'I hadn't touched a camera until two weeks ago,' Rachel says.Jon Davey, head of cable at the Independent Television Commission, says: 'Cable programming has become an incredibly active field. Few of us would have thought a couple of years ago that cable systems might have capacity problems.'He points out that cable and satellite operators benefit from a virtual free market. A simple licence is all that is required and can only 5be refused under Section 6 of the Broadcasting Act, which sets out basic protection of taste and decency. Cable is also a cheaper option - the annual rent for an Astra satellite transponder is pounds 5m.It is also an alternative method of reaching British homes, without being part of the Sky multi- package deal, where recent newcomers to the UK such as Nickleodeon or QVC, the shopping channel, have ceded equity to Mr Murdoch. It also means not being dependent on Sky's subscription management system, the gateway to paid satellite services.Only 707,000 UK homes have cable, though it is expected to rise to one million by Christmas. In comparison, there are three million homes with satellite, and Sky has embarked on an pounds 18m marketing campaign to add another million subscribers by Christmas.All of this underlines Associated Newspapers' tough fight ahead.

It owns the venture outright and will be paid a small carriage fee by the cable operators, but, inititially, it is likely to raise only small sums from advertising and sponsorship.Mr Aston accepts that at first rewards will be small, with profits some four to five years away. 'We wouldn't be doing this if Lord Rothermere hadn't given this the strongest possible sanction. He sees it as a step on the superhighway.'Nor is it clear where the synergy between print and television will actually come from. Channel One hopes to have assistance from the well-oiled news machines of the group's highly competitive newspapers. The promotion tape features, for example, several top Daily Mail writers and their potential programme slots - for example, Baz on the Raz with Baz Bamigboye, the paper's personable show-business writer. Mr Bamigboye, however, knew nothing about the programme.The next part of the plan will be to extend the London formats to Newcastle, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Birmingham (hence a flurry of activity to scrutinise whether Live TV trespasses on Channel One's programme plans).Mr Aston says Channel One will be supplying a core service to these areas - composed of general magazine, entertainment and show business features - after Easter He is still working out how to add the local news. For all the ambitions of local newspapers to enter into the revolution, he favours partnerships with major news agencies because they would not be tempted to hold stories back Old rivalries die hard.(Photographs omitted).

Why is it, whenever I decide to have an early night, the people across the road decide they want to have a late one? Not only that, but they invite all their friends along too. There I was tucked up with my book and hot cocoa, nursing a bad cold, when the warning signs began around pub closing time. Car doors slammed, slurred voices hollered across the street then - boom, boom, boom - on went the music. Years of living next to a squat (now a 'community care' home for former mental patients, and thankfully much quieter) taught me to adopt a Zen-like approach to noise nuisance. Rather like pain, it can be managed best if you let it drift over you, rather than immediately rush for the nearest bottle of aspirin in an act of repeated desperation.I also learnt that the most practical answer was to have a pair of earplugs handy, a lesson I seemed to have forgotten this time round.I tried Zen. Rocked by the beat, I managed to get off to sleep at first but that was well before midnight and the party had hardly got going.Half an hour later it was a different story.

The volume was up and so was I, peering through the darkness at the vivid green figures on the alarm clock. 00.31.So it went on - wake up, turn over, check the green light.01.05, 01.20, 02.00, 02.15.By 03.00 I'd had enough. How dare they? Don't they have jobs to go to in the morning? Don't they have kids who need to sleep? Don't they have a cold for God's sake?I contemplated ringing the council's noisy-party line to complain. But I couldn't remember where the number was, didn't really want to put the light on and search through the directory, and wasn't really capable of stringing together a coherent sentence to the person at the other end. Then I remembered that this was a Sunday night and the noisy-party line only operates on a Saturday.