Faces of the week

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Our regular look at some of the faces which have made the news this week. Above are Eric Clapton (main picture), with <A HREF="#ANCHOR">PRINCE WILLIAM,</A> <A HREF="#ANCHOR">MADONNA,</A> <A HREF="#ANCHOR">GERALDINE MCCAUGHREAN</A> AND <A HREF="#ANCHOR">VACLAV HAVEL</a>.

Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton has announced he is to resume playing his classic cover of the JJ Cale song Cocaine. He believes it can now be interpreted as "an anti-drug song". He dropped it from his repertoire in 1987. "At the time, I thought it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me," he says.

Clapton had been a heroin and cocaine junkie and although he was clean of hard drugs by then, he'd simply replaced one addiction with another. When the blues maestro would wake up in his hotel room, his first action would be to raid the mini-bar.

Today, as he wakes up on the north American leg of his current world tour, the only items missing from the mini-bar will be the nuts.

Guitar man: Clapton counts the great bluesmen as his inspirationAs a 61-year-old father of three young children by his 30-year-old American wife Melia McEnery, and a 21-year-old daughter by a previous relationship, Eric Clapton has the confidence and the emotional stability to gauge a perspective on his life - something he is reported to be writing about in a long-awaited autobiography, possibly due out next year.

It was the tragic death of his four-year-old son, Conor, who fell from a 53rd floor window in New York, which finally convinced him to stop drinking.

It could so easily have had the reverse effect, but Clapton would tell friends, "I was honouring his memory, trying to stay sober in order to do the right thing by him".

Mistrust

If an addictive personality can be a result of nurture not nature, Eric Clapton's upbringing had plenty of the necessary formative ingredients.

In particular, he discovered at the age of eight that the couple he thought were his parents were actually his grandparents, and the woman he thought was his sister was really his mother.

The result was a deep confusion at all the lies and deceit which led to anger and insecurity.

It had one benefit. He began playing the guitar as a way of healing himself. "I went to music because I found that a safe place to go to."

Eric Clapton (r) in Cream, with Jack Bruce and Ginger BakerInfluenced by the great blues guitarists of the day such as BB King and Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton was soon being acclaimed as God in graffiti daubed across London.

But his family experience had bred in him an unhealthy mistrust of people, and a dislike of himself, despite his talent.

"I found that when I drank or took drugs or whatever, or changed myself from the inside out, I felt more acceptable to other people."

Not only did he find it difficult to establish any lengthy and quality intimate personal relationships with women - not for the want of trying - Eric Clapton was never a team player musically either.

Despite some of his greatest work being produced with Cream and Derek and the Dominoes (he still regards Layla as his best song), he was never happy in a permanent band.

"Second chance"

Yet, thanks to a strong genetic disposition and the sanctuary of music, Clapton not only somehow pulled through where many had fallen by the wayside, but put his experiences to good use.

For a while, he became a full-time worker at the Priory, the rehab centre beloved by the rich and famous.

Then, in 1998, on the Caribbean island of Antigua, he underwrote the Crossroads Centre, an addiction recovery institution, with the help of the sale of many of his thousands of guitars. It continues to grow.

Cleaned up: Clapton is now free from drink and drugsFor his charity work, he was honoured by the Queen last year. She famously asked him "How long have you been playing?"

Clapton describes his wife Melia as the only woman with whom he has had a genuinely equal relationship.When he's not touring, he lives a quiet family life in the manner of an English country squire.

"I've got my stride," he says. "I got a second chance."

Not only has he gone back to performing Cocaine, he's about to release an album with JJ Cale.Musically, Clapton is still a force.

"When I get to the point when I think I've become clumsy, I'll give up," he says. "But at the moment, I'm breaking even."

Prince William

Prince William has shown that he has the common touch, not once but twice. First, the prince, who is currently undergoing officer training at Sandhurst Military Academy, visited the Mecca bingo hall in nearby Reading with a group of pals before hitting a number of the town's nightspots. The following evening he, and a group including his girlfriend Kate Middleton, dined at Pizza Express in Oxford on a Fiorentina pizza washed down with house Chardonnay.

<a href="/1/hi/uk/5404966.stm" class="bodl">Full story</a>

Madonna

Confusion reigns over whether Madonna is about to adopt a child. The superstar, who has been visiting Malawi, is said to have picked out a suitable toddler from a group. According to the country's information minister, Patricia Kaliati, "Madonna's people asked us to identify 12 children aged one... and what I know so far is that she identified one child." But Madonna's publicist denied the reports, saying her private visit was connected with her charity work.

<a href="/1/hi/entertainment/5410722.stm" class="bodl">Full story</a>

Geraldine McCaughrean

The author of the sequel to JM Barrie's Peter Pan has said she wanted to give a woman's view of the famous story and present an "answering argument" to Barrie's "gloomy" opinion of childhood. Geraldine McCaughrean, author of Peter Pan in Scarlet, added, "I think there's quite a lot to be said for grown ups and for growing up in general. I also don't agree with Barrie that mothers are quite as useless as he made out."

<a href="/1/hi/entertainment/5408858.stm" class="bodl">Full story</a>

Vaclav Havel

Vaclav Havel, the former dissident and the Czech Republic's first president, has celebrated his 70th birthday. Hundreds of Czech celebrities, current and former politicians and friends, including the British playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, gathered in a former church in the centre of Prague to celebrate with Mr Havel. In an interview, Mr Havel, who has battled respiratory diseases including lung cancer, said he was "surprised that I lived so long, in relatively good health."

Written by BBC News Profiles Unit's Bob Chaundy