He's a very jovial man but at the races it's like being at the office

"He's a very jovial man, but at the races it's like being at the office. He doesn't want to be disturbed." So, too, says Neil Graham, formerly Hern's assistant. "He's a great raconteur and loves to sing songs and tell jokes after dinner He's very much a people's person when you know him. He loves company." But few people do know him, beyond the narrow world of Lambourn or the very best racing circles, and the Major remains content to let his record and his horses speak for him.It is racing's loss, for Hern the great after-dinner raconteur could offer stories and insights about Hern the great trainer to fill several volumes. By reminding people of what WHO has achieved, and detailing what remains to be done, Dr Nakajima was making a plea for clemency and cash at a time when overstaffed, over-bureaucratic organisations are under threat everywhere.

In doing so, WHO's once popular slogan of "Health for all by the year 2000" was quietly laid to rest.. In the mid-1950s, Michael Pope was training horses in Blewbury, Oxfordshire, and his assistant was an old friend from their days in the desert during the war. He accused Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, of postponing his monthly meeting with Eddie George, Governor of the Bank of England, until Friday. VCRs will be most affected, with the cost of retuning them put at £60m to £120m.The responsibility for retuning and the burden of cost lies with the licensee. By his own reckoning he has had 109 colleagues during five years in the first team."The constant chopping and changing hasn't helped," he said.

"We are trying to cut costs wherever we can."Dr Nakajima describes the World Health Report as his "personal responsibility". It was presented with pomp and ceremony to the World Assembly yesterday. A jobs freeze is already in place and more jobs are threatened. "What makes WHO work is its brain power, the people who work for it, and that is what we are trying to preserve," a spokesman said yesterday. In the run-up to the re-election of Dr Hiroshi Nakajima from Japan as director-general in 1993, there were bitter accusations of corruption within the organisation. Britain's National Audit Office conducted an investigation and concluded that there were "shortcomings in contract letting" and a lack of accountability.European countries and the US bitterly opposed Dr Nakajima's reappointment on the grounds that he lacked the communication skills for the job, that he spent too much time travelling, and alleged favouritism in appointments to senior positions.