I'll come out with something and she'll say, "Well? I don't think that's right, dear." And she'll give me the exact logical explanation why, which makes me even madder. Usually with old right-wingers you can bait them, but I've tried and it's water off a duck's back to June. She'll just say, "Well, I don't feel that way dear, but there we are, dear.' What's even more infuriating is she quotes the Daily Mail all the time, so now I get it to see where they're fibbing so I can put up a few arguments. But it doesn't make any difference to June - as I say, water off a duck's back, dear.June and Tim are about the only people that Debbie and I go away with for the weekend.

We do have some screaming laughs, but it's a great relief being with them because you don't have to try. I don't have to be making gags, or come out with snappy one-liners, or start singing. It's wonderful just sitting with them and having a cup of coffee in the morning, reading the papers and not having to say anything.! News Huddlines tag and details to go herey here hereXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Lady Colin Campbell's original passport had described her as male because she was born with a cosmetic malformation and mistakenly registered as a boy at birth. She was brought up as George William, but at 21 she had corrective surgery and was issued with a new birth certificate. Now officially Georgia Arianna, she was able to apply for a new passport which gave her gender as female. She became a model and went on to marry Lord Colin Campbell, but the marriage ended in divorce.

She began to write and published a book about the Princess of Wales called Diana in Private. She wrote the book using information gathered from friends of the royals, and her passport shows that she travelled to America and Japan in 1992 to publicise the book She says: "My book was before Andrew Morton's. When the Morton book came out, people saw that a lot of what I had said, which had been discounted at the time, turned out to be true - things like that the marriage was on the rocks and that she had bulimia. I also said at the time that she wanted a separation, which people found slightly unbelieveable - well, of course, later they found out that indeed it was absolutely true." The Russian stamps in her passport trace the lengthy process she had to go through to secure the adoption of her two young sons, Misha and Dima She says: "I went over in '91, '92 and '93. The laws were very complex and the Russians are very punctilious about respecting the law, and they kept bringing in new regulations, so it was quite an involved process, but certainly worthwhile. I tried to adopt in Britain, but I actually found the system quite counter-productive. I was left with the impression that the system is geared towards keeping social workers in jobs and babies in foster care." In the end she adopted Russian children because she has some Russian blood.

"My father's grandmother was Russian and I feel an affinity for the Russians."8 'A Life Worth Living: the Autobiography of Lady Colin Campbell' is published by Little Brown Price pounds 18.99.. Crystal-blue glaciers towered on both sides as we flew through a canyon of ice. The pilot dipped the wing, preparing to land on a snow- covered frozen lake. The tracks from the Cessna's ski landing gear were the only sign of life as I stepped gingerly out of the aircraft under blue skies and sunk almost to my knees in fine, sparkling powder. A short while earlier, we had taken off from the airstrip at Alyeska, an Alaskan ski resort carved out of a forest and surrounded by the Chugach mountains, just an hour's drive from Anchorage. Within minutes we had buzzed a herd of caribou grazing close to the Turnagain Arm waterway, before climbing to skim the surrounding glacier peaks.This was my first visit to Alaska and my first chance to ski through powder snow with superb sea views. Curiously, the resort base is just 250 feet above sea level but due to Alaska's extraordinary latitude, skiers can count on getting an average of 46 feet of snow each season. Another bonus is that skiing at sea level eliminates any of the debilitating effects associated with high altitude resorts.The whole idea of travelling for some 17 hours to test the ski slopes in this remote US state had raised eyebrows among friends and colleagues who were convinced that my enthusiasm to explore new territory had finally gone too far.

Why visit Alaska in the winter? Surely it would be dark and cold In fact, it was neither.And I was not alone. To the cynical smirks of its competitors, Crystal Holidays introduced package winter holidays to Alaska last year, partly as a publicity gimmick. Demand from those hardy Brits, always looking for a new experience, surprised even its own marketing team.British winter sports enthusiasts are, it would seem, prepared to go to any lengths to gather new experiences and seek out fresh territory. Alaska - not only America's largest state but bigger than the next three biggest states combined - is so sparsely populated that there is almost one square mile available for each inhabitant.In Alyeska you'll savour the whole Alaskan experience. Where else in the world can you take a day trip away from the ski lifts to watch seals playing in the surf and the occasional surfacing whale? It is well worth hiring a car to take the 90-mile drive through the Chugach National Forest to Seward, on the Kenai Peninsula, trying to spot bald eagles, moose and mountain goats along the way.At Seward, climb aboard one of several available guided launch trips to view sea otters, dolphins, seals, sea lions and, if you're lucky, a whale or two.Taking the extensive cross-country ski trails through Alyeska's surrounding woodland you can travel for hours without seeing another soul. Sometimes you get the feeling that perhaps you really are treading ground where no one has been before.If cross country becomes too energetic, follow the example of the locals and try skijoring, which involves being pulled along on skis by a healthy husky dog who seems all too happy to take the strain and certainly knows the way home better than you will.Under strict instruction, I was able to drive a team of huskies, steering by yelling the Eskimo words "yee" and "haw" which the dogs understood to mean left and right, although admittedly, I couldn't always remember which was which.Snowmobiling is another highly popular activity in Alyeska.