DARLINGTON - the chilli capital of the world! Not as daft as it sounds and it's all down to Mark McMullen, who has a passion for peppers. With a fellow enthusiast, he has launched a website which tells you all you would ever want to know about growing peppers - and gives details on more than 3,500 varieties.

"I just think they're fantastic plants," says Mark, 31, and a sensible stockbroker in his everyday life.

"I love cooking Indian and Chinese foods and when I went shopping for chillies, it was always a bit disappointing, only the few same varieties around. So I started growing my own."

Soon chillies and peppers were taking over the house, the garden, the spare bedroom (which his partner was trying to use as an art studio) and every available space.

"This year I've limited myself to 50 varieties," he says. "There's only so many windowsills in one house."

Growing chilli peppers is a massive hobby in the US and Scandinavia.

"They are so easy to grow - in the greenhouse, in the garden, on the kitchen windowsill," says Mark. "They just need a light soil and a bit of love. And they're good for you. An average size pepper has twice the amount of Vitamins A and C as an orange. And now experts think that the complex chemical compounds in chilli peppers may help prevent cancer."

And some of them just look pretty.

He started the website with fellow enthusiast Julian Livsey, who, luckily, just happens to be a website designer, so it looks good.

"At the moment it's just a labour of love, a bit of fun, a forum for people who love peppers," says Mark.

It includes advice, recommendations and a database listing those 3,500 peppers, usually with photos, from abbraccio (very pretty, medium hot) to zualas chiltepiquin (small and yellow, heat unknown) with a few in between you might even have heard of - bell, capsicum cayenne, jalapeno.

Since it was launched at the start of this month, the website's had over 100,000 hits and 1,700 emails from 70 countries, including one from the US government.

Mark says: "Maybe they thought there was something suspicious about us." Or maybe someone in the White House just fancied growing their own red hot chilli peppers.

And if Mark the Chilli Man has anything to do with it, many more of us will soon be doing just that.

No seeds for sale yet, but plenty of advice and information to inspire you.

www.thechileman.org