THE Duchess of York blames slimming drugs, taken when she was a teenager, for clouding her judgment and bringing about her fall from grace.
In a TV interview she said she underwent a personality change after taking the drugs in an attempt to lose weight while visiting her mother in Argentina.
In the interview with comedienne Ruby Wax, the Duchess said: "I was only on them for about four days. But I can tell you now . . . I feel that it certainly added a bit of fog and confusion to my mind."
She said it was only recently she had cleared the drugs out of her system and had found her "true self«MDBO»"«MDNM» with which to face the future.
Fidel Castro is to meet Pope John Paul II today in an historic encounter which the Cuban president hopes could lead to a lifting of the US embargo on his island.
Now that the US election is over, he said, he hoped that President Clinton and his administration would be able to do something.
He recognised nevertheless that the US leader was constrained by a Republican Congress which he said was hostage to "the extreme right".
Queen Elizabeth's chief press spokesman, Charles Anson (52), is to resign. He is to leave in January, after six years in the post, to join Grand Metropolitan as group corporate relations director.
According to the 1997 Guinness Book of Records, the Beatles have sold more albums this year than in any since they were formed.
Anthology albums One and Two sold 13 million with a further six million of the Beatles back catalogue, adding to their world record of more than one billion sales.