pressing in the moment: replacing the printer cartridge, catching up on urgent work-related email. But nothing is more pressing than someone you love who's suffering, and whose continuing existence you can no longer take for granted. So never vow to ring "tomorrow" – pick up the bloody phone.

• So Much For That, by Lionel Shriver, is published by HarperCollins on 25 March at £15. To order a copy for £14, with free UK mainland p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846.

• Bereavement
• Relationships
• Cancer
• Health

Lionel Shriver
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Whether it's sweet or savoury, breakfast or dinner, the addition of a little nutmeg can improve a dish no end

In this final part of my spice trilogy, I'm not quite saving the best until last, but I am perhaps saving the most versatile. Nutmeg is the spice that transcends cultures and cuisines, sweet and savoury, and takes the flavour-hungry cook from breakfast to dinner with its sweet, warming, pungent aroma.

Not surprisingly, such a miraculous spice has a history splattered with bloody rivalry – the gore shed over several centuries in its violent pursuit. Nutmeg is one of the two spices obtained from the beautiful, tropical evergreen tree, Myristica fragrans, the other being its lacy covering, or aril, mace. It is native to the Banda Islands of the Indonesian archipelago, whose spicy bounty was tussled over by the Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, until the pragmatic French smuggled out a few seeds and planted them in Mauritius, thus breaking the Dutch monopoly.

Nutmeg was probably first brought to Europe by the Crusaders, though it wasn't until the 18th century that we really lost our heads over it (it contains myristicin, which gives it its warmth and savour, and which can also, in huge quantities, have a narcotic effect). It became the height of fashion to carry your own nutmeg around with you, along with a fancy silver grater, to scatter its sweet, aromatic and spicy gratings on everything from drinks to meat.

So much more than something to sprinkle on your cappuccino or hot chocolate, nutmeg's uses are almost too numerous to list. At breakfast time, it gives an added dimension to porridge, eggy bread or muesli. Later in the day, its pungency adds savour to all manner of savoury dishes. It softens spinach's slightly metallic edge, marries beautifully with creamy fried onions in the classic Alsatian tart, perks up cabbage and kale, adds depth to sweet carrots and squash, gives an added shot of subtle flavour to mash, and marries beautifully with charcuterie (see today's quatre-épices blend) and slow-cooked ragùs.

Of course, nutmeg's affinity with eggy, milky dishes is legendary; it's essential to perfect rice pudding and a béchamel sauce would be a poor thing indeed without a grating or two. It has an affinity for orchard or vine fruits – in which context it's more subtle and sophisticated than ubiquitous cinnamon: it steals less from the fruit. So try some in an apple tart, with poached pears or in a cake bursting with juicy dried fruits.

Writing this, I'm now thinking those 18th-century dandies were really on to something, so I'm off to commission a gold nutmeg grater on a chunky chain. Nutmeg bling – you read it here first.

Quatre-épices

This classic French spice blend is used most often in charcuterie, particularly in pork terrines and sausages. If, however, you'd like a sweet blend to add to gingerbread and other kinds of baking, for instance, simply replace the peppercorns with an equal amount of allspice and replace half of the ginger with cinnamon. The finished mix will keep well in a dark place in an airtight container for a couple of months.

2 tbsp white or black peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves
2½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1½ tsp ground ginger

In a spice grinder or clean coffee grinder, whizz the peppercorns and cloves to a fine powder, then mix with the nutmeg and ginger.

If you have neither the time, inclination nor equipment to make your own sausages, give these simple patties a go instead – they're the perfect, spicy addition to a special cooked breakfast. You need to make a start a couple of days before you want to eat them, but it's not as if there's a great deal of work involved. Makes eight to 10 patties.

750g coarsely minced pork (you want it fairly fatty – a mix of shoulder and belly is good) or 600g pork shoulder, coarsely ground, plus 125g streaky bacon, very finely chopped
10g flaky sea salt (5g if you've used bacon rather than pork belly)
1 tsp quatre-épices (recipe above)
1 tsp rosemary leaves, finely chopped
1 tsp thyme leaves, finely chopped
8 sage leaves, finely chopped
¼ tsp chilli flakes
50ml red wine
1 egg yolk
1-2 tbsp groundnut oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 small handful sage leaves
1 bay leaf

Combine the first eight ingredients in a bowl, cover and refrigerate for two days. Then, when you want to cook your patties, mix in the egg yolk and break off a small piece. Fry this in a little oil, taste for seasoning, then add salt and pepper to the mix as necessary. Form into patties. Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat, add the sage leaves and bay leaf, and fry the patties for about four minutes a side. Serve with fried eggs and toast.

Custard tart

This English classic is the perfect combination of soothing, creamy, eggy filling and warming, spicy nutmeg. Makes one large tart or six small ones.

125g unsalted butter, softened
90g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
250g plain flour, sieved
1 good pinch salt
1 egg yolk whisked with a little water, to glaze

For the filling
500ml double cream
100ml whole milk
1 vanilla pod, split
3 egg yolks
2 eggs
60g golden caster sugar
1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg, plus a little more for grating over the top of the tart

To make the pastry, beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and light, then gradually beat in the egg. Slowly beat in the flour and salt. As soon as you have a crumbly dough, tip it out on to a lightly floured surface and form into a smooth, flattened disc. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for a couple of hours.

On a lightly floured surface, or between two sheets of greaseproof paper, roll out the pastry so that it's large enough to line, with some overhang, a 22cm loose-bottomed flan tin; or divide it into six and use to line six 10cm loose-bottomed flan tins. Don't trim it too closely at this stage, and reserve a little excess pastry for patching up gaps later. Lightly prick the base(s) all over with a fork, line with clingfilm or greaseproof paper, and fill with baking beans (or uncooked rice or dried pulses). Chill for 20 minutes. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4.

Place the flan case(s) on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Carefully lift out the clingfilm or greaseproof paper and baking beans, and trim the edges with a sharp knife. Patch up any tears with the reserved pastry offcuts. Return the flan case(s) to the oven for five to eight minutes, or until it (they) just takes on some colour. Remove from the oven, brush with the egg wash and bake for another five minutes. Remove and set aside to cool. Reduce the oven temperature to 150C/300F/ gas mark 2.

Meanwhile, over a medium-low heat warm the cream and milk with the vanilla pod in a saucepan until bubbles appear around the edge of the pan. While the cream is heating up, beat together the egg yolks, whole eggs and sugar. Pour in the hot cream, stirring constantly, then strain through a sieve into a jug and stir in the nutmeg. Pour into the tart case(s), grate over a little more nutmeg and place on a baking tray.

Bake until just set – they should still wobble a little in the middle: about 13-15 minutes for small tarts, 20-25 minutes for a large one. Serve at room temperature or cold.

• Go to rivercottage.net for the latest news from River Cottage HQ.

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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
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The Iranian indie band talk about life as outlaws in their homeland, as documented in their new film No One Knows About Persian Cats

At first glance, Take It Easy Hospital look like any other aspiring indie duo. Dressed in impeccable Shoreditch chic – plaid shirt and skinny jeans for him, cute vintage dress, black tights and brogues for her – their teenage epiphanies came on copied cassettes of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, while these days they're more into Sigur Rós and Foals.

Their ambition for next year, once they find a drummer, is to get on to the bill at Glastonbury or Reading. The difference is that Take It Easy Hospital originally formed in Iran, where rock music is banned. When the local music industry is non-existent, gigs and recording studios are regularly raided by police and even MySpace is monitored, simply finding someone who shares your love of guitars and plaintive vocals is fraught with difficulties.

Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi, the twin songwriters of Take It Easy Hospital, are the stars of a new Iranian film by garlanded Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, called No One Knows About Persian Cats (so named because pet cats, like rock musicians, are outlawed in Iran). The film is a fictionalised account of the duo's attempts to recruit a rhythm section in order to play a local underground gig and ultimately escape to the rock-friendly west. As the two indie innocents are taken under the wing of music-loving wide-boy Nader (Hamed Behdad), the film becomes a Linklater-esque romp through Tehran's clandestine rock underground. All the bands and musicians featured are real, but whether hairy blues rockers, jazz singers, class-war rappers or indie kids, they exhibit a love for making music that overrides the fear of being arrested the moment they switch on their amps. "If you were discovered playing rock music, you'd get arrested, you'd have to pay a fine," reveals Ash, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you'd go to prison."

The film gleans affectionate humour from the various bands' ingenuity when it comes to hiding their rehearsal spaces from the authorities in diligently-soundproofed underground caverns, shacks constructed on the roofs of tower blocks or, in one case, in a working cattle barn (much to the cows' displeasure).

By coincidence, there is a British film out this month which also documents the struggle of a couple of indie dreamers to form a band – except 1234 is based in London, so the only obstacles are their own musical inadequacy and weedy sexual tension between bandmates. Persian Cats makes 1234 look rather pathetic.

In Iran musicians are forced to behave like fugitives, even though the charges invoked against them are vague (Ahmadinejad imposed a ban on "western and decadent music" soon after becoming president in 2005). "It's a not a written law," complains Negar. "There isn't this red line. You never know when you're crossing it. [The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."

In 2007, Ash's former band Font staged an open-air gig in a private garden in a suburb of Tehran. Armed police arrived en masse to shut it down, arresting everyone in the audience, and slinging the band in prison for 21 days. "They didn't have any law that said what they should do with us, so they called us satanists. They said we were against the moral law and disgracing the face of society." Ash chuckles wryly at the memory. "It was an odd experience, sleeping next to a serial killer for three weeks. But it made me believe even more in what I was doing."

Font and Take It Easy Hospital are rarities: most Iranian wannabe rockers never even get further then their bedrooms, due to the subtle pressure exerted within families. "Under this regime, you don't have any opportunity to make a living from being a musician, so families prevent their children from learning music in the first place," Ash explains. "Families are a small example of big government. They don't trust the young generation."

When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.

The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?

"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."

If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."

Ash picks up the thread: "Politics is a tool to solve a situation at one moment. We believe that art is pure and always depending on human nature, so we've always kept ourselves far from politics. Our music is not dangerous, but the current regime in Iran feels that it has to keep people away from honest expression because if they face up to the reality they will soon find out what they are missing."

Ash and Negar agreed to star in Persian Cats not to make a political point, but to try to show the older generation, including their parents, that music is a force for good. But while Ash has received some positive feedback from older Iranians – "I've heard that they walk away after seeing this film to remember what they had before the revolution" – Negar is despondent that most of them haven't been able to overcome their prejudices. "I guess that when people decide to close their eyes to something, you can't force them to see the truth."

In the light of last year's post-election protests, the police crackdown on young people involved in music and the arts has intensified. When Take It Easy Hospital's old drummer went back to Iran several weeks after the election, he was arrested and beaten. Last January, the film's co-writer, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, was arrested in Tehran and handed an eight-year jail sentence on trumped up charges of being a US spy (she was eventually freed following a global outcry).

Reluctantly, Ash and Negar decided it was unsafe to return to Iran and have successfully applied for asylum in the UK, where they've been living since coming over to play at Manchester's In The City festival in 2008. In the film, the duo never make it to London, so in this case, truth is happier than fiction. However, Negar is at pains to point out that they never viewed England as the promised land, despite our rather more relaxed laws regarding the public airing of Farfisa-driven jangle pop.

"Some people say we've run away," says Negar. "But there is no running away. Moving from one country to another doesn't necessarily solve all the problems that are on your mind." Proof that indie introspection truly is an international language.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is out Fri; it previews at Brixton Ritzy, SW2, Tue

• World cinema

Sam Richards
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Ahead of the release of Shank, which was met by protests from locals during filming, a look at some other location shoots that went bad

Question: if you peaked out your window, and noticed a ragtag gang of knife-wielding teens storming past, what would you do? Call the police, of course. That's exactly what residents of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle did, only to find their estate was actually the film set of dystopian thriller Shank, where knife-wielding gangs roam free, starring Kaya Scodelario (Effy from Skins), Kidulthood's Adam Deacon, and oddly, Tim Westwood. "I can see," offered the director Mo Ali, "how residents might get the wrong impression".

Long gone, of course, are the days of parking your entire film in the MGM lot and making do with a plastic tree and the contents of the fire bucket to make Elvis look like he's in Hawaii. But with the credit crunch, more places than ever are eager to take the film companies' dollar. David Boice – who runs BeforeTheTrailer.com, a fansite that tracks location shoots – points out that previously unlikely locations are now tripping over themselves to give generous tax breaks and entice film crews, with Michigan leading the way. The result? "In the past year the city of Detroit has filled in for Washington [for Red Dawn]. Rather than filming 'on location', they just film where there's the best incentives."

Last April, the LA Times reported that LA-based location shoots had fallen to their lowest level since records began. Put another way: everywhere is anywhere now. But with more locations, come more problems. The films that have been protested about because of the nature of the film are too numerous to mention – from Brick Lane due to perceived prejudice against the Bangladeshi community to Basic Instinct, which, well, take your pick – anti-woman and anti-gay were the main ones.

But, like Shank, what about the effect on the locals? And what, more importantly, about the house prices? You can forgive the residents of London's Kentish Town (Zone 2, tube, nice pubs), for instance, for being concerned when filming commenced on Nick Love's hooligan film The Firm, as they prepared for a brawl scene involving 140 actors, stuntmen, extras, and with dire warnings of "noise and swearing". That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. With Timmy listening! The locals protested, and filming was soon moved to Hackney. "Residents of Hackney were happy for the fighting to take place on their streets," reported a London freesheet, who declined to mention if the residents actually noticed the difference.

Still, brawling in the UK is one thing. When location shoots go global, it can be far worse. Of course, we all know the foreign shoots that went south – Terry Gilliam's aborted crack at Don Quixote, Coppola going cuckoo during Apocalypse Now – but at least those two can say one thing: they didn't bar people from the Almighty. Last September, Julia Roberts was on location near Dehli filming the Brad Pitt-produced Eat, Pray, Love, in which she plays a woman who finds God via food and Hindu spirituality. All well and good. The only problem was, no one else could find God, as their temple was shut. Villagers hoping to celebrate the beginning of Navratri – a nine-day Hindu festival of worship and dance – found their temple sealed by Roberts's security team, which featured the small matter of 350 guards, bulletproof cars, and a chopper. It was a security detail that essentially said: We have your God now. He's shooting a movie. And he's not available for comment. One villager threatened a break in: "I am going to barge in for the evening aarti [ritual]. Let's see who stops me. What is it that they are shooting that we cannot even enter our own temple?"

Of course, upsetting the faithful is one thing. But won't someone, please, think of the dangerous criminals. Not, it seems, Mel Gibson. For his latest, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, in which he'll star as a career-criminal sent to a harsh Mexican prison, 300 real-life inmates were made to relocate from their prison in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz this January to make way for the film crew, causing not just demonstrations by relatives, angry at having to travel further to visit their incarcerated ones, but a full-scale prison riot. "Mel Gibson, it's your fault they want to take away our relatives," read a banner of one of protesters, who clearly wasn't big on irony.

Yet if you can't find it in your heart to feel for the muggers and murders crushed under Hollywood's unfeeling foot, at least spare a thought for the prostitutes. When Ed Harris-starring drama The Third Miracle was filming in Ontario, Canada, in 1998, they unwittingly became the third consecutive production to shoot in the red light districts of Sherborne and Carleton, causing out-of-pocket street workers to protest about lack of earnings.

Yet sometimes, it's not even that their home has been disrupted, trampled on and destroyed. It's that they're not getting enough credit for it. When filming A Quantum Of Solace in the small town of Baquedano, Bolivia, local mayor Carlos Lopez took matters into his own hands by jumping in his car, nearly hitting two police officers as he sped through the barricades, storming the set, and coming to a skidding halt between Daniel Craig and the cameras. The reason? Bolivia was being used to represent local rivals Chile, and that wouldn't do at all. He was swiftly taken into police custody. But as for Bond himself? Not just shaken or stirred it seems, but, according to Lopez, a full-scale pants disaster. "He fled in terror!" he said after being released. "When he saw me, James Bond ran off!" 007, really …

Still, protests from the locals are what you expect. While filming Australia – the Baz Luhrmann multimillion pound movie/tourist board infomercial – the protests came from closer to home. Extras were appalled when actors climbed upon a first world war memorial in the tiny town of Bowden during a cattle stampede scene, and lobbied to ensure the actors stood their ground and took the marauding 2,000lb beasts like men. Rumours that another memorial was needed for the fallen thesps are, as yet, unconfirmed.

There's even been the odd occasion where it wasn't the filming itself that caused the disruption, but what those filming asked the locals to do. When a crew was about to film aerial scenes for The Dark Knight in Hong Kong, they sent letters to building residents requesting they keep their lights on to present the city in its full illuminated glory. For six days. From 7am to 11pm. Unsurprisingly, they declined. "Producers are able to create the same effects through post-production," argued Gabrielle Ho at Green Sense, "but instead they are asking us to turn on so many lights, wasting so much energy."

Though there is one thing to be said about all these disruptions: they ended once the filming did. The crew of The Beach not only got permission to film in what was part of a protected national park in Thailand – Maya Bay on Phi Phi Le island – in 1998, but also to make it even "more" of a paradise, uprooting trees, removing natural vegetation that held the sand formations together, levelling sand dunes, and adding 100 non-native coconut palms. Fox promised to put everything back the way it was, but there was erosion, and in 2006 Thailand's Supreme Court upheld an appeal court ruling that the environment had been harmed. Still, Leo had had a look, and it seemed OK to him. "From what I see with my own eyes, everything is OK," the self-described environmentalist said in a statement. "I have seen nothing that has been destroyed or damaged in any way – I cannot tell you the reasons why people have been saying the opposite. It is beyond me." It's beyond us too, Leo. Those inconsiderate, unfeeling bastards.

Shank is out on Friday

• Julia Roberts
• James Bond
• Terry Gilliam
• Skins
• Mel Gibson
• Baz Luhrmann

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The Guardian's fashion editor, guides you through the latest trends

Jess Cartner-MorleyRebecca Lovell

Musicians, DJs and authors to reveal their favourite hangouts

Have your say on the Travel blog

HiFi, New York

HiFi is the best rock'n'roll bar in NYC.The room is covered with empty album sleeves and the juke box is hands-down the best in the city – I believe there are about 3,000 albums on it, so you can't complain about them not having your song. There is a fantastically affordable happy hour and a great local crowd. Like the rest of the East Village, it can get a bit much on weekend nights, but most of the time it's my favourite bar in town.
• 169 Avenue A, +1 212 420 8392.
Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady

Pegu Club, New York

The entrance to the Pegu is an unassuming doorway on the south side of West Houston Street. It's only when you are up the stairs that the glory of this place hits you. It is like going back to the great clubs of the 20s, when the staff were pretty and jazz and cocktails ruled. On a recent visit, two amazing Django Reinhardt-style guitarists were swinging through 30s classics. Cocktails are taken seriously here – the art of proper, classy drinking is almost a motto. At the weekend it can get pretty busy as it is becoming the "in" place.
• 77 West Houston Street, +1 212 473 7348.
James Pearson, artistic director, Ronnie Scott's, London

Po' Monkey's, Mississippi

It was a balmy night in September when I visited Po' Monkey's juke joint. It's a ramshackle hut powered by a single cable in the tiny town of Merigold, deep in the Mississippi delta. A poster on the door warned: "Bring your liquor inside but not your beer." The walls were cluttered with posters and age-old postcards, while toy monkeys swung from the rafters. It was low lit – smoky but inviting, with beer and whiskey flowing freely. Terry "Harmonica" Bean took to the tiny stage, elbow to elbow with the crowd, and delivered a mind-blowing, foot-stamping performance that will stay with me forever. Delicately soulful cries came from his ageing gruff voice, while stupendous bluegrass melodies oozed effortlessly from his antique steel guitar. This was raw blues at its authentic and spine-shivering best.
• +1 662 514 7488, 15km from Cleveland.
Dan Hipgrave, co-founder of Original Music Company (originalmusictravel.com), which launched this month and specialises in music-themed holidays

The Spirit Store, Ireland

The Spirit Store in Dundalk, County Louth, is on the edge of town beside a small harbour. There's a small, friendly bar downstairs which opens around 4pm, but it is the live music upstairs that is the main draw. You would be hard-pressed to find anywhere as welcoming to an artist and more genuinely music-driven in its programming of events. That's why I keep going back there to play, and why many other artists who have outgrown the 120- or so capacity venue keep returning. So many venues and promoters are about the money but Derek Turner, who books the music, is driven by something much more.
• +353 42 9352697.
Duke Special, musician. His DVD box set, The Stage, A Book & the Silver Screen is out now

The Hideout, London

Not exactly a venue, not exactly a bar, entrance to Trishas/The Hideout/that door on Greek St (as it is variously known), is obtained by boldly knocking on what appears to be the entrance to a flat above a shop, striding through a starkly lit corridor and down a flight of stairs, before mumbling an explanation to the owner as to why you don't appear to be in possession of a membership card – having accidentally put it through the washing machine normally does the trick. Inside, you'll find a cupboard-sized, candle-lit cavern which can be hired out for private music showcases. But stumble in unannounced after hours on a weekend and you might also find a doo wop or jazz band sandwiched into the corner between the usual crowd of transvestites, metropolitan hipsters and veteran Italian locals.
57 Greek Street, Soho, London.
Krissi Murison, editor, NME

The Shed North Yorkshire

I first played at this blink-and-you'll-miss-it shed in the tiny village of Brawby back in 1998. It only held 64 people and we scraped our legs on the front row's knees. It has since moved to Hovingham village hall, though it retains its name. The man behind The Shed, Simon Thackray, has presented events from the Fish and Chip Van Tour with a trombonist, to mixed media knitting installations – saxophonist Lol Coxhill playing free jazz in a skip to coach trips for folks in knitted Elvis wigs touring sites of Elvisian interest in Ryedale. My own band, Hank Wangford and the Lost Cowboys, started a tradition of Christmas gigs at The Shed, where we play morose songs and have a riotously miserable time. The Shed was the inspiration for my village hall tour around Britain, which I am currently writing up as a book. And, after 235 villages, The Shed is still the loony best.
• 01653 668494.
Hank Wangford, writer and musician. His CD, Whistling in the Dark, is out now

A38, Budapest

For me, the greatest gig of 2009 was at A38, a huge old ship that used to lug coal up and down the Danube. The lower deck is now a state-of-the-art live music venue, but bits of engine room equipment are still there. Even though the boat is held down in dry dock by 100 tonnes of concrete, the bottles still jingle on the shelves of the bar when the parties get wild. The booking policy is great – they've had cutting-edge electronic artists such as Ikonika, Dorian Concept and Foreign Beggars play recently. And nothing compares with the signature dish of the restaurant on the upper deck: rooster stew, complete with the crest and testicles of the bird.
• +36 1 464 39 40.
Mary Anne Hobbs, Radio 1 DJ. Her show is broadcast on Thursdays 2-4am

Wild At Heart, Berlin

Wild At Heart is a whisky-soaked, no-nonsense rock'n'roll joint in Berlin's old anarchist district, Kreuzberg: a seven-nights-a-week venue painted blood red, crammed with Elvis memorabilia, Hawaiian gods and a lifetime's supply of hard liquor. For 15 years it has presented bands from all over the world – mostly punk, rockabilly, psychobilly, 60s garage and surf. I spent a memorable evening there talking to TV Smith from the Adverts and another with Wreckless Eric, both of whom started out with punk label Stiff Records in 1977, and I've played there with my band, the Flaming Stars. The music's loud, but the welcome is friendly, and the club also runs the Tiki Heart cafe and clothes shop next door, where you can eat, drink and kit yourself out in a spectacular variety of rock'n'roll clobber.
• Wienerstrasse 20, +49 30 610 747 01.
Max Décharné, singer in the Flaming Stars and author of A Rocket in My Pocket: The Hipster's Guide to Rockabilly, to be published by Serpent's Tail in June

Mesa de Frades, Lisbon

Mesa de Frades in Alfama, the oldest district of Lisbon, is the sort of place you dream of hearing fado, the traditional soulful Portuguese music. A tiny converted chapel with tiled walls, it is full of locals and quality performers booked by owner Pedro Castro, a great guitar player. You can come for the music, which starts late – around 11pm – or book a table and come for an excellent dinner beforehand. A couple of years ago I sat here watching Carminho, the amazing young fado singer who is now the talk of Lisbon. When the music starts, the doors are shut to enclose the tiny performing space. It's what fado in Lisbon should be, but so rarely is.
• Rua dos Remedios 139A, +351 91 702 9436, mesadefrades.com. Booking is essential.
Simon Broughton, editor of Songlines magazine (songlines.co.uk/musictravel)

Il Folk Club, Turin

In the heart of Turin, off Piazza Statuto, you'll find the best of all worlds: from Wednesday to Saturday Il Folk Club plays host to Italian and international jazz, folk and world musicians. How this Italian institution – legendary in Turin for over 20 years – has remained generally unknown to travellers and music junkies outside Italy is a mystery. Alongside its regular programme, Il Folk Club is also the launching point for Radio Londra, a monthly mini-festival which fuses British musicians such as Jim Mullen, Kit Downes, Brandon Allen and Quentin Collins Quartet, with local stars such as Mario Pozza, Enzo Zirilli and Dado Moroni. The bar is simple – one central room with space for about 150 people, exposed brick walls, and a stage – so the focus is always on the incredible music.
Via Ettore Perrone 3, Turin.
Sam Sollai, buyer and events coordinator, Ray's Jazz at Foyles

Gerbard, Barcelona

This little neighbourhood bar used to have a green door with panes that rattled when you opened it, but it has now been replaced with something more solid, partly to keep the sound in. It's run by Mar and Nacho, both dyed-in-the-wool culés (Barcelona supporters), and nights there are long and loud. You can hear Sam Lardner, an American resident who plays his own fusion of flamenco and bossa nova, or wonderful classical and flamenco guitarists like Daniel Figueras and Pedro Javier Hermosilla, or the Covers Project, with frontman Philip Stanton. The eating and drinking are delicious too – Galician-style octopus, traditional meatballs, pimientos de padron (small green peppers), and wine for not much more than a euro a glass. A great night out in the Alta Zona.
• C/ Ivorra 24, Sarria, Barcelona, +93 203 4988.
Rupert Thomson, author living in Barcelona. His latest book, This Party's Got to Stop, will be published on 8 April

La Casona del Molino, Salta, Argentina

Salta, in north-west Argentina, is well-known for its folk music heritage. This has given rise to the creation of pena, which roughly translates as a place where musicians and music lovers come together. Seven nights a week you can experience this at La Casona. The venue's five colonial rooms are filled to the brim with musicians, professional and amateur, folk, jazz and others, locals who come down from the Andes bearing pan pipes and drums, and some foreign visitors, all coming together to jam the local tunes. As a musician, I found great comfort in the fact that this kind of place exists in the world. And of course, many people come simply for the music.
• La Casona del Molino, Caseros.
Lizzie Ball, violinist and singer. She will be performing – and launching her album – with Machaca at La Linea Festival in the Purcell Room on London's South Bank on 27 April

Salón Rosado de la Tropical, Havana

The first time I asked a taxi driver to take me to Havana's Salón Rosado de la Tropical back in 1989 he said it was a place for Cubans, not foreign tourists – and certainly not lone women – and I'd better watch out as it could be rough. He'd obviously never been inside this mecca of Cuban dance music, where all the top bands play regularly, testing their latest material in front of the sexiest dancers on the island. In Cuba, most music venues are geared to tourists and too expensive for ordinary Cubans, who are often not allowed in anyway. Not so the Salón Rosado. This is the closest you can get to hanging out with a Cuban clientele. Dedicated to the memory of Beny Moré, Cuba's touchstone band leader of the 1950s, it started out life a Spanish cultural centre at the beginning of the 20th century. These days there's a balcony reserved for tourists overlooking the dance floor where, if you're lucky, you may rub shoulders with the musicians as they gather for the gig. Although today reggaeton and hip-hop dominate street tastes, Salon Rosado continues to offer a window on to the latest music scene and is a dancer's dream.
• Avenida 41 esq. 46, Nicanor del Campo, Marianao, +53 7 203 5322.
Jan Fairley has been travelling to Cuba since 1978 and is writing a book on women and music in Cuba

Liquid Room, Tokyo

Leading Japanese venue Liquid Room has been going for about 15 years and hosts weekly bands and DJs from Japan and around the world. The website may say it closes at 12, but the last time I played there, as The Orb, they didn't let us out till 6am. There's a beautiful cafe upstairs and the friendly enthusiasm of Tokyo clubbers has to be experienced to be believed. The last time I played there I took a bag of Space Dust (the sweet!) which made me very popular.
• Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, +81 3 5464 0800, liquidroom.net.
Alex Paterson, co-founder of The Orb and HFB, his new project. HFB's first three EPs are available from 12 April on Malicious Damage Records

New Africa Shrine, Lagos, Nigeria

Lagos is not your classic tourist destination; it's a prohibitively expensive city of 14 million people and a crime record to frighten even the toughest traveller. But Nigeria's notorious capital does have one musical landmark worth going the extra mile for: the New Africa Shrine. It's named after the legendary club run by the late musical activist Fela Kuti, which was razed by soldiers. Fela's daughter Yeni and her musician brother Femi have built up a nightclub that can hold thousands and has live music throughout the week. It's not for the faint-hearted, but the Shrine is probably the safest place in Lagos: it has its own police force. You'll get a warm welcome, and hear some of the best live music in the region.
• Pepple Street, Ikeja.
Rose Skelton, music and travel journalist specialising in West Africa

• Bars and clubs
• United States
• New York
• Ireland
• World music
• Budapest
• Hungary
• Berlin
• Germany
• Lisbon
• Portugal
• Yorkshire
• Argentina
• Havana
• Cuba

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Kevin Rushby thought he didn't get on with horses. But a two-day ride across beautiful countryside of Provence was the start of a new love affair

When the horses come down from the hill, I'm standing on the lane, wondering if there is any way to get out of what is about to happen. It's an impressive sight: the dozen horses, manes and tails in motion, all cantering through the forest, the dog barking at their heels. There were two patched and painted ponies, like Apache war steeds, a pair of dainty Arabs, dish-faced and bug-eyed, like they had pranced straight out of a Stubbs painting. There were a couple of greys and some big brown mares. The biggest brute will be mine, I thought – the one with the grudge.

Far below us, down 700m of mountainside, shimmering and hazy, was the Côte d'Azur with its white tower blocks, black cars and scorched skin. But we were no longer in that world; we were in a golden forest of field maples, oaks and scarlet sumac near the village of Sainte-Agnès, just a few miles north of Monaco, close to the Italian border. We were setting out on a two-day ride into the virtually uninhabited interior, our saddlebags stuffed with supplies and bedrolls.

Denis came past me, whistling, then shouting for the dog, "Avant, avant, Uxel! Allez, Juanita!" And the dog, a huge lolloping hound, was behind Juanita, one of the painted ponies, urging her down. I noticed that the dog appeared to know the horse's name, and thought, "Is that possible?"

I stepped back. My partner, Sophie, and six-year-old daughter Maddy were with Denis, catching horses by the manes, slipping on bridles, tying them up to a rope strung between two trees. But I stepped back.

I'll be honest. Horses and me never did click. A bite on the hand long ago, tales of terrifying injuries, cowboy movies where they get thrown and trampled and bitten and generally reduced to a bloody, quivering pulp, and finally the time in Sudan – I blush at the recollection – when I coolly threw myself up on a mule, and went directly over the other side into the dirt. If only the whole village hadn't been watching! Some of them laughed so hard they had to lie down. Gimme a bike any day. To add to my woes, Sophie and Maddy are comparative experts – and they look good in jodhpurs.

The night before, Denis had explained his methods. "I leave the horses out on the mountain – that way they get strong and they have the security of the herd. They got a pecking order and they got leaders. I work with 'em."

Denis Longfellow inspires confidence. Born in California in the 60s, he grew up surrounded by writers and poets (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an ancestor). In the 70s he moved to Provence and spent 10 years with the last generation of old-time shepherds: "They couldn't read or write, but they knew how to keep animals."

Denis has a direct simple animal psychology: "In Europe you got a lot of culture grown up around horseback riding. There's a guy two metres up there, looking down on someone, and he wants to make that seem mysterious and complicated. But it ain't. Horseback riding ain't complicated."

Now, here on the lane, Denis is about to show me how simple it is. He grabs the big brown mare – the one with the grudge, of course – and he grips the reins in one hand together with a fist full of mane and he says to me. "Hold her like this. Get a foot in your stirrup, then jump up."

I do it. The horse keeps steady. Denis positions my toe in the stirrup. "It's a natural position: feet underneath, basin ..." he points at my pelvis. "That's where you ride – in the basin. You can stand if you want, but keep your head down and butt up. Hold the mane with both hands if you need to."

Maddy and Sophie are up, too. Mel and Liz, colleagues of Denis, are up. The loose horses are milling, hooves clattering on tarmac. The dog, Uxel, is waiting for a signal. Denis jumps into the saddle. A piercing whistle. My brown mare, Mada, turns sharply right and pounces forwards after the loose horses. A cacophony of hooves explodes around me. A black horse bashes my knee. We're going downhill at a trot and my bum is being punched. Stand up. Grab mane. Horse's head starts to pump up and down as she breaks into a canter. Denis comes rattling past, cooler than a cowboy dude, leaning back like he's tootling a Harley D up Route 66: "Sit back. Use your basin. It's like making love."

I can't sit. I can't make love with my basin. I can't do anything but hold on. And yet that's cool. Denis is cool. "OK, basin up and head down," he shouts. "Like a jockey."

I'm laughing with exhilaration. We sheer away down a broad grassy footpath. Sophie is alongside me on her grey gelding and grinning. "Well?"

I can't stop smiling. "I – think – I – might – like – this ..." How come, I'm wondering, I never realised what fun this could be? And I haven't even thought about falling off.

After an hour we pull up by a tumbledown cottage where a man with a face full of furrows is waving a bottle of pastis. He pours me a stiff measure.

"You'll never believe what I saw this morning: a man with a knapsack and nothing else – naked!" He laughs. "I hardly see a soul up here, though it's just a few kilometres from the coast."

A curious thing about Provence is how the coast and the mountains have exchanged population: the coast was once an overheated pirate-afflicted zone that nobody wanted, while the cool hills were desirable – everyone lived up here. Now the population is all down on the coast, even though it's still overheated and pirate-infested (they sail in gilded mega-yachts these days), and the hills are silent: you would struggle to get a pétanque match together in most villages.

Riding through the sun-dappled forest, the only humans we see are a couple of mushroom collectors. We emerge at an abandoned coastguard station and a magnificent panorama. Behind us are the snow-capped Alpes Maritimes, ahead the sparkling sea and the mountains of Corsica on the horizon, 200km away. Westwards we can see Provence disappearing in ridges of blue and violet, while to the east are the mountains of Italian Liguria.

"I guess most kids in England learn horseback riding indoors," Denis says to Maddy.

She nods: "My horse is called Pippin. We go across the ring from A to C, then B to D. It's fun."

I think Maddy is missing the rule-bound predictability of the riding school, a place where correct clothes, posture and meticulous attention to detail are observed. She has coped with the intensity of this outdoor experience with remarkable sang-froid, but for her – truth to tell – the confidence nurtured in the riding school is indispensable here.

Lunch is laid out: tiny black Niçoise olives, cheeses, hunks of bread, a bottle of red wine, pasta and salads. We eat and talk, then some of us snooze. Later we trot onwards in the deep glow of late afternoon. Denis tells me how he breaks new horses in.

"There ain't no problem when they live in a herd. The young colts run with us and they see what happens with the older horses. When they're three years old, I put a bridle and saddle on them. I use hackamore bridles so there's no bit. They take to it real easy."

In a broad meadow we gallop about and round up the loose horses, whooping and yelling like cowboys on the range. It is both ridiculous and wonderful. That evening we light a camp fire, put some sausages on to cook, and watch the stars come out.

"If only I'd known riding could be like this!" I say to Denis. "No pomp – just relaxed."

My attitude to horses has, I admit, been damaged by exposure to a certain kind of horsey person: braying women in uptight clothes, red-faced toffs in white cravats, all wearing those foul black helmets with a ribbon on top. (I have to stop myself at this point since Maddy and Sophie love this kind of kit.) Denis, I scarcely need to say, does not wear any of that ghastly garb, favouring jeans and checked shirts with sunglasses under a baseball cap.

"A lot of guys come to it when they are older – thirties, forties, even fifties and sixties," Denis says. "There's no problem with age at all."

There is a commotion among the horses and Maddy goes to investigate. She comes back grinning sheepishly. "They're doing binki-bonki."

A torch reveals what exactly binki-bonki is: a grey gelding in an aroused state mounting a chestnut mare.

"Ah, that's Dodo," says Denis. "He gets in the mood every three or four months – no problem." He goes back to turning sausages on the fire.

Next morning we ride for about three hours and have lunch on a hilltop before heading back towards Sainte-Agnès, at 760m the highest coastal village in Europe. We unsaddle the horses and send the herd off into the forest, then sit down to an excellent dinner in the village restaurant.

Later that evening, I head out alone on to the rocks around the village. The trip has challenged my prejudice, and then surprised me by flipping it over entirely. The truth is that I was the one with the grudge, not the poor horse. I sit down on a spur of granite and look around. To the south are the bright lights of Menton and Monte Carlo; to the north is complete darkness, punctuated by the hoots of owls calling across the valley. And above, as if attempting to tie these two impossibly different worlds together, is the broad spangled belt of the Milky Way.

• France
• Provence
• Horse riding
• Family holidays
• Camping

Kevin Rushby
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Compensation for staff at Ground Zero who suffered ill-health is not a fair deal, federal judge rules

A judge has rejected a $657m (£437m) deal to compensate workers who suffered ill-health after helping out at New York's Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, ruling the sum is not adequate.

Federal judge Alvin Hellerstein said the proposed payout was not a fair deal for about 10,000 police officers, firefighters and labourers made sick by the dust and debris.

Under the settlement, the amount received by each responder is based on a complicated points system that would give some workers only a few thousand dollars while others might qualify for $1m or more.

The judge said he was concerned too much of the money would be eaten up by legal fees and that the plaintiffs were being pressured into signing up to the agreement before they knew how much they stood to receive.

A third or more of the cash was expected to go to lawyers.

Workers have been given just 90 days to decide whether they agree to the terms, far too short a time for such an important decision, said Hellerstein.

"I will not preside over a settlement that is based on fear or ignorance," he said.

Hellerstein, who rules over all federal court litigation related to the terror attacks, had heard from several tearful responders speaking about their illnesses, and received letters and phone calls from others expressing confusion about the deal.

The settlement has taken years to negotiate and was announced last week. Hellerstein said more negotiations were now needed.

The payouts will come from a fund set up after the attacks when New York City was unable to find private insurance to cover claims originating from the clean-up effort.

• New York
• September 11 2001
• US domestic policy
• United States

Damien Pearse
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• Read the letter in full

A group of senior public figures have called on the government to abandon its plan to push through controversial digital economy bill before the election, amid claims that the move could "sidestep" the democratic process.

Earlier this week the government revealed that it wants to force the digital economy bill - which includes the controversial "three strikes" rule to cut off the internet connections of those accused of illegal file sharing - into the statute books in the next few weeks.

While it usually takes far longer to create an act of parliament, thanks to the public debates held by MPs, the secretary of state for business, Lord Mandelson, plans speed up the process by making use of a controversial parliamentary technique known as the "wash-up".

Under those rules, party whips bypass the usual debating process and make a series of horse trades in order to get proposals into law before parliament dissolves ahead of a general election.

That proposal has already caused concern, but today a coalition including a cross-party group of MPs and peers - as well as figures from the business world and entertainment industry - said that short circuiting the democratic process could have disastrous side effects.

In an open letter the group suggests that the controversial nature of the legislation - which it says "threatens to severely infringe fundamental human rights" and could introduce "website blocking" measure that impede free speech - must face the full scrutiny of parliament before it becomes law.

Among the signatories are musician Billy Bragg, human rights activist Peter Tatchell and writer Graham Linehan, who helped create comedy series including Father Ted and The IT Crowd. They are joined by a number of activists and campaigners, as well as politicians drawn from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

"Our worry today is that none of this will be properly debated by parliament," says the letter. "Last week Harriet Harman failed to give the Commons any reassurances that this important, complex and controversial bill will be properly scrutinised by our elected MPs."

"Democracy and accountability will be sidestepped if this bill is rushed through and amended without debate during the so-called 'wash-up' process. The thousands of people we know to be contacting their MPs with concerns will find their faith in politicians even further undermined."

The plans, which first became public last autumn, have caused controversy at almost every turn.

As well as the three strikes rule and measures to take down websites accused of infringing copyright - which could potentially result in the closure of major web destinations such as YouTube - Lord Mandelson has also sought the power to alter copyright law without the assent of parliament.

In addition, it has also been suggested that the bill's measures to prosecute the owners of internet connections used for illegal file sharing could hit anybody who provides web access - such as universities, libraries and cafes, as well as those individuals who leave their home Wi-Fi connections open.

While the made it through three readings in the House of Lords, it was not without serious objections. Lord Puttnam, the film producer, said he had faced "an extraordinary degree of lobbying" over the proposals, while others questioned the revelation that an amendment used language British music industry body the BPI.

Earlier this week BPI chief Geoff Taylor said that it was imperative that the legislation is passed before the election.

"It is vital for the future of the UK's creative sector that the digital economy bill becomes law before the dissolution of parliament," he said.

However, the open letter suggests that the bill's most controversial elements must receive proper debate or be removed from the bill entirely and left until after the forthcoming election.

• Digital Britain
• File sharing
• Wi-Fi
• Internet
• Piracy
• Law and technology

Bobbie Johnson
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After years of infighting, the East Lothian MP is deselected after a vote by local party members

A sitting Labour MP has been deselected by her local party members after tensions over her style erupted into a public feud with senior constituency officials.

With only weeks to go before the general election, Anne Moffat has been sacked as Labour's candidate for East Lothian, a seat she has held for nine years, after a special meeting of her local constituency party tonight.

Nearly 200 members, approximately half the local party, took part and voted for a special resolution to deselect her by 130 to 59 – a heavier margin than her supporters expected. The meeting heard her pleas to be kept on in silence.

Moffat, a former president of the trade union Unison and granddaughter of a famous Scottish miners' leader, has until 5pm on Monday to appeal to Labour's ruling national executive committee.

If she accepts the result, an all-women shortlist will be drawn up urgently to contest the seat. There is speculation she may now retire on health grounds.

The vote comes after four years of infighting between Moffat and senior party activists in East Lothian – a constituency shared by the current Labour leader in the Scottish parliament, Iain Gray. He has repeatedly refused to back her.

Complaints about her track record and her style as MP has twice led to four out of the area's six Labour party branches asking her to stand down. Moffat has relied heavily on a union block vote for her survival, and the feuding led to the formal suspension of the constituency party by the NEC in 2008.

Harry Cairney, one of her leading critics and the chairman of Prestonpans Labour club, one of the largest in Scotland, said that despite the deep split within the party the meeting had been "conciliatory and business-like".

Cairney said: "People have waited three years to get this vote and people said three years ago when she couldn't carry a majority of the branches they should have their say."

Moffat left without speaking to the media. She had accused senior party officials of "bullying and intimidation", while her critics claim she had failed to do her job adequately, failed to attend party meetings and neglected her duties.

Moffat was involved in the first controversy over the suppression of information about MPs' expenses by the Commons authorities.

In 2007, a two-year battle by a Green party activist under freedom of information legislation finally led to the release of Moffat's £40,000 travel claims from 2004 – then the highest of any MP at Westminster.

A former nurse, she has countered by claiming the party has ignored her medical condition after she had a brain haemorrhage last year. She wrote to the party to say doctors had advised her not "to engage in any activity which would cause stress and anxiety".

In an earlier interview with the BBC, she attacked her critics, claiming her recovery "has been hampered by their bad feelings, and viciousness and vindictiveness of those people who even when I was seriously ill, didn't let up".

Labour is defending a nominally strong 7,600-vote majority in East Lothian but that has been halved since the previous sitting MP John Home Robertson stood down before the 2001 general election to focus on his career in the Scottish parliament.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats are pressing hard to take the seat and their candidate, Stuart Ritchie, said after the vote: "Labour are going to parachute in a candidate, who probably won't know or understand the issues the people of East Lothian face every day.

"They'll just parrot Labour's tired old lines.

"It doesn't matter to the people of East Lothian who the Labour candidate is. Because whoever they end up with, Labour are falling apart here."

Moffat's period as MP has been dogged by controversy. She quickly fell out with Home Robertson after allegedly interfering in his constituency concerns; fought off allegations of an affair with a fellow Labour MP; came bottom of a table of MPs ranked by the number of their Commons speeches; and endured a sacking row with a senior member of her constituency staff.

• Labour
• Scotland
• MPs' expenses

Severin Carrell
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