Forget the Prozac. Forget the self pity. Just think of Jennifer Capriati. If ever there was a great example of the power of positive thinking, she's the one.

At 14, she was a tennis superstar, touring the adult circuit and earning millions in prize money and endorsements. Then it all fell apart. She dropped out, reportedly took to drink, drugs, shoplifting, pigged out on junk food until, at 17, she and her life were in such a mess that she wanted to kill herself.

And now? Now, at 25, she's fighting fit, on top form and, to prove it, has just won the French Open and is hotly tipped to win Wimbledon.

To be a tennis champion, without any dramas and setbacks, takes incredible drive, determination and single-mindedness. To hit rock bottom and then bounce back up to the top, is awe-inspiring.

It would have been easy for her to blame everyone else for her misfortunes - her parents, her coaches, the companies so eager to cash in on her talent that she missed out on a normal childhood. She could have slobbed out at home, never picked up a tennis racquet again and most of us would have felt sorry for a wasted talent, but would have understood why and sympathised.

But wherever the blame lay, the only one who could get her out of the mire was herself. And she did.

It is too easy to go round blaming other people for our own misfortunes. Indeed, in this compensation culture, we are positively encouraged to do so. And, while we're doing that, we forget that the only person who can really help us is ourselves.

Jennifer Capriati has proved that splendidly and magnificently. Her win in the French Open wasn't just a testament to her tennis skills but also to her determination and strength of character.

It's easy to wallow and feel sorry for ourselves. Easy to say that something is so impossible to achieve it's not even worth trying. Easy - and so much nicer - to blame other people for our own weaknesses.

But how much better to take control and fight back.

Even if you're hopeless at tennis, there's a lesson there somewhere. And Jennifer Capriati's dazzlingly triumphant smile is the proof of it.

So now it's your turn to get off your bum and get your life in order.

WELL, well, well... Nick Tate, the man who helped devise the appalling AS levels which most of the country's lower sixth formers (with the notable exception of Euan Blair and his fellow students) are currently wasting their time doing, now says that he got it wrong.

AS levels were invented when he was chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. But now he's back at the chalkface as headmaster of Winchester College and views it from an entirely different angle.

"We got it wrong. I did think it as the right approach, but it looks different when you are on this side of the fence," he says.

Exactly. Only when experts have to live with the consequences of their decisions, will they ever get round to thinking things through properly.

And if Nick Tate is now finding life tricky, well, at least he knows who to blame.

ESTELLE Morris (pictured right) is a very cheering appointment as Education Secretary in the new cabinet. She has famously admitted that she made a bit of a hash of her O levels and a major disaster of her A levels. Apart from being good at sport, she didn't collect many qualifications at school.

On the other hand, once she left, she managed to get herself into college, then university and became a teacher then an MP.

As our student children are caught in the grip of exams, it's reassuring to know that school is not the only place you can get qualifications. Whatever their results might be, this is not their one and only chance.

Think of Estelle and remind yourselves of that on the day the results come out.

SO now Hovis - fixed forever in our minds as that misty dreamy nostalgic boy with a bike on a cobbled hill - is now using South Park-style cartoon horrors to sell their bread.

What next? Dracula selling tooth whitener? Eminem selling soap powder? Or maybe we could have the Terminator as the Milky Bar Kid.

IF only we could elevate Joanna Lumley (pictured right) to the status of National Treasure. She's intelligent, funny. Men still lust after her, women can imagine sharing a bottle or two of confidences with her. And, at 55, she definitely has some grown up ideas.

Harking back to another time in a weekend interview, she says approvingly: "You jolly well buttoned your lip. Everyone kept their own little griefs and worries to themselves. That was perceived as the British strength. Now we're encouraged to show everything, to let it all hang out.

"In the darkest, direst circumstances of the war, people were saying to themselves 'Chin up dear'. I think I'm with the Chin Up brigade."

If only Prince Charles had married her instead.

Published: 13/06/2001