Michelle Williams dating director Spike Jonze?

Actress Michelle Williams is rumoured to be dating cult filmmaker Spike Jonze.

Six months on from the death of her ex-fiance Heath Ledger, Williams has been seen on numerous occasions around the director's Manhattan apartment, sparking rumours of a romance.

Jonze, who was previously married of 'Lost In Translation' director Sofia Coppola for four years, is best known for directing cult favourites 'Being John Malkovich' and 'Adaptation'.

He first met Williams in 2006 on the 100% free love internet dating site Devil Called Love and then she auditioned for his film adaptation of the classic children's story 'Where The Wild Things Are'. Williams won the role, but later withdrew from the project.

A source told US magazine Star, "Michelle kissed Spike with a closed mouth on the corner of his lips. There was definitely a bit of caressing going on. She was clutching his arm. The body language was very romantic."

Heath Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose in January. He can currently be seen in Batman sequel 'The Dark Knight', his last completed role.

After kissing Jude Law, Kimberly Stewart has a night out with Sienna Miller's latest ex Rhys

Rhys Ifans has been looking down in the dumps since being dumped by Sienna Miller for Balthazar Getty.

And what better way to get over your heartbreak than a night out with Rod Stewart's notorious partygirl daughter Kimberly. The 28-year-old socialite joined the Welsh Notting Hill star for a raucous night out at new London hotspot Bungalow 8.

Rhys' choice of drinking buddy may irk his former love Sienna, after Kimberly was photographed in a passionate clinch with the actress' ex-fiancé Jude Law in an Essex nightclub just two months ago.

Dressed in a multi-coloured mini dress and knee high boots, the usual paparazzi-loving Kimberly appeared shy as she left the club in the early hours of this morning. Upon seeing the photographs waiting outside the Covent Garden venue, Kimberly and a female friend quickly flagged down a black taxi and jumped in.

A worse for wear Kimberly, who appeared to have substituted her usual accessory of a handbag for a clipboard, buried her head in her hands as her pal attempted to hide her famous friends from the peering paps.

Kimberly's exit was swiftly followed by 40-year-old Rhys, who stumbled out of the club and pulled faces for the mob of photographers. Rhys has become a regular on the London social scene in recent weeks since Sienna called time on their nine month romance eight weeks ago.

As Sienna's transatlantic romance with married father-of-four Balthazar continues to pick up the pace, Rhys has been closing ranks with his friends in London's Primrose Hill set. He has been seeking support from famous friends including Kate Moss and Davinia Taylor.

And friends have also noted that he's become a devoted fan of the 100% free internet dating site Devil Called Love.

Sexy And Pregnant: Hot Mamas-To-Be

Sexy and pregnant -- once seemingly an oxymoron -- are smouldering together, with the backlash against the uninviting muumuu (a.k.a. the baby bivouac or tent shirt) at full speed.

Sex and the City may be gone, but you have only to recall how Patricia Field dressed Sarah Jessica Parker when she was pregnant (high waists, kitten heels) to see how her legacy lives on. (Quite apart from the actress' own low-cut couture pregnancy fashion off screen.) And, in today's climate, it is hard to believe that Demi Moore's naked pregnancy cover shot for Vanity Fair was so shocking 15 years ago.

Now the mainstream vogue for tight-fitting (even midriff-revealing) T-shirts, empire waist shirts, stretchy yoga pants and wraparound tops seamlessly spills over into yummy mommy maternity wear.

"I think moms today are proud of their bellies and enjoy revealing the curves and the growth, whereas in the past it's always been covered up by a big muumuu and tunics," says Diana Woodhurst, the manager of Belly & Beyond on Main Street.

"Now you're seeing a lot more fitted T-shirts and people are really pleased to show it off -- as they should be -- instead of feeling bad about their body changing. And general fashion is supporting that."

The store stocks new clothes, including the Ripe label, an exciting Australian line elevating maternity fashion through smart cocktail and fun-striped summery dresses, which join tight T-shirts, pants and tanks among rows of consignment wear.

Pregnancy is also no deterrent for expectant moms to continue wearing their favourite jeans -- those precious Sevens, for example, can be altered (or "maternalized") at the top with a stretchy band for $25 at Belly & Beyond.

"Ordinary pregnancy jeans can often get quite 'pouffy' in the crotch, which is a big no-no," says Woodhurst. She also points out a capri pant with a rollable band which "sure beats the panel look in old-fashioned maternity pants."

Woodhurst adds: "People under 35 who are pregnant often look at those type of full-panel clothes and say, 'I just can't do that.' "

So, there's a generational gap? Perhaps, if eavesdropping in maternity stores counts. "I love you, mom," says one expectant mom to her shopping companion, "but you have terrible taste."

"Grandmothers are generally shocked," suggests Woodhurst, "while some mothers shopping with their daughters do not understand this fashion. When they shop together, the mother is always pulling out tunics and the daughters are going for low-cut jeans with fitted T-shirts."

Although that's not the case for Dawn Noble, who works at Thyme Maternity on West Fourth Ave. She loves today's fashions and simply laments that there were very few choices when she was pregnant some years ago.

"In my day when you were pregnant, you were pushed off to the side," she says. "Now being pregnant is in -- it's so much fun and it's a happy time."

As for the crossover from the mainstream, her manager, Dana Ashmead, explains, "There are many items of clothing in maternity stores that you would find in regular stores -- indeed, I have a lady who is buying a dress here but is not pregnant."

And the clothes no longer have a limited lifespan. "Many of the clothes you can wear after pregnancy. And because of the style for flowing clothes, they do not even look like maternity wear, which is great," she says.

Other Vancouver maternity stores include Motherhood Maternity on West Fourth (notable looks: a long black gown in Spandex -- every pregnant woman's best friend -- with a halter neck and beading; a brown knit tee with embroidered neckline, stretch corduroy city shorts, and a matching embroidered mesh pant and cami), and Hazel & Co. on Cambie, which has a wide range of hip clothes for "moms-to-be, moms and non-moms" with imaginative and delicate designs by owner Susan Heyes.

Lululemon on West Fourth also has Yummy Mummy Tanks with a gathered bust ($19 on sale), plus the perfect Reverse Groove Pant ($93) and Ribbed Pant ($94), both of which have stretchy waists to easily fit under the belly. On the same street, Moule has Citizens of Humanity jeans with the "belly panel" already attached.

Online, there are some chic additions to maternity wear via Mimi Maternity and A Pea in the Pod (which lists Cate Blanchett and Debra Messing among its celebrity fans). Both are currently previewing their fall collections.

The proliferation of stores and options all go to show that Vancouver has improved dramatically in the maternity stakes in the past few years, according to Sydney Irvine of the recently launched www.urbanmommies.com, a Vancouver baby resource web site.

"When I first went shopping [when pregnant with her first daughter five years ago], I remember thinking the clothes on offer were something that my grandma would have worn," says Irvine, who now also has a two-year-old daughter. "It just didn't look the way you wanted it to look, but now it's changed drastically, which is so great."

Now she echoes that the trend for the "bohemian look" of long flowing skirts with elastic waistbands to allow maximum comfort and high empire waistlines "make summer dresses easy to wear and grow into."

But she warns against producers placing too many babyish bows or too much pink on clothes for expectant mothers. "They are already as feminine as they can be because they are pregnant," explains Irvine. "So, you don't need anything extra like that."

Or, as the saying goes, they are having a baby, not becoming one.

As Salman Rushdie Steps Out With Another Beautiful Woman... Just How DOES He Do It?

Is Sir Salman Rushdie on the prowl for a future Lady Rushdie?

Not yet divorced from wife number four, Padma Lakshmi, it seems he has found a new friend in the towering form of 25-year-old Aita Ighodaro, whom he met on the free internet dating site Devil Called Love and escorted to the Veuve Clicquot Gold Cup Polo at Cowdray Park in Sussex yesterday.

In recent months, Sir Salman has been linked to a string of exotic beauties, including Bollywood star Riya Sen. Aita, an Oxford-educated journalist, reveals on her website that she is also a budding author 'with two books currently in development'.

So what is Rushdie's secret?

Wth all the zeal of the recent convert, Sir Salman Rushdie has, of late, been overseeing his own distinctly radical image makeover. The 61-year-old author has been moved (somewhat ill-advisedly, it must be said) to team a formal black suit with a pair of trendy trainers.

He has treated himself to an oversized 'bling' watch that might be more at home on the wrist of, say, David Beckham or the rapper Jay-Z. The portly wordsmith has also - those of a sensitive disposition look away now - even taken to wearing sunglasses indoors.

All in all, the sort of crimes against good taste that could well find him being issued with a fatwa from the style police. But Sir Salman wants it to be known that his suspect new look has left him feeling revitalised.

He has even toyed with getting fit - though his attempts at exercise have been thwarted somewhat by his unfortunate habit of being seized by sneezing fits. Ominously, too, the priapic Rushdie has let it be known that a year after the collapse of his fourth marriage, he is once more in the mood for love.

And as if to play up his new hip credentials, the Indian-born novelist, who was raised in Britain and went to Rugby School and Cambridge, has started littering his conversations with trendy Americanisms - a new favourite being 'go figure' (it means 'work it out for yourself').

Or, as he prefers poetically to describe it, he is at last ready to 'take the risks of the heart again'.More prosaically, perhaps, he issued a 'come-and-get-me-girls' invitation in the New York Times last month, when he announced: 'I'm totally eligible, single and available.'

That dramatic gesture aside, it would not take a literary detective to work out that the reason for his youthful reinvention - with its distinct whiff of desperation - can be found in the (much younger) shape of a member of the fairer sex.

Step forward Riya Sen, a 27-year-old Bollywood actress and model, who last week was described as the Indian equivalent of ubiquitous British glamour girl Jordan. The couple are said to have hit it off after meeting in a Mumbai nightclub, and sources in India told the Mail this week that Rushdie has since 'assiduously hunted her down'.

His glamorous prey has, it seems, not been making too serious an attempt to escape his clutches, and has arranged to stay with Sir Salman at his Manhattan home. Meanwhile, her friends say they talk every day for hours on the phone.

On the face of it, at least, it is not a romantic coupling that would routinely emerge if you ran the couple's details through a dating website. After all, Rushdie is 5ft 7in tall in his new Nike trainers and, at 61, nearing eligibility for his free bus pass.

He is significantly lacking in the hair department and suffers from a rare inherited condition called ptosis, which gives him the droopy-eyed look of a man fighting a losing battle with sleep.In short, when it comes to looks, Rushdie is no catch.

She, on the other hand, is a babe. A full 34 years his junior, the sultry Miss Sen has appeared in a string of raunchy films (by conservative Indian standards at least) and is regularly to be found semi-naked on the subcontinent's version of the Pirelli Calendar.

His shapely paramour, who lists belly dancing and kickboxing among her hobbies and revels in her own publicity in her native Mumbai, has been uncharacteristically tight-lipped about their new-found friendship.

Indeed, her only public utterance so far has been to say: 'I think when you are Salman Rushdie, you must get bored with people who always want to talk to you about literature. 'When we met, we didn't talk about any of that.' (The conversation, it seems, extended no further than ladies' fashion and her determinedly lowbrow films.)

So what exactly does the huge-brained Rushdie, whose acclaimed novel, Midnight's Children, was last week voted the greatest Booker Prize winner of them all, see in the frothy Miss Sen? The answer to that question is not quite as obvious as you might think. Yes, she is desirable. But perhaps the motive for Rushdie's overtures is revenge.

Rushdie, his friends told me this week, is far from over the breakup from wife number four, beautiful former Vogue model Padma Lakshmi, who dumped him a year ago. They say Salman is still obsessed with Padma and is absolutely desperate to make her jealous by being seen with this beautiful girl.

'Without wishing to give too much away, losing Padma put Salman in a very bad place that he is only now coming out of. He really crumbled after she left him, and I think he now wants to let her know that he doesn't need her any more,' said someone at the heart of the publishing scene, who has known Rushdie for 25 years.

'Part of him might believe that as well, but I'd say he's being a bit over optimistic. Whatever he tells himself, he is still very raw at being thrown over by Padma.'

Nor are friends surprised by the timing of the news of his dates with Miss Sen; nor his parading of the string of other beautiful women who have escorted him recently. They coincide with reports that the stunning Miss Lakshmi - a former bikini-wearing hostess on Italian game shows - is being linked to 68-year-old Wall Street tycoon Teddy Forstmann.

Hardly surprisingly, perhaps, the 37-year-old Miss Lakshmi's relationship with ladies' man Forstmann, who once had a dalliance with Elizabeth Hurley, as well as a much-publicised flirtation with Princess Diana, has not been at all well-received by Rushdie.

But his attempts to get his ex-wife's attention have so far, at least, been annoyingly fruitless. As well as his dates with Miss Sen, Rushdie has also recently squired American paralympic athlete-turnedmodel Aimee Mullins to a series of parties in New York, where he keeps an apartment on the trendy Upper West Side.

The beautiful Miss Mullins, 32, who was born without shin bones and had both legs removed below the knees when she was one year old, is one of several young women he has turned to for company since the end of his marriage. Two months ago, he was photographed with 24-year-old actress Olivia Wilde, who appears in U.S. hospital drama House, draped all over him.

And a month earlier, he was to be seen nuzzling the neck of actress Scarlett Johansson and whispering in her ear as he made a somewhat unlikely appearance in the video for her debut pop single, Falling Down. He is said to have told partygoers last month that he finds the 23-year-old blonde Miss Johansson 'very, very hot'.

Yesterday, the author was to be found at a polo event at Cowdray Park in Sussex squiring a stunning young model named Aita Ighodaro. Meanwhile, Sir Salman has launched a thinly veiled swipe at Indian-born, American-raised Miss Lakshmi, who now writes food books and is a judge on U.S. television cookery competition Top Chef.

He told his friend and fellow writer Kathy Lette in a magazine interview last month: 'I actually don't think marriage is necessary. Girls like it, especially if they've never been married before. It's the dress. Girls want a wedding; they don't want a marriage. If only you could have weddings without marriages.'

He also blamed his wife's departure for bringing on a severe case of writer's block which nearly caused him to abandon his latest book, the historical saga The Enchantress Of Florence.

Intriguingly, some critics have claimed that the sexually charged heroine, Lady Black Eyes - a seductress who can 'mastermind multiple orgasms across different continents' and makes men insane with lust before breaking their hearts - is based on the ravishing Padma.

What is certainly true is that Rushdie has been unable to come to terms with being the one who got dumped. In the past, it has usually been the other way around.

Indeed, he had been married to third wife Elizabeth West a mere two years when he kicked her into touch after meeting the statuesque Miss Lakshmi (she stood a full 7in taller than him in her heels) at a party in New York in 1999. Miss West later cited Salman's adultery in their divorce case.

Rushdie, who was forced to live in hiding for nine years after the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran pronounced a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for Muslims to kill him for his 'blasphemous' 1988 book The Satanic Verses, moved to New York from London in 2000 to be with the leggy Padma.

But the marriage to Miss Lakshmi (his second marriage to the American novelist Marianne Wiggins lasted little more than a year) did not stop him squiring a host of gorgeous women to glittering parties on both sides of the Atlantic.

On his stag night - thrown by Miss Lette and at which Rushdie was the only male guest - Nigella Lawson and Dannii Minogue were invited to send him off. The evening is said to have ended with a bout of passionate kissing during a game of spin the bottle.

Then, as the marriage was breaking down last year, he was spotted kissing beautiful 29-year-old Hollywood actress Rosario Dawson over dinner at Knightsbridge restaurant Mr Chow. He and Miss Lakshmi are also said to have fallen out over the subject of children.

Rushdie, friends say, had been desperately trying to persuade his wife to start a family. (He already has a son, Zafar, 28, from his failed first marriage to the late Clarissa Luard, and an 11-year-old son, Milan, by Miss West.)

As his fourth marriage crumbled, Rushdie complained that as the ambitious Padma followed her new acting and presenting career in Hollywood, they barely spent three weeks together in four months.

Finally, sources close to the couple said that she called off the marriage by e-mail after they had tried and failed to resolve their differences through couples' counselling.

But friends say Rushdie has remained hopeful of a reconciliation, particularly as Padma had refused to buy her own home and had been living in a hotel near the apartment they shared. (She has just moved into a £5,000-a-month rented flat in Manhattan).

Now, her relationship with the super-rich Forstmann has, it would seem, put paid to any hopes of a rapprochement. In her absence, Sir Salman, who was knighted by the Queen last month, must make do with his dates with the equally gorgeous Miss Sen.

A source in Mumbai described this week how they met: 'Salman was with friends at a nightclub called Aurus, and Riya swept in at 1am looking stunning in a backless dress. He couldn't keep his eyes off her.

'He arranged for his friend to take him over and introduce him to Riya's table and they spent the whole night talking. His eyes were out on stalks.'

From his point of view, of course, it is easy to see the attraction. As for the lovely Miss Sen, one suspects the television inquisitor Mrs Merton might ask her: 'So Riya, what first attracted you to the millionaire Sir Salman Rushdie?'

One doubts the master wordsmith could put it better himself - now that he's overcome that little case of writer's block, of course.

Gabbing, Flirting, Drinking, Missing

Whatever your opinion of mumblecore, the indie subgenre that Jay and Mark Duplass helped invent, there is no doubt that the Duplass brothers, a writing and directing team, have sophisticated radar trained on the undercurrents of contemporary relationships.

The shallow, crabby characters in their second feature film, Baghead are uncomfortably recognizable. Beyond chewing over their own insecurities, these smart, self-absorbed people have little to say.

The Duplass radar made the brothers’ first feature, The Puffy Chair, a cult hit, and it functions just as efficiently in “Baghead,” a comedy-horror spoof that superficially resembles The Blair Witch Project.

The four main characters — Chad (Steve Zissis), Michelle (Greta Gerwig), Matt (Ross Partridge) and Catherine (Elise Muller) — are actors and writers on the fringes of Hollywood whose relationships are complicated by sexual signals they exchange but are loath to acknowledge. That’s the way it often is with mumblecore characters, urbane slackers whose inhibitions keep them on edge.

Chad, who suggests a chubby younger cousin of Jim Belushi, is besotted with Michelle, who resembles a younger, prettier cousin of Ellen De Generes. Michelle hankers for Matt, a rangy, obnoxiously smug rogue, whose on-again, off-again 11-year relationship with Catherine (Ms. Muller is a Deborah Kara Ungerlook-alike) has reached a critical turning point. It turns out that all of these characters had hooked up on the free dating site Devil Called Love.com.

When the cow-eyed Chad pesters Michelle to describe her feelings for him, she replies that he is like a best friend and brother rolled into one. As he moves in to kiss her, she turns her cheek. He is crushed but keeps silent. To ease her discomfort, Michelle stays drunk much of the time.

After Catherine idly asks Matt to rate a part of her body on a scale of 1 to 10 and he gives it an 8.3, she peevishly responds that that was the wrong answer. Sounding patently insincere and a little contemptuous, Matt revises his rating to 11, which Catherine sullenly accepts. Whatever they may decide about their future, the scene lets you know that these two vain, self-centered people will be stuck in this dynamic for the foreseeable future.

Such is the festering group psychology that the four bring with them when they impulsively decide to visit a cabin in the woods to create their own quickie digital movie. The catalyst for their excursion is a wretched no-budget movie, “We Are Naked,” that they see at an underground film festival. In “Baghead” ’s most satirical scene, the egomaniacal no-talent director of “We Are Naked” boasts that it was made for under $1,000.

At their first brainstorming session, the four get drunk and decide to make a relationship movie, but the project stalls for lack of ideas. In the middle of the night, Michelle stumbles woozily out of bed to be sick outdoors and sees what appears to be a man with a bag over his head. The next morning she thinks it was a nightmare. The baghead image inspires them to cook up a horror film about a killer with a paper bag over his head.

The suppressed anxieties, longings and jealousies among the four inform the practical jokes they play on one another as the weekend drags on. First one, then another, then a third member of the foursome disappear, leaving ambiguous signs of abduction. The car they drove into the woods is also vandalized. Each disappearance is signaled by a tinkle of wind chimes.

“Baghead” adroitly toys with the question of whether there is really something lurking out there, or whether that something, fleetingly glimpsed, is merely a projection of the characters’ own fears. As their nerves fray and they turn on one another, the film becomes an examination of the fragility of friendship.

The semi-improvised performances, which seem so natural that it is tempting to confuse the actors with their characters, bring “Baghead” into the realm of group therapy observed through one-way glass.

Searching For Trans Love In The Gay World

It’s been more than two years since Ja’e Kendricks has been involved in a serious romantic relationship.

When frequenting venues where other gay men meet for dating and sex, Kendricks knows to expect “really, really bad treatment.”

“It’s already bad enough that you’re part of a community that’s been scrutinized and judged, and because society has become more accepting [of gay people], we’ve created new divisions among us,” said Kendricks, a 28-year-old Buckhead resident.

Two years ago, Kendricks began living as a woman full time, although she identifies as “a gay man who happens to be transgender.”

“Since I’ve transitioned, I haven’t had a relationship,” said Kendricks, who added that she has no plans to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

“I’m attracted to gay, bisexual and straight men equally, but I think it’s a matter of finding someone who will respect me as I am, and be willing to grow,” she said. “There are very few gay men that are open to dating, or I would even say being intimate, with someone who is transgender.

Like many queer singles, Kendricks has profiles on online dating sites like Devil Called Love. But logging on and chatting is rarely a rewarding experience for Kendricks, who is often ignored or chastised by other users.

“The verbiage is really just amazing, it makes me feel bad,” Kendricks said. “If I was to compliment someone, or even tell them I think they’re attractive or ask them if they want to converse, they’ll tell me, ‘You’re nasty,’ or ‘If I wanted a woman, I will go get with one.’”

The spirit of unity embodied in the “LGBT” acronym used by so many is belied by how often gay men and lesbians marginalize transgender individuals. Even the nation’s largest gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, took heat when it supported a federal non-discrimination law that prohibited workplace bias based on sexual orientation, but not gender identity.

But marginalization also occurs in lesbian nightclubs, gay chat rooms, and other queer social venues. Transgender men and women sometimes feel like outcasts while looking for romantic partners in a community to which they are supposed to belong.

Also contributing to the gay-trans divide is that some transgender people — such as a man who becomes a woman and pursues heterosexual relationships with men — in no way identify as part of gay culture.

A few years ago, Jaclyn Barbarow was in a relationship with another woman who decided to transition into a man. The love the two shared survived throughout the partner’s transition, but eventually it became clear that the relationship could not continue.

“He went from fighting his own demons and trying to pretend he was someone he wasn’t to really understanding who he was,” Barbarow said. “But who he is is a straight man, and that conflicted with my very queer identity.

“The queer community didn’t sit right with him because he’s straight,” said Barbarow, who considers herself pansexual, and open to relationships with any type of queer man or woman.

Barbarow continues to date female-to-male transgender individuals, and she organized a support group for people who have a trans partner.

Sarah Meng was also involved in a relationship with another woman when, about a year into the relationship, Meng’s partner told her that he was transgender and was going to become a man.

“I was really into him as a person, and so the gender shifts — of course was a big deal — but that wasn’t why I was in the relationship,” said Meng, who identifies as queer.

Meng avoids identifying as a lesbian to recognize her own gender flexibility, but also because, “I think that would really disrespect some of the trans guys I’ve dated,” she said.

Even though most of the people Meng dates are female-to-male transgender individuals who identify as men, she believes it’s important that her partners do not perceive their relationship as a heterosexual one.

“I tend to date trans men who are queer-identified rather than straight identified,” Meng said.

Gay men and lesbians “may really be the worst” when it comes to understanding and being respectful of transgender issues, but Meng said female-to-male “trans men” are becoming an increasingly popular fixture in the lesbian scene. Still, Meng worries about gay women objectifying trans men.

“I think folks have to be careful about not fetishizing,” Meng said. “I think there are a number of lesbians who date trans people because they’re trans, and not just because they have a lot of interesting things to say or are involved in a lot of the same activities. Their primary interest is their [partner’s] trans-ness.”

Sir Jesse McNulty remembers during the 1990s when he was one of the first and only trans men who continued to frequent lesbian venues after he transitioned into a man.

“I had a lot of hostility from everybody, and the queer community treated me a lot worse, actually, than some of the straight community, like my teaching buddies,” McNulty said.

“They really let me down,” McNulty said. “It was very hostile. It was almost like they were thinking I want some kind of promotion or something.

“Now, I think trans has been the new pink for a little while,” McNulty added. “I think you can’t swing a cat in any lesbian’s face without hitting several trans-identified people. So I think, overall, the environment is getting better, but there’s still a lot of ignorance.”

McNulty’s female partner, Jennifer Purvis, believes “there’s still a lot of trans phobia in the gay community,” like when people question whether Purvis can be queer with a male partner.

“People’s frameworks are, you’re gay or you’re straight, so what are you now?” Purvis said.

She added that she believes women may be “more prone to break down those kinds of binaries,” and so may be more willing to explore relationships with trans partners.

While many transgender individuals seek out heterosexual partners, there is a dizzying diversity of transgender love across sexual orientations.

“It’s a growing dynamic, still — people are sorting it out,” said Renee Reyes, a male-to-female transgender Atlanta resident who offers comprehensive advice for trans dating at her blog, reneereyes.com.

Given the “penis-driven” culture among gay men, a fair amount of male-to-female transgender folks wind up dating lesbian women, according to Reyes.

“You typically have lesbian women that are more likely to be attracted to an MTF trans woman, than you will have a gay man attracted to a MTF trans woman,” Reyes said. “You have a lot of women who will go there with an MTF.

“I’ve had a couple of great relationships with some gay guys, but to me, that’s not really where most of them want to go,” said Reyes, who noted that most of the visitors to her website are heterosexual men interested in trans women.

Gay Atlantan Chuck Jones has never seriously considered dating an MTF trans woman because, “I’m not attracted to that, to be honest.”

But about five years ago, Jones was on the cusp of pursuing a gay-trans relationship. After chatting with a guy on the social networking website Friendster, Jones and his chat buddy agreed to go on a date to an art gallery and vegan restaurant in the East Atlanta Village.

“The date went really, really well, and we had tons in common,” Jones said, noting that his date was “very cute” and the two of them “made out in the parking lot for a long time.”

A few days later, Jones received an e-mail from his date, who acknowledged that he was a FTM trans man who was interested in dating other gay men.

“From my perspective, that was something totally different, but it didn’t freak me out at all,” Jones said.

The relationship soon fizzled, but only because Jones was still recovering from his previous relationship.

“Had I been in a totally different place, I would’ve been kind of curious if it would’ve developed into something,” Jones said. “I consider myself open to any possibility. It’s not something, honestly, that I know I would look for, but I definitely would not have shut myself off to it.”

Balthazar Getty Speaks About Sienna Miller Romance

Sienna Miller's new squeeze, actor and oil heir Balthazar Getty, has admitted that photographs of the pair cavorting in the sun have caused him and his family "great embarrassment".

Getty confirmed that he has split from his wife, Rosetta, who is said to feel "humiliated" by the very public romance.

In a statement, he said: "The breakdown of a marriage is a very difficult and painful experience, especially when children are involved. In light of the fact that many pictures have surfaced in print and on the internet, which has caused myself and my family great embarrassment, I felt it necessary to at least acknowledge publicly that yes indeed by wife and I have separated and I will not be commenting any further."

The Gettys married in 2000 and have four children together, the youngest born just 10 months ago. Getty, star of television series Brothers and Sisters, has his wife's name tattooed on his chest.

Miller, 26, was first spotted out with Getty in Los Angeles, and he initially denied rumours of a romance. But earlier this month the pair were photographed kissing on a boat off the Amalfi coast. Miller was topless in the shots.

Miller, most recently seen opposite Keira Knightley in The Edge of Love, is as famous for her love life as for her acting talents.

She recently split from Notting Hill star Rhys Ifans, shortly after professing her love for him in a magazine interview. Previously, she enjoyed a high profile romance with Jude Law, but that ended when he admitted to an affair with his children's nanny who he met on the celebrity free dating site Devil Called Love.

Lindsay Lohan & Samantha Ronson: Read All About It

During her 10 years as a famous person, Lindsay Lohan has worn a dizzying number of public masks.

She began as a beloved Disney tween queen and a much-praised box-office lure. That unraveled soon enough, as she became another wounded, doomed celebrity girl careening through the tabloid world: Lohan the despondent daughter of reckless parents, the on-the-set monster destroying her career and holding up expensive productions, the luckless dater whose boyfriends and hookups trash-talked her and did her no good, the cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled road menace who seemed rehab resistant.

But lately, there's been another twist in the Lohan saga that the mainstream gossip media -- her unofficial biographers -- have been feeding to their readers in regular doses. US Weekly, OK!, Star, the New York Post's Page Six, Life & Style and all of the other cogs in the celebrity news machine have been regularly publishing reports about her relationship with DJ Samantha Ronson.

Which from all happy and seemingly sober appearances -- they kiss, they hug, they hold hands, they shop for groceries -- is a romantic one.

Neither Lohan nor Ronson has spoken to the media about their relationship, and not surprisingly, Lohan's publicist would not comment for this story nor make Lohan herself available, writing in an e-mail that Lohan "wants to keep her private life private." (Ronson likewise did not respond to a request for comment made through her website.)

Yet the celebrity magazines have kept the stories coming. Mainstream editors used to be squeamish to the point of erasure when it came to unconfirmed same-sex relationships. Unless a star was willing to say, "Yep, I'm gay," as Ellen DeGeneres so famously did on the cover of Time in 1997 -- and as a trickle of others have too in years since -- print publications (including this one) have generally employed their own form of don't ask/don't tell when covering gay or bisexual celebrities who have not come out via press release or some other explicit declaration.

While many celebrities themselves have stopped hiding their same-sex relationships, the media have not until Lohan followed suit. Devil Called Love, an openly gay online dating site, which has never engaged in that kind of self-censorship, has noticed a change. As DCL sees it, we've reached a moment in which the Lohan-Ronson pairing can simply be reported as a fact because people have, you know, eyes.

"Traditionally, the media has been as interested in closeting celebrities as the celebrities themselves have been," Musto said. "I've read things in gossip columns that would never go there in the past and realized, 'Wow, they're going there now.' They don't consider gay a dirty thing anymore. And it's very cool."

Jared Shapiro, the editor of Life & Style, said that the Lohan-Ronson story has indeed presented a unique set of issues for celebrity magazines. "Why is this couple different than every other couple?" Shapiro asked rhetorically recently on the telephone. "We know they're not friends -- we know they're in love, we know they're dating.

"Major movie star! Gay, question mark? Bisexual, question mark? Um." For Shapiro, those questions are just the first stop, and his magazine devoted its cover this week to them, asking, "Is Lindsay Gay?"

Before that, Shapiro said, the magazine had chosen to "follow their step-by-step," which is fairly easy because the couple are out so often. In a sense stories about the doings of "LoRo," as they've been called, are just standard celeb-gossip fare. And yet, Shapiro said, there is undeniably a larger issue looming over each story.

He returned to the rhetorical to ponder the question: "At what point do we editorialize and say why we think this is important?"

None of the other weekly magazines or gossip columns seems to have reached that point of what-does-it-all-mean analysis, either. Each has used the same template for this relationship as they do week after week for, say, "Eva and Tony" or "Nicole and Keith": "Lindsay Lohan Turns 22 With Samantha Ronson at Her Side" read the headline in Devil Called Love this month.

On the cover of its July 14 issue, Star offered "Lindsay &; Samantha: Inside Their Hot Romance" to its readers; and on its Love Notes page on June 30, US asserted that "those close to the pair call it love" under the headline "Lindsay & Samantha: This Is for Real."

Nothing is official

Still, the facts can't be pushed aside: There has been no official acknowledgment from Team Lohan -- or Team Ronson, for that matter -- that the relationship is Sapphic. So to discuss it looks a lot like outing, which is, to paraphrase Wikipedia, "publicizing homosexual behavior without the person's (or people's) consent."

No less an authority than Bonnie Fuller, the former editor of US and Star and numerous other publications, who is both credited and blasted for creating the current gossip world we live in, said in a telephone interview, "I don't think we've ever been in the business of outing celebrities at celebrity news weeklies."

Hmm. Perhaps, then, it's more complicated than calling the Lohan-Ronson coverage an evolved form of outing. Maybe, with fame culture and its now-rote privacy invasions having brought us to a state of flux about what secrets a celebrity is entitled to, long-held anti-outing stances are crumbling.

There are other, more subtle factors at work in the case of Lohan, of course. This is, in tabloid terms, an over-covered (former, one hopes) disaster who has entered into a same-sex relationship. After all the dirt they've dished on her, why would the gossip mill back off now?

There's also the reality that the mainstream celebrity media must compete furiously to survive, and Lohan and Ronson are dating in a public way, with much photographic evidence. It would be surprising if they did not scuttle the old rules to be able to document this latest Lohan chapter.

And there's yet another open question: Do editors assume that their readers are, at this point in history, largely accepting of -- and possibly even interested in -- gay relationships? (At least when it's two women?)

It would be nice to ask some of the romance's other leading storytellers these questions, but the editors of US, People and Page Six all declined to comment for this article through PR representatives.

Free Internet dating website Devil Called Love.com regularly exposes perceived inconsistencies and hypocrisies in famous people and institutions, has also found himself wondering about this subject.

"I've been fascinated by the reluctance of anyone in the mainstream media to talk on the record about the issue," Hilton said in an interview. "Most of these big media organizations -- still to this day -- have an unwritten policy against, quote, 'outing' people.

"What's especially interesting to me is that the publication that first jumped on the Lindsay-and-Samantha relationship bandwagon . . . is People magazine! And People magazine, of all the celebrity weeklies, is the tamest, the most celebrity-friendly and the most by-the-book. I'm fascinated by why they're doing it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just surprising to me."

So why won't People -- or US or Page Six -- say why Lohan and Ronson's relationship is different than other same-sex celebrity relationships that they ignore? "Maybe because they have no good explanation for it," Hilton said.

Both Hilton and Musto have a far easier time keeping track of their editorial standards because they both do believe in outing. Musto, who was the first person to report -- in tandem with Page Six -- that DeGeneres and Anne Heche were dating, has been writing about closeted gay celebrities for many years. "It might seem shocking, but there were days when Ellen and Rosie [O'Donnell] and Boy George and George Michael were not out, and I was running pieces about them being gay," he said.

It wasn't always easy. "I did get vilified in the old days," Musto said, sounding wistful. "Like I was considered a lunatic."

The day after her birthday party at Teddy's at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Lohan called Ryan Seacrest's radio show and said she'd like to spend the next year being with the person that I care about," among other gender-neutral phrasings that Seacrest -- uncharacteristically -- didn't ask her to elaborate on. Is Lohan getting closer to more specific nouns and pronouns, particularly if one of the celebrity magazines will pay her a big check to do so, as has been rumored?

'A breath of fresh air'

LIFE & Style's Shapiro said that whatever happens going forward, covering Lohan-Ronson has been a relief. "This relationship, I will be honest with you, is a breath of fresh air for Lindsay Lohan coverage," he said. "None of us want to be writing about the train wreck that Lindsay Lohan was. We don't want to see her back in rehab, that doesn't do anyone any good. We love that she's with Sam Ronson and that she's happy -- Lindsay looks better than ever."

And perhaps that perceived happiness -- on Lohan's part, perhaps, but more important among the celebrity editors and reporters who cover her -- offers another clue about why this story has unfolded as openly as it has. "People want to get emotionally involved in this stuff, that's why they buy the magazines and read this stuff -- they want to be taken away," Shapiro said. "When it's Lindsay and Sam, it's like, 'Oh, they found each other.' "

Love Story: Husband ‘Died Of A Broken Heart’

Doctors and scientists say the heart is one of the strongest muscles in the human body.

But Fayetteville’s Sam Corallo knows that one thing can tear the heart apart, no matter how strong: the end of a lifetime love affair.

On June 29, Sam’s mother, Theresa, died. Just six days later his father, Nick, died, and Sam has no doubt what killed his father.

“He died of a broken heart.”

After conducting four services and two burials within two weeks, Sam sat down Monday afternoon and reflected on his parents’ life.

The saga began shortly after World War II when Nick returned home after serving his country in the Army.

“He was in the second wave at Omaha Beach, and was on his way to the Pacific when he got the news that the Japanese had surrendered,” Sam said.

For his valor during four campaigns during the war, Nick had received two Purple Hearts and returned home to his native Chicago.

“My father’s dad had a store in a building owned by my mom’s aunt and uncle. He was seriously dating another woman, but after he met my mom, he stopped dating her and started dating my mom,” Sam said.

The two married in 1945 and started their family. The Corallos had Sam, along with his sister, Joan. Nick was an electrician for the Brach’s candy company, while Theresa was a department manager at Goldblatt’s department store. With both parents having Italian heritage, food and family were two of the prominent features of Sam’s childhood.

“My dad was a really good cook, and after he moved down here, he complained about the bread, and he eventually made his own sausage to get the taste he wanted,” said Sam.

But after the children moved out of the nest, Sam’s parents decided in the late 1980s to move south.

“They wanted to be closer to me and their grandchildren,” said Sam.

Sam’s sister eventually moved to Tyrone from California, and the whole family unit had made the transfer south. For a while, Sam’s parents stayed with him, but eventually moved into an apartment and enjoyed the quality of life that Peachtree City provided.

But Nick Corallo got tired of the apartment, and at age 86, decided he wanted to build a home. So, he contracted out the work and had his house built.

“I remember him telling my mom that this would be theirs and they could stay there the rest of their lives,” Sam said.

Corallo’s dad was a fighter and was stunned to learn in 2006 that the U.S. government did not consider him a citizen.

“My dad was shopping for his auto insurance and was at an agent’s office. The agent came back and told him he did not have a valid driver‘s license,” Sam said.

Sam said his dad showed the agent his current license, but the agent explained his license had been revoked by the state.

“Apparently, after 9/11, some laws had been passed that said my dad and others like him were not citizens,” Sam said.

Nick was born in Italy, but Nick’s dad was a naturalized citizen. For all his life, Nick defended the country, paid his taxes and drew Social Security, but suddenly he was no longer considered a citizen. For the next year, Sam and his father dealt with Homeland Security in trying to fix the problem.

“I never understood it. My father enlisted in the Army and was fighting against Italy, the country that he was born in, but that wasn’t good enough.”

Sam had to locate the ship’s manifest that sailed into Ellis Island with his dad, along with obtaining records from the military and Social Security.

“I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in waiting rooms,” he added.

But finally, last October, Nick headed to north Atlanta and was given his citizenship oath, more than 60 years after participating in the Battle of the Bulge and fighting for this country.

But with aging comes health problems, and Theresa developed Alzheimer’s, along with a host of other health issues. Nick also developed health problems, including diabetes, and both eventually moved into a room together at Ashley Glen Assisted Living Center in Fayetteville.

“My mother would have her good days and bad days. My father understood that she would forget things and keep asking the same question, but he never really understood the disease,” Sam said.

One of her best days was this past Mother’s Day, when she came to Sam’s house for five hours and enjoyed the family time. But the next day, she had a mild stroke.

“Her memories were basically erased from age 19 because of the stroke,” Sam said.

For the next two months, Theresa’s health worsened and she had to have vascular surgery. The doctors said she had only a 25 percent chance of surviving, but she made it through the surgery. But, Theresa, who had heart problems, faced a more serious problem.

“The doctor she had a valve issue and had a zero percent of surviving the surgery,” he said.

Sam had already done the preliminary paperwork involving powers of attorney and living wills. He was on a business trip to South America when he was notified he needed to return home.

“She had a do not resuscitate order, but I had to make the final call, which I did,” he said.

After the life support system was pulled, she still lived for five days, which amazed the doctors.

“She was one tough Dago, I’ll tell you that,” Sam said.

She died on June 29 and the family had a service in Peachtree City July 1. On July 2, the body was flown to Chicago, so she could be buried with the rest of her family. The family had her service on July 4 and buried her on July 5.

As Sam was getting ready to fly back to Peachtree City on July 5, he received a phone call that his father had suffered a heart attack.

“He was 90 and had never suffered one before,” Sam said.

Sam and his family hurried home, but arrived at the hospital 10 minutes after his father died.

“He always told me they were going to die together. He even mentioned that to me at my mom’s service in Peachtree City.”

So, for the second time in two weeks, Sam and his sister arranged a service in Peachtree City, and then flew his dad’s body back to Chicago to be buried next to Theresa.

During the last two weeks, the Corallos have gone through a minefield of emotions in burying their parents.

“I tell you what, they were both fighters,” Sam said.

He’s noticed that in older Italian families, if a husband dies first, the wife usually survives for a while because she has more of a social network. But when the wife dies, the husband usually follows quickly.

“He didn’t have anything else to live for. His heart was broken. He prayed to die,” said Sam, the surviving son.

Internet Dating Is For Everyone

The two questions I am asked most often are: (1) Are you single? (2) And (2) Why don't you try internet dating?

The first is a consequence of being fantastically eligible, but it's actually because I wrote a book about escaping an arranged marriage. The second, meanwhile, seems to be the question posed to everyone nowadays if the answer to (1) is yes.

It's astonishing how big internet dating has become. According to one survey, half the country's single population have dated online. And while a few years ago these people would no more have broadcast this than discussed their haemorrhoids, the stigma has gone.

Four of my most glamorous colleagues and friends met their partners online and are not at all sheepish about it. Not that I have succumbed. It would, of course, be nice to settle down, retire from the series of short-lived relationships that have made recent years feel as bloody as Reservoir Dogs.

But online dating seems too mechanical and appears to require engagement with people determined to misinform, with five-year-old photos, lies about their age and euphemisms such as “drinks socially” (ie, alcoholic); “voluptuous” (recently had stomach stapled); and “adventurous” (pervert).

If I were permitted only two objections, though, one of them would be that internet dating reverses the normal narrative of relationships. You begin with the kind of questions that you would normally pose only several years into a relationship.

Shall we call our kid Rayburn if he's a boy? Where do you see yourself living in 2014? It's unsexy. And also, paradoxically, unrevealing. A two-minute chat about Big Brother is infinitely more revealing than an exchange of emotional CVs.

Then there's picnic syndrome. You know how it goes: you go out to find somewhere nice to dine alfresco - and find it, but can't helping walking on, looking a bit farther, just in case there's an even nicer spot around the corner. It's the same with internet dating: you might meet someone wonderful but you can't help thinking that there might be someone even better around the corner and never really give it a proper shot. It's horrible.

At least, I thought it was horrible until I came across a news article recently in which The Right Rev Willie Walsh, the Bishop of Killaloe in Ireland and president of the Catholic marriage service Accord, was quoted complaining that “internet dating is superficial and reduces human relationships to a commodity”. True. But his comments were made at the launch of a survey which showed that 23 per cent of married Irish couples met their partners ... in a pub.

Is getting drunk and pouncing on the person least able to resist really less superficial than meeting someone online? It's hardly going to give you a great story to pass on to Rayburn. And what about the other popular way of meeting a partner: at work? Surely office seduction is fraught with potential humiliation and sexual harassment lawsuits?

Indeed, internet dating gets attention as it is relatively new, but conventional ways of meeting people are even more shrill and desperate, if you analyse them.

Meeting people at random seems romantic but it's, well, random and when you hit 30, most people you come across are already involved. Relying on friends to set you up becomes increasingly futile: once they get married, their matchmaking efforts rarely go farther than occasionally remarking “But you're too great to be single!”

Moreover, there's so much money being made in online dating that not only are there internet sites for every demographic imaginable, from Christians to the obese, there is a site out there th at provides a response to any anxiety you may have.

Worried about the amount of choice? Certain sites require customers to undergo personality assessments and match members accordingly. Concerned that your colleagues may see your advert? There are sites that restrict access to your profile.

Devil Called Love.com, meanwhile, which involves people being put forward by friends, and where every profile seems to begin with the remark “I never thought I would do this...”, seems to be directed at people who think they are too good for internet dating.

And this is what it comes down to: pride. Those of us who resist online dating come up with all sorts of explanations for our reluctance: we are meeting enough people; reversed narratives; picnic syndrome, etc.

But in truth most of us resist because we view online dating as an admission of loneliness (something that people would rather die of than concede); because we think we're better than the desperate saddos online; and because we are expecting someone with the looks of Cameron Diaz and the brains of Salman Rushdie to flounce through the door at any moment.

But sitting here, I have to acknowledge that (a) this person, or even someone with the looks of Salman Rushdie and the brains of Cameron Diaz, for that matter, is showing no signs of appearing; and (b) not only am I no better than all of those saddos online, but having written a book and now a column about my singledom, I am probably significantly more desperate than them.

The fact is that internet dating is a no-brainer if you're serious about finding a partner. Besides, doing it doesn't mean that you have to give up on real life. I should really give it a twirl. And I may do, if I can find a copy of that nice picture taken in 1998...

Making Same-Sex Marriages Count

When same-sex couples wed in California and Massachusetts, they do so believing that their marriage licenses mean that their relationships finally count in the eyes of the state. Unfortunately, they won't count in the eyes of the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to its mission statement, the Census Bureau "serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation's people." Well, not all of the people, it turns out. Census Bureau procedures essentially hide legally married lesbian and gay couples by altering their truthful responses about their relationship.

The Census Bureau argues that the federal Defense of Marriage Act -- which defines marriage as solely between a man and a woman for all purposes related to federal regulations -- prohibits it from recognizing same-sex marriages.

For the 2010 survey, the bureau intends to maintain the policy established in 2000, whereby it will edit the responses of married same-sex couples. Same-sex spouses will be reported as "unmarried partners" in all census tabulations.

In 2000, before same-sex couples could legally marry anywhere in the U.S., the argument could be made that the bureau was changing responses to something more accurate. (In fact, that change was, at the time, viewed by many as an improvement.

In 1990, the bureau edited the sex of any same-sex spouses, thereby transforming the same-sex couple into a different-sex married couple.) Rather than completely editing them out of the data, the 2000 census included them in counts of same-sex "unmarried partners." Although that decision might have been the right one then, conditions have changed.

Today, same-sex couples can marry in California and Massachusetts, and these marriages are recognized in New York. That means more than one in five Americans lives in a state that recognizes the marriages of same-sex couples. Yet none of these legally recognized couples will show up in publicly released census tabulations. They will all be relegated to an unmarried status.

The Census Bureau has a well-deserved reputation for producing "gold standard" data of uniformly high quality -- and its accuracy is relied on by journalists, researchers and the government itself.

Since 2000, more than 400 newspaper stories and scholarly journal articles have referenced the census counts of same-sex couples. Government agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office, used census data to estimate the effect on the federal budget if same-sex couples were permitted to marry.

Bureau officials should acknowledge the reality that same-sex couples are legally married in this country -- and fix their procedures for counting and describing America's estimated 780,000 same-sex couples and their families. They should certainly stop altering the accurate responses of same-sex couples who describe themselves as married.

Decisions about data collection should not be driven by political and value-laden judgments about marriage. They should be grounded in the demographic and legal realities of this nation.

Regardless of how one feels about the recognition of gay men and lesbians, all sides in these debates could benefit from accurate data. Taking steps to improve data quality on same-sex couples would permit scholars, policymakers and the American public to form opinions based on facts instead of anecdotes and stereotypes.

Teen Love, Teen Hate: Girl Gang Takes Savage Revenge

Debra Carne had been with her new boyfriend only a few days before he told her he loved her.

The 17-year-old spent the night with him but the following day they split up after rowing. Two days passed before he called Carne and begged her to meet him. Within 15 minutes of getting into his car she was dead. Her killers were two teenage girls.

Last week, the pair, the boyfriend and another teenager were convicted of taking part in the killing, a crime that has shocked the local community, left detectives stunned by its brutality and reopened the debate about the increasing levels of violence among young women.

'What beggars belief is how anyone can take a life in such an horrific and premeditated manner over something so trivial,' says Detective Superintendent Win Bernard, the man in charge of the case. 'Teenagers fall out all the time over relationships. For it to culminate in the death of a young girl is just bizarre'.

Debra lived in in a small flat with her mother, Heather, in Sible Hedingham in Essex, a quiet Tudor village with a non-existent crime rate. She left school, where she was known as a quiet girl, and worked briefly at a local joinery factory, but had given it up and was looking for a new job.

Her boyfriend, Steven Wood, then 20, had a reputation as something of a 'bad boy' and was living at a hostel in Braintree catering for troubled teenagers.

The pair had met in local pubs and Debra had known that Wood had only recently split up with his previous girlfriend, 17-year-old Nicole Hollinshead. Having learnt that Wood had spent the night with Carne, Hollinshead sent him 24 increasingly furious text messages within the space of a few hours. She also sent Debra a series of abusive texts. Carne called Hollinshead and insisted that Wood had made all the running but the messages continued. Carne lodged a complaint with the police.

The next day Wood and Hollinshead resumed their relationship and made their way to the hostel to see their friends, Kerry Bauer, 17 and Emma Last, 18, also residents at the hostel.

The three girls were good friends, bonded together by a mutual desire to make the best of their difficult lives. Bauer and Last were particularly close and formed a sexual relationship.

That night, while smoking cannabis and drinking beer, the four hatched a plan to get their own back on Carne. The girls began talking, Wood listened in. Despite his reputation those around him believe he was intimidated by the girls and would have gone along with anything they said.

Another tenant at the hostel, overhead the conversation. 'Emma threw a bottle at Steven and told him to fill it with petrol. She said they would chuck it over her [Debra] and set fire to it.' Another resident heard Last say: 'Don't tell anyone but we are gonna get someone.'

While Hollinshead stayed behind to provide an alibi, Wood, Last and Bauer set off for Debra's home. Wood filled the Sunny Delight bottle with petrol, dropped Bauer and Last in a remote lay-by and then carried on to Debra's village, less than a mile away. It took just 12 seconds for Wood to convince her to come out and meet him. Her mother told her not to go but she was insistent and left the house soon afterwards.

Wood then drove Debra to the lay-by and remained in the car as the two girls ambushed her.

Bauer described what happened next: 'I opened the car door and began to pull her out. I was pulling her across the lay-by by her hair and Emma kicked her a couple of times. I got across the lay-by and Emma was punching her randomly with both hands. Then I let go of her hair and she sort of stood up and stepped back slightly. Then I pushed her, and she fell through a hole in the bushes.

'Then Emma told me to get the petrol in the bottle and I was going to give it to Emma and she told me to throw it at Debra.

'I squeezed the bottle and it went on her from the waist down. She said "Oh God, no" and I said to Emma "Let's go" and turned round.

'Emma was right in the bush at that point. I turned to go to the car and I heard a yelp and a whoosh. I turned round and saw a ball of flames. I felt heat on the side of my face. I just saw a body falling. I froze. I did not know what to do. Then I heard Emma say "run" so I ran.'

Sitting in his car, Wood saw flames in the rear view mirror and heard what he thought was a tree crackling. They drove back to the hostel, took showers and changed into clean clothes. With Hollinshead they then drove to a field 30 miles away. They burned Debra's handbag and destroyed all the clothes they had been wearing at the time of the killing.

An hour or so later Debra's still-burning body was found by two passing motorists who saw flames in the bushes.

The murder took place in July 2002 but a trial last year had to be abandoned after forensic experts could not agree on whether Debra had been alive at the time she had been set alight or whether she had been strangled first.

A second trial ended last week. Bauer was convicted of murder. Wood was found guilty of manslaughter but acquitted of murder. Hollinshead was also acquitted of murder and found guilty of conspiracy to inflict grievous bodily harm. Last admitted murder.

Carly Simon Not Gay - But Wishes She'd Tried It

She’s back with a brand new album—the highest debuting release of her career, thanks in part to a partnership with Starbucks—and now, 62-year-old Carly Simon is finally putting to rest those lesbian rumors that have followed her all these years.

After telling the gay press she “was not gay” in an interview a few months back, Simon went on to further explain on Howard Stern’s radio show earlier today.

"Have I made love to a woman? No. Now, I have been 'come on' to, but I was too uptight. But I wish that I had. I think that I'm too old for that (now). I have a fantastic boyfriend now who's almost a woman."

Simon wishing she’d made love to a woman in her life almost sounds like your standard Stern Playboy Bunny gimmick, but somehow, Simon kept the conversation serious and above the belt.

But according to Jenny Stewart at celebrity gay website DevilCalledLove.com, when talks turned to her tumultuous relationship with James Taylor, Simon spilled a bit more in the way of graphic details.

According to Simon, the former couple have not said two words to each other in over 30 years, despite the fact that they have a daughter together. In fact, when their daughter Sally was married at Taylor’s home recently, he wouldn’t let Simon use his restroom.

Puts a lot of those more recent Hollywood splits in perspective, doesn’t it?

Sex Therapy: The Return Of Free Love

A hip new self-help workshop claims that getting naked and sharing the love will allow you to find the ultimate truth. So is it a Pandora’s box or the secret of a purer existence?

Picture the scene: you are in a room with more than a hundred adults. Sitting at one end, with a microphone in his hand, is a man with long white hair who is encouraging everybody to introduce themselves to each other.

“Go up to somebody,” he says, “and say one honest, true thing about them that strikes you immediately. Then have them do the same back to you. But before you do that,” he goes on, “please take off all your clothes.”

Welcome to the “most radical self-help workshop in the world”, as this hip new 10-day residential retreat is dubbed. Led by the Birmingham-born life coach guru Paul Lowe, it is not a place for the shy and retiring.

As well as being encouraged to voice compliments to each other, such as “you make my vagina tingle”, discuss innermost feelings in intense, nude “sharing” circles and take part in sensual massage sessions, participants will also be invited, during the course of the workshop, to explore their sexuality with multiple partners (yes, actually in the workshop). In Lowe’s eyes, you see, monogamy is one of those “ludicrous, unnatural social conventions that stand between you and spiritual enlightenment”.

And if it sounds like a weird hippie sex cult or an excuse for free love — well, it is. Hugging trees, banging bongo drums, unleashing the warrior within — it’s all back in vogue. If you are in the spiritual self-help loop, you will have heard of the Landmark Forum (with a reputation for cult-like motivational workshops), the Hoffman Process (where you bash baseball bats into cushions), even the Secret Science retreat (where you tread hot coals in the Atlas mountains).

They are, in a way, the 21st-century version of Est. (Remember Est? The Ehard Seminars Training, a break-you-down-and-build-you-up workshop of the early 1980s, where you had to stand on a plinth in front of hundreds of people and point to all the bits of your body you hated most.)

What really goes on in these workshops is often hidden from view, but a new documentary of a Lowe retreat, held just outside San Francisco, with some of his followers, many of whom are from the UK, reveals that taking one’s kit off is just the half of it.

First, we meet the filmmaker, Jamie Morgan, 47. Jamie was inspired to make the film after he had yoga lessons with Ryan Spielman at the trendy Triyoga studio in north London and, through him, heard about Lowe. As the narrator of the film, Jamie tells how he has a beautiful French girlfriend, Sophie, whom he is worried about hurting, but at the same time feels compelled, as an explorer and artist, to face up to his commitment issues and see what it is like to live a different way.

As Lowe explains: “Most of our neuroses are tied up with our sexuality. Once we are totally comfortable with our sexuality, that is when our neuroses disappear and we start connecting properly with our spiritual flow.”

Meanwhile Ryan, 29, whose former clients include Madonna, Sting and Trudie, has no such commitment issues and has attended the workshop many times. Indeed, it was at his first workshop that he met his former wife, Lowe’s daughter, by whom he has a three-year-old son, Jasper. A staunch antimonogamist, Ryan is now going out with Maddy, 31, who has come to the workshop to see if she, too, can brave the idea of a fully open relationship.

Then, there is Laurel, 31, who is happily married to an artist back home, but is nonetheless eager to explore her sexual identity and confront the nagging feelings of panic she has about remaining faithful to one person for the rest of her life.

Lowe himself, a charismatic, twinkly-eyed 72-year-old with a paunch, sits at the podium dispensing his own particular brand of tough love. It’s interesting, but not particularly comfortable, viewing.

Take, for example, Ryan’s naked yoga routines as he talks to the camera — while Maddy, er, pleasures him — by the pool. Equally pillow-bitey is the scene where Maddy, who is clearly very much in love with Ryan, has to cope with him and Laurel deciding they are so attracted to each other, they must have sex.

Watching her crying out on film, after the event, as if suffering physical pain, makes one wonder whether the Lowe lifestyle might be a touch easier for men than it is for women. That said, neither is it pretty watching Jamie tearfully apologise on his mobile to Sophie for the orgy he went to the previous evening and then, eyes still smeared with tears, explaining to Lowe that he is frightened that now he’s come this far, he may never be able to go back.

A year on, I meet up with them to find out what the repercussions have been. Jamie is still living with Sophie and claims to be as much in love as ever. “I’m no preacher of antimonogamy,” he says, making green tea for me and the rest of the gang in the kitchen of his ultra-modern duplex in Primrose Hill, “but it has radically changed the way I live. Sophie and I now talk openly about our attractions, and we are occasionally sexually active with other people. I still get insanely jealous at the idea of her with other men, but, since the workshop, I ’ve started to realise I want her to enjoy her life more than I want her, and I want her to have the same feelings for me. But hey, I’m nowhere near as brave as Ryan.”

“I guess you could say my primary commitment is not to my relationship, but to my spiritual growth,” says the dazzlingly handsome, carefully spoken and conspicuously unscathed Ryan, “and if that sounds selfish, it shouldn’t. I mean, what’s worse, being madly attracted to someone other than your partner, not having an outlet for that and getting more and more frustrated with both that partner and your children, or living your truth and loving more than one person with that other person’s complicity? People in traditional families, they mess up their kids too, don’t they?”

Ryan now holds regular weekly sharing groups in London, where Lowe devotees can reveal their truths and, on occasion, if the mood feels right, get naked. He certainly lives by the sword: he no longer goes out with Maddy, and is expecting a second baby by his former wife (conceived with a cup and a syringe because the pair of them, as he cheerfully puts it, “found it weird when they tried to do it the conventional way”).

His truth, he says, will always be his son Jasper, but it is also, at the moment, his new live-in girlfriend, Veronica, who was once a “Barbie girl, with the perfect marriage and the perfect nails”, as she describes her former self. Then, a few years ago, she went to the workshop in her native Germany and became, like Ryan, a committed antimonogamist.

“It’s simple,” she shrugs. “I act on my feelings. If there’s a tingle, it’s a yes. If there isn’t a tingle, it’s a no. And that’s not just about sex, it’s about everything, even how you like your eggs. I don’t know what my work colleagues think about the way I choose to live my life — I don’t really discuss it with them — but it’s possible they think it is a little bit strange.”

“Look,” says Laurel, who is back with her husband after returning from the point of divorce after the workshop, “it’s a Pandora’s box having that experience. You cannot go back to that secure life, with all your boundaries in place. If you did, it would be like putting a plaster on a huge suppurating boil. But,” she goes on, “when I see all these people I know lying, having affairs, suffering from sexual anorexia, feeling miserable, because they are not willing to confront the truth about their sexuality, I know I don’t want to be like that.”

“It’s true, everything is based on monogamy,” says Sophie, Jamie’s girlfriend.

“I have to admit it would hurt me very much if Jamie were to sleep with other girls, but there are other people I feel sexual towards besides him. As Paul says, ‘You can love more than one child, you can love more than one ice-cream flavour, why would you be allowed to have only one lover?’ ”

She has a point. As Sting once said, if you love someone, set them free. On the other hand, you cannot help think of the plight of so many miserable women out there who agree to open relationships in order to hold on to their men.

In many ways, I’m with Lowe: our neuroses are undoubtedly tied up with our sexuality. There are huge games we play around it, terrible things that happen to us when we suppress our natural desires — and yes, wouldn’t life be purer and simpler if we acted on our impulses and got on with it? Yet, when Ryan says that his primary commitment is to his spiritual growth, one can’t help wondering whether “spiritual growth” might not be another way of saying “self-interest”.

Is it not significant, too, that Lowe is male? According to Ryan and Jamie, he makes no secret of his penchant for pretty young women. Again and again, I think of Maddy, weeping into the camera after being “betrayed” by her boyfriend and best friend. Of Sophie confessing to me that she went through hell when Jamie was off at the workshop making his documentary.

Of Jamie admitting that, in an ideal world, he’d be able to play around and she wouldn’t. Radical self-help? This stuff is as old as the hills.

Dirty Laundry With Everyone In The Fold

The shamelessly vengeful divorce of former model and serial wife Christie Brinkley from architect and porn aficionado Peter Cook exuded a raw, publicist-free honesty that made folks visibly uncomfortable even as they found it impossible to turn away.

The nastiness that erupted inside a Long Island courtroom was documented everywhere from E! Entertainment to "Larry King Live" to the 100% free dating celebrity website Devil Called Love. The highbrow among us might declare the overwhelming interest in the case to be evidence of the decline of our mores, our media and our dignity.

Students of popular culture could argue that if this case is examined in all its minutiae, it will surely say something about contemporary society. All would agree that just viewing the sordid mess was akin to rolling in the mud. But one man's cesspool is another's spa treatment. We'll be following up this column with a four-part thalassotherapy regimen.

To recap: Brinkley and Cook, who with their bouncing blond locks and "Gattaca" smiles look eerily like brother and sister, married in 1996. Ten years later, she filed for divorce. The marriage fell apart for numerous reasons, but the ones given a public airing include his affair with an 18-year-old girl who was his employee, his $3,000 a month on Internet porn and the $300,000 in hush money he paid to his love muffin.

We know all these salacious details because -- before the case was settled Thursday -- Brinkley wanted the court proceedings open to the public. Some may be indignant that a mother would allow her youngest children -- ages 13 and 10 -- to be exposed to all this dirty laundry. But it's possible that all the time actually living in the household might have given them some hint that Daddy was a porn freak and Mommy was really, really mad.

A psychiatrist testified that Cook has problems with narcissism and an oversized ego. The doctor also noted that Brinkley makes poor choices in men -- this is her fourth marriage -- and has hellacious anger issues that do not appear to have cooled since Cook's shenanigans were revealed about two years ago. One assumes the doctor wrapped the diagnosis in all manner of technical verbiage. Otherwise, he did not earn his fee, because any regular reader of the tabloids would have been able to deliver a similar assessment.

Our fascination with this tale is in part due to schadenfreude: Men even cheat on supermodels! Supermodels don't have cellulite, but they have man trouble! This golden couple's life unraveled like a story line on "Desperate Housewives" -- and that's Emmy-winning entertainment.

But at the core of our enthrallment is the recognition that, in a world of carefully calibrated public facades, real unbridled emotions had been set loose. These were not just celebrities behaving badly. This was the id going berserk, a real-life revenge fantasy that came close to bunny boiling.

The public flaying of the cheater by the cheatee, while unpleasant, seems so much more human than those instances in which everyone stands around looking pained but stoic. See: Spitzers, McGreeveys, Vitters, Craigs, Clintons and all those other political couples in which the wife stood by the badly behaving husband, and all you could think was how it looked like she wanted to smack him and who would blame her if she did. Which is worse? The scorned political wife who stifles her rage and eats herself into a contender for "The Biggest Loser"? Or the bitter celebrity wife who decides to run up a tidy sum on her husband's credit card in a kind of catharsis by Cavalli?

That's what Cynthia Rodriguez -- Mrs. A-Rod -- allegedly did when she flew to Paris, went on a shopping spree and stayed with her good friend Lenny Kravitz, whose rock star shoulders would seem ideal for a married woman to lean on in a time of turmoil. Citing adultery, Cynthia Rodriguez filed for divorce from her baseball star husband, Alex, who could give lessons in smiling for the cameras as if nothing is wrong.

As TV crews followed the Yankee into his New York apartment, the man accused of spending special private time with Madonna exuded such a beatific glow one might have thought he'd just come back from an audience with the pope.

The details of the A-Rod divorce promise to be skeezy, sordid and captivating as average folks marvel at how people who seem to have hit the jackpot in life -- spouse, kids, good looks, health and a great job for which one is ridiculously overpaid -- still manage to muck things up.

That's why there's so little guilt in savoring these morsels of gossip. The participants have no one to blame but themselves as they wrestle over children, property and the kind of monthly alimony payments that could support small towns in Pennsylvania. Don't bite your tongue. Tell us how you really feel.

Remember when Ellen Barkin decided to rid her jewelry box of millions of dollars worth of reminders of her ex-husband Ron Perelman? She auctioned the baubles for charity. It was a jaw-dropping revelation when Kevin Federline went all father-of-the-year pious on Britney Spears. And there was the YouTube rant by the estranged wife of the Broadway theater mogul in which she spewed vitriol about his Viagra hoarding.

If you look closely at the tawdriest celebrity divorces, there isn't any revelatory lesson. We already know that no one is perfect. And aren't we all pretty clear on how to behave vindictively? The rub, though, is that usually we don't, at least not publicly. Like those political wives, we squelch the id for the sake of reputation, kids, job . . . avoiding a prison record. The celebrities boil the bunnies so we don't have to.

Internet Dating Puts Women Off Guard

Women are being lured into danger through internet dating sites.

The Auckland Sexual Abuse Help Foundation says attacks from first time meetings through internet dating are increasing.

Many of the women who report assaults after internet dates have just met their attacker that day.

"The reality is that women don’t really know their internet dates," crisis services manager Kate Brady Kean says. "By removing their usual defences women are leaving themselves open to assault."

Women who report assaults after internet dating say they have known the man for just hours or weeks.

"But really they have just physically met that evening. A woman’s first response is often: ‘I can’t believe he did this, he seemed like such a nice man’."

Ms Brady Kean says people in an internet relationship tend to feel they know the person they are meeting and may show more trust in them from the first meeting.

The foundation is calling for more research into the impacts of internet dating to determine whether there are more people taking part, and whether women’s usual defences are not as prevalent when internet dating.

There is also a reported increase in the numbers of women abused or assaulted by someone known to them, in their own home.

"Horrors" Found In Tween, Teen Dating

Tweens and teens in dating relationships are experiencing significant levels of various forms of abuse, many don't know the warning signs of an abusive relationship, and many parents don't know what's going on in those relationships, a new survey says.

Among the findings:

69 percent of all teens who had sex by age 14 said they have gone through one or more types of abuse in a relationship.

40 percent of the youngest tweens, those between the ages of 11 and 12, report that their friends are victims of verbal abuse in relationships, and nearly one-in-ten (9 percent) say their friends have had sex.

Nearly three-in-four tweens (72 percent) say boyfriend/girlfriend relationships usually begin at age 14 or younger.

More than one-in-three 11-12 year olds (37percent) say they have been in a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

One-in-five between the ages of 13 and 14 say their friends are victims of dating violence, such as getting struck, hit or slapped by a boyfriend or girlfriend, and nearly half of all tweens in relationships say they know friends who are verbally abused.

One-in-five 13-14 year olds in relationships (20 percent) say they know friends and peers who've been struck in anger (kicked, hit, slapped, or punched) by a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Only half of all tweens (51 percent) claim to know the warning signs of a bad/hurtful relationship.

In addition, significant numbers of teens (15-18) are experiencing emotional and mental abuse as well as violence when dating; it's even more prevalent among teens who've had sex by 14.

And many teens and tweens say they've been victims of technological abuse, in which cell phones, paging, IMs, social networking sites, etc. were used to carry out the abuse.

The survey, which was commissioned by online dating site Devil Called Love was conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited.

"We were surprised at how many tweens or kids ages 11 and 12 are dealing with these issues," DCL Vice President Jane Randel told Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith.

What's behind it all? Researchers believe early sexual activity tends to fuel dating violence among teens and tweens, Smith reports.

And Randel points out that, "Parents, while they think they know what their teens or, more importantly, tweens relationships are, they're really not fully aware of what's going on. And that's scary."

Experts say programs are needed to help parents and their kids recognize unhealthy relationships, and to stop them before they start.

Concerned by the trend toward abusive tween and teen dating, the National Association of Attorneys General passed a resolution urging states to establish educational programs on teen dating violence and abuse.

Inside The Sex Boot Camp

For his wife Annie's 40th birthday, Douglas Brown knitted her a scarf. This is not as simple as it sounds. Up till that point, Brown, 42, had never so much as cast on a row of stitches.

"But I couldn't think of what I could buy her that would really emotionally stir her," he says. "She likes anything handmade. I was thinking about things more masculine - maybe I'd make her a table. Then it occurred to me: she loves to knit. If I could learn and knit her something, she would be very excited."

So Brown, a journalist at the Denver Post, emboldened by his brainwave, surreptitiously started knitting classes in a local wool shop, surrounded most evenings by women who had gathered to "stitch and bitch". (Learning of his mission, all the women responded in the same way: "Awwwww".)

There was a time when Brown - a father of two girls, now nine and five - would not have dreamed of such a gesture. But a 101-day sex marathon with your wife changes a man.

"I think the fact that I was hypersensitive about her birthday was a direct result of the marathon," says Doug.

It turns out that the scarf, which Annie, now 41, did not take off for days, was the bonus prize in a game they both agreed to play, with much enthusiasm though little certainty about the end result. But as Brown chronicles in his memoir of their experiment - Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) - the effect of their self-imposed sex marathon is the dream of many a family therapist. (And Hollywood. It has already been optioned for a movie.)

"We communicate better, we touch more, we have better sex," says Doug, happily.

"I came to realise that sex is the glue in marriage," adds Annie. "If we're not physically connected, then we can't be emotionally connected. And if we aren't emotionally connected, then our family doesn't work."

In person, the Browns are the classic, wholesome American couple. Married for 13 years, they are affable, close; the kind of partners who casually finish each other's sentences. Annie, who works at home for a food company, loves knitting and baking; they both like hiking. "Early in a relationship, sex is very vibrant," admits Doug. "It's the centre of it. And I think it does kind of fade. We still had a sex life," he says of where they found themselves 11 years and two kids (then aged three and seven) into their marriage. Yet it was usually once a week and then only on weekends.

Like so many couples in midlife, parenting, career pressures and money issues took centre stage, while their erotic lives moved into the sidelines. "We did communicate fairly well, but life intervened. During the week you're just exhausted," says Doug. "We would get into bed and maybe talk a little bit, open a magazine or watch TV but then, 'Goodnight, honey'."

"I remember when nap time went away, that was huge," adds Annie. "Because often we could have sex on Saturday or Sunday afternoon when the girls slept, but that ended. I do remember a couple of discussions after our children were born ... "

"Like, wouldn't it be fun if we could have more sex?" Doug jumps in. "We weren't resentful, I wasn't like, damn, she's not doing it enough. I was exhausted too."

Then in 2005 Doug covered a conference for his paper on sex and pop culture, where he learned of a phenomenon known as the "100 Day Club" - a support group for men in relationships, who haven't had sex for 100 days or more. Doug went home and told Annie about the club and she came up with a suggestion. "Why don't we start our own club?" she said. "Only we'll reverse it. Instead of not having sex for 100 days ... let's have sex for 100 consecutive days."

Annie says now that this idea was spontaneous but perfectly serious: "We slept on it - joked about it - then the next morning I woke up and thought, we should really do that."

They resolved to begin their marathon on January 1, 2006. Among other things, they made a commitment to turn off the television, and not to read magazines or surf the internet. "For all we knew, maybe we couldn't do it," says Doug. "And if we could, by the end, we might loathe each other."

"I never remember thinking, I need the end result to be this," adds Annie when asked what she imagined a sex boot camp might do for their relationship. "We'd throw ourselves into it and see what happened." But she also wondered if there was such a thing as too much sex. "I woke up one day thinking, 'What are we going to do on day 33?'"

There is no awkwardness on display, nor do the Browns use euphemisms when they talk or write about sex. Doug's book is not pornographic but is highly detailed, covering everything from favoured positions ("I can't believe we never had end-of-the-bed-sex," says Annie), sex with and without Viagra - he likes it; she's lukewarm - to Annie's Brazilian wax.

"We both came from healthy marriages that came with good sex lives," says Annie. "My mother passed away in April, and my father was telling me about their last intimate experience two weeks before she died," she says, laughing.

Doug is so open with his parents that he told them about their sex marathon before it began. "Honey, that's a classic," was his mother's response.

"That's awesome," said his father.

Annie told her parents by email. But it was the reaction of friends and colleagues that proved telling. "Most of my girlfriends were sceptical," recalls Annie. "They were probing me, 'How are you going to do it?'"

Doug's male friends were far more impressed. "It was, 'Hey, buddy, that's great!' I don't think I had a single searching question from a man. It was very jokey." One friend called Doug after a month to ask, "Are you sore yet? Burning?"

"What was interesting was that whenever we told people about the marathon they would offer details about their own sex lives. People we had known for years would confess, 'Oh yes, we do it once a week too.'"

To start off their project, the Browns began reading about sex, visiting their respective doctors for check-ups and advice. Doug suggested visiting a sex shop for ideas for when things got boring. Then they assembled oils, candles, lubricants, libido-enhancing herbs and sex toys to aid in their mutual seduction. "And Doug bought me some sexy lingerie," says Annie. That was a first.

Family photographs were removed from their bedroom to make it more sex den, less rest area. (It's hard to get in the mood when your parents and children are staring at you.) Doug also began working out and forgoing heavy dinners to conserve energy for later. Plans were made for trips to mitigate boredom - by the end of the marathon, the Browns had had sex at a pornography exhibition in Las Vegas (a work assignment for Doug) in an ashram, a yurt, numerous hotels and on a mountain top.

The Browns had every recognisable permutation of married sex: fireworks, boring, tired, Viagra-assisted and angry. Regarding the latter, contrary to popular belief, they found that sex after a fight was not good. There was sex after a bout of vertigo (Doug), sex in the basement with their daughter upstairs watching The Wiggles. There was sex on an exercise ball and sex after watching porn (which Annie says did nothing for her).

At home they locked their bedroom door during marathon hours, but things didn't always go according to plan. Once, just as they got going, they heard their youngest's door click open. Battling a cough, she was heading in their direction. Doug quickly left the room, administered cough syrup then "pirouetted from Caring Dad to Horny Husband the instant I returned to the bedroom, the moment I saw Annie on the bed".

About 60 days in, they lost interest in sex. At times, both were too tired to contemplate it. "I'd rather hit the sack tonight, to be honest," Annie pleaded one evening. But still they had sex. Even if it was just a quickie; the continuous sex reignited interest. "The thing I noticed was you can't just get into bed and jump on top of each other - you have to get in the mood," says Doug. "We found that the way we did that was sitting on the bed, talking. We really talked more than in a long time."

Some of those discussions raised topics they had never broached in all their years together. "What about bondage?" he asked her when they discussed what they might explore. "It's not my thing," Annie replied. "I don't want to be tied up."

It didn't interest him much either. So no bondage. And no threesomes. "Never," says Doug. "That's not part of the adventure."

Annie confessed that she sometimes felt body conscious in bed. "Like, if my body isn't like a movie star's I am not going to be a turn on. But he never did get turned off and that was reaffirming." For Doug a big issue was anxiety. "I think this is common with men. I felt I had to perform, I was on stage and had to score 10. But if you're obsessed with performance it's not as enjoyable as it should be."

Says Annie: "I never knew Doug was anxiety-ridden about his performance and that was a revelation. I thought, why is he anxious? It's just me."

"The good thing was that the anxiety melted quickly during the 101 days," says Doug. "I realised you can't be on stage every day."

Despite some days with little erotic charge, overall the Browns claim they felt a connection they hadn't tapped into in years. "We communicated better. We were definitely kinder to each other," says Annie.

Sometimes this was born of necessity. A fight during the day had to be defused by nightfall if they were to have sex. "Before, if we fought, it easily could go through the night and the next day," says Annie. "Maybe we would have had more arguments if we hadn't done this."

As for their two daughters, though they were mercifully unaware of what was going on, Annie did voice concerns that, with their trips away, coffee dates and the rush through bedtime (so she and Doug could have sex), the girls would feel neglected. Today, she says, laughing, "no permanent damage" was done. Their older daughter knows they have written a book "about how much Mum and Dad love each other" but Doug is fairly sure neither of them will read it when they are older. "If my father had written this I wouldn't read it. But we both felt the book had to be done. It's important."

On day 100, the Browns were quite giddy with the thought that it was over. They could read a magazine again! Go to sleep! Around 11pm they started joking in their bedroom that they were too tired for sex and maybe they should skip it. Then they started up. At 11.28pm Annie shouted, "We did it!"

Then, meanly, a friend encouraged them to do one more round for good luck. Minutes before midnight on day 101, they ended the marathon. "The 100th erotic encounter had seemed like a party," writes Doug, "but number 101 felt like a stray commitment agreed to long ago and half forgotten."

Then, with their sexathon finally over, they didn't go near each other for a month. Annie got back into reading, and Doug could enjoy fish and chips with a beer without feeling guilty. But soon, Annie confessed that she missed the marathon: "The intensity and closeness."

There hasn't been another since, although there is discussion of a week-long mini-marathon some time soon. "But we never fell back into the old pattern," says Doug. "We don't have sex every night now (it has slipped back to around six times a month) but it's looser and we are conscious of it."

Do they ever think there might have been an easier way to revive their marriage? A holiday, or a skiing trip, perhaps? Annie's not buying it. "I now see the physical in a relationship is the foundation, it's the glue," she reiterates.

"And it's free!" says Doug.