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He’s been described as a ‘nice genuine bloke’ and ‘quietly determined’. Paul Disney met city council leader Brian Oxley

Describe yourself
Somebody who tries to get on with others, even if I don’t always agree with them and to always treat others as how I would like to be treated.

Why Brighton and Hove?
Brighton and Hove is comfortable with people leading their lives in their own way. I knew Brighton and Hove before I moved here in the late 1980s. It has great people, the sea, and the Downs on its doorstep.

How long have you been involved in politics?
Since I was 13 years old and I’m now 48! I started work in a chartered accountants. I then became a local government officer for five years. After standing for parliament in 1987 in Sheffield, I worked as a parliamentary assistant to Conservative MPs for 19 years. I have been a councillor for Westbourne Ward in Hove since 1995 – serving two years on the former Hove Borough Council and then unitary Brighton and Hove City Council from 1997.

What or who got you interested in politics?
The industrial strife in the early 1970s. It seemed to me that the fabric of the country’s governance was coming apart and I felt it was wrong that a government should be brought down by activity outside parliament.

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What’s it like to lead a life of crime in Brighton? Andrew Kay asked international bstselling crime writer Peter James

AK:When did you write your first book?
PJ: The first published was a terrible spy thriller I wrote in 1981 called Dead Letter Drop. I really wanted to write crime, but it was a nowhere genre back then. I read an article in The Times that said with Ian Fleming’s death there was a shortage of spy thrillers, I thought I could writeone. To my amazement I got an agent and to my bigger amazement he got it published – to my even bigger amazement still it completely flopped. I wrote a second one and that was called Atom Bomb Angel that flopped too.

Have they been re-published?
I bought the rights back and I keep them out of print, they are really not very good.

So, your first big break was Possession?
Which veered on crime, in that someone actually committed one, but it was not a crime novel. I wrote Possession, kind of a one-off book, and my publishers Gollancz said to me “You know I think we can build your name up if we pigeonhole you as horror” and at that time in 1987, horror was in the ascent. You had Steven King, Dean Koontz, James Herbert and it was the big genre. I was grateful to have a publisher who was enthusiastic and I said yes. It was a poisoned chalice because within five years, four or five books for me, the genre had gone into decline and crime was starting to rise out of the penny dreadful ghetto. Gollancz had done a marvellous marketing job, kind of Britain’s answer to Steven King – but not wanting to be. I moved from the supernatural and wrote a science fiction novel. I moved publishers to Orion hoping to get repositioned as a crime thriller writer but they just did not do it.

Did they want more horror, psychic thrillers?
They said they wanted crime but they kept marketing my ‘horror’ tag, I got very frustrated. I was half way through a two year contract and I changed agents, to the wonderful Carole Blake. She asked if I was brave enough to buy myself out of my contract. I bit the bullet and did it.

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A dazzling dance spectacular direct from Cuba

Let Brighton Dome warm you up this April as Cuba’s high octane dance ensemble Ballet Rakatan cranks up the heat to boiling point with a dance/music extravaganza straight from the heart of the world’s most soulful city.

Music and dance have always been a way of life in Cuba – with live bands playing in every café and on every street corner. In the UK, this is known most famously through the Buena Vista Social Club and The Cuban National Ballet. Now, this brand new Company of dancers are visiting the UK to show exactly what modern Cuban culture is all about – sexy, sassy and great fun.

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We talk to Katherine Heigl about her new role in romantic comedy 27 Dresses

How was it making a film predominantly about weddings, seeing as you’re newly engaged yourself?
It was very coincidental timing. I had been planning my wedding for a year and a half. Fox just decided to release this in January, so that’s not my fault. I thought it was interesting because both Malin Ackerman and I were planning weddings during the movie. Malin actually went off and got married, come back to work, and there was a ton of wedding talk. Definitely all the details, all the planning. It was just really funny to see Malin come back to work. She could not stop saying ‘My husband…’ over and over – it was awesome and it was exciting. I’m having a much smaller wedding. It’s a Christmas wedding and so it’s a totally different vibe. What is kind of great about it is that I kind of got to have the best of both worlds. In fantasyland I got to have the beach wedding that was beautiful, fabulous, and wonderful. Hopefully my wedding will be just as nice.

You’ve been on a bit of a roll lately with your film choices. Have you noticed yourself enter another level after the summer?
Well, I think that the nature of my career certainly changed drastically. It seemed to happen all at once, so it was hard to keep a perspective on it. I think it’s just been the most gratifying and gracious year of my life, personally and professionally. I can only hope that 2008 is just as wonderful, maybe in a different way, because I’m scared to hope that it would be just as awesome as 2007. It is always really nice that people actually watch your work and enjoy it. The movie took me to a different level in my career, as far as having a film career and being able to star in a movie. People will actually take that chance on me. Then there is press coverage, the constant paparazzi, and that kind of thing. That’s different now. No-one used to care if I went to the shops. I still don’t care.

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