Overview.

In the olden days, our Words Director, Catherine Bassindale, was a journalist for national newspapers and magazines. She specialised in features, health and celebrity interviews, and worked on staff as a writer and health editor for the Evening Standard, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday and Best magazine. She also used to edit a jazz magazine called Jazz Express, annoying all the Acker Bilk fans when she put the Young Disciples on the cover. As a freelance journalist, she has contributed to a range of titles including Elle, The Guardian and High Life. Ah yes, those were the days – deadlines at dawn, smoking cigars with Sylvester Stallone, chatting to Heather Mills about Croatia, interviewing a woman who thought she was a peanut…

It’s a car that’s a boat. Or maybe a boat that’s a car. Well, whatever it is, Catherine Bassindale took it for a spin along the Thames…Read article…

The barefoot cosmic doc will see you now. Catherine Bassindale talks Tao, Indians and atom bombs with the ‘spiritual yob’ who soothes Madonna’s psyche…Read article…

John Humphrys, from the Today programme, talks to Catherine Bassindale about food, foot-and-mouth and the power of women consumers…Read article…

Camilla, 30, from North Clapham, is a victim of one of the new methods of carjacking – ambushed by a gang of men when she slowed down for sleeping policemen…