How many of us have dreamed of leaving work behind and running off to join the circus? Most of us, if we're honest, have our own customised escapist fantasies, but few have the courage - some would say the stupidity - to carry it through.

A new offence of corporate killing is being planned by the Government to prosecute directors of companies where people died as a result of failures at the top. Colin Brown, Chief Political Correspondent, says the Home Secretary is certain to introduce legislation.

A fail-safe system that should have prevented Friday's Southall train crash, which killed six people and injured more than 160, was fitted but may not have been working properly, Railtrack admitted last night.

SOCIETY

Retro scooters are for softies. South London's black youth have adopted the modern moped, all curves and chrome, and made it hip, says Howard Byrom

Horse trials

A Richard Branson Virgin Trains express was almost involved in a repeat of the Clapham rail disaster last week.

Two-thirds of expenditure on tackling the drug problem is spent on law enforcement and one-third on prevention, education and treatment, according to a report published today by the Penal Affairs Consortium.

China's capital is to get its first taste of an authentic pub. Teresa Poole reports

A prostitute was sentenced to custody for life at the Old Bailey yesterday for murdering a wealthy banker who tape-recorded his own horrific death.

The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold

Like its hero, the first ever theatrical adaptation of Kind Hearts and Coronets shows an early interest in its own ancestry. The curtain rises to reveal a television showing the scene from Robert Hamer's Ealing Comedy in which the hangman peeks into the cell of Louis Mazzini, Duke of Chalfont and serial killer, on the eve of his execution. On stage, Mazzini silences the television with a flick of the remote control. "Tonight, for the first time," he says, "I can tell my own story."

We're playing pinochle. I am winning by about a million points, but tragically I'm the one who vetoed playing for cash, and it'll be a bit obvious if I change my mind now, so I have to settle for the simple pleasure of humiliating my companions. The coffee table is crowded with the usual mass of empty wine bottles, full ashtrays, lumps of driftwood and bank statements on which Dan, who is 19, has doodled so many marijuana leaves that the figures have been obliterated. Dan has gone out, looking insulted when asked conversationally where he was going. Dan and Charlie exist, I think, to remind me that, in some people's eyes at least, I am now a member of the older generation. I wish they'd tell that to the 70-year-olds. Charlie is lying on the sofa in the kitchen watching a Steven Segal film on cable.

It was a strange sight. Young white men - at least half the audience - swaying alongside their black brothers and sisters, mouthing the words: "All I ever wanted was a niggerman."