1.5 Whether you are a wife beater or a wife beaten, the killer of a father or the lover of a mother, there's always room on the Oprah Winfrey Show to tell all to millions. The public washing of dirty linen has become, in her hands, a multi-million dollar business; she is prosecution and defence counsel as she prowls around her audience and demands a verdict on the personal behaviour of the people who queue up to be so judged. Ms Winfrey's qualifications for her job are never called into question, perfect though they are. She is the female black raised in the dominantly male white Southern state of Tennessee; the girl sexually assaulted at the age of nine and sent to a detention home at 13 . . . and, hey, if that doesn't teach her the meaning of problems, she even has a widely publicised struggle with her weight. Her human frailties and personal triumphs make just the right balance to allow her to probe into everyone else's: she can be stern of gaze or unashamedly tearful in sympathy; she'll wheedle, coax or demand an answer - "So you broke up - why?" There appear to be few concessions to sensibilities: one couple appeared on her show where the woman had had her first baby three weeks earlier. Winfrey not only produced the husband's girlfriend, but drew out the information that the girlfriend also had a baby by the same man. She's the first woman to own and produce her own talk show, the youngest person to win the Broadcaster Of The Year award, and the first black person to own a large television studio @ 2.3 Whenever people spot Oprah Winfrey on the streets of Chicago, they don't finger their autograph books nervously, whispering "It's her...it's her". They grab her arm and say: "Wait right there while I get a pen." Winfrey, the most successful chat show host on American television, is everybody's friend; in a synthetic world she has succeeded in syndicating sincerity. Yet Winfrey is so warm, so comfortably plump ("Whenever I see a fat black woman waddling towards me, I think, 'Here comes another woman who's always being told she looks just like me',") so confident with her defiantly tight scarlet pants and sweater, chunky gold jewellery and great big glamorous smile, that she makes other hosts look like shrinking violets. The Oprah Winfrey Show goes out live from Chicago five days a week and deals with real people, raw feelings. She won't have politicians on her show "They don't tell the truth"- or writers and actors publicising their latest work. The show went national five months ago, is already the number one syndicated daytime programme in America, and, according to Variety magazine, Winfrey is expected to earn about Ł19 million this year from the deal. "I believe what you are and who you are is settled by third grade," she says. "In class I was always the first to raise my hand, the first in this, first in that; the person everyone turned to and told their troubles to. It's still the same today." The difference is that today, when people tell Winfrey their troubles, they do so live on television. The woman who says she came home and found her husband in bed with her mother, the fresh-faced schoolboy telling of how he was forced into Satanist rituals, are confiding their experiences and anxieties to 92 per cent of America. Winfrey forestalled any suggestion that she exploits the guests on her show, by confessing, early on, that she was raped by a baby-sitter when she was nine and regularly sexually abused by three family friends after that. In the same programme, she burst into tears and threw her arms around a middle-aged woman who was trying to describe how she gave birth to her father's autistic child. "The reason I came out and said I'd been sexually abused is that if nobody talks about it, you think you're the only one it's ever happened to. I didn't know it was rape. I didn't know what it was called. I just knew it must be something I was doing wrong and I couldn't tell anyone about it." Today, the studio audience are sharing their sex secrets with the nation. A woman gets up and says: "I had three men as well as my husband, and I can tell you it was great." Winfrey rolls her eyes admiringly. "Boy, you have got a lot of stamina." Occasionally she gets angry. Hand on hip, she thrusts her microphone at the man who's just announced that women should stay at home and look after their husbands and children. "What century do you live in?" She once asked Sally Field if Burt Reynolds wore a toupee, questioned Dudley Moore about the technical intricacies of sleeping with tall women, and quizzed a porn movie actor: "Don't you get sore?" An admiring woman in the audience says: "She comes out with what you want to come out with." Replying to Shirley Maclaine, who made earnest pronouncements about how losing weight would make Winfrey happier with herself as a person, she said briskly "I don't know about all of that. I just want to get into a pair of size 10 Calvin Klein jeans." She weighs 180 lb on a good day, and is always on some sort of diet. "I eat when I'm depressed and I eat when I'm happy. Sometimes when I can't decide whether I'm tired or hungry, I make the decision while I'm eating." People keep urging her not to lost weight, saying she'll lose her personality. "Honey, it ain't in my tights," she replies. "Straighten up and fly right,'" is her positive message to the people who tell her they can't cope with life. "I did a whole show about people with negative addictions and was absolutely frustrated." She stamps her feet, one, two, three, to emphasise her frustration. "There's this woman who says she can't help the fact that she goes out and picks up men. Aargh, I don't relate to that. I'm screaming blue murder on that show, crying 'Don't say can't, it's so dumb. You can do anything. Do you hear me? Anything. Of course you can.'" She is a fine example of her own philosophy. Born in Mississippi 33 years ago, the result of a "one-day fling under an oak tree", she spent her first six years with her grandmother ("She could whip me for days and never get tired"), and was shuffled about between relations until she ended up with her father, a Nashville barber and part- time city councillor, when she was 13. He gave her stability, discipline and worried that she never did any homework. "What does it matter?" said Winfrey, "I get first grades." She still gets criticised for not doing her homework, but knows she does best relying on her instinct. In 1971 she won the Miss Fire Prevention contests, got a reporting job on the local radio station while she was still in highschool, and then a scholarship to Tennessee State University. "I hated it, hated it. It was an all-black college and it was 'in' to be angry. Whenever I hear the words 'community organisation' or 'task force', I know I'm in deep trouble. I still get a lot of stick for not backing women's or black groups. I intend to do a grand job, not because I'm black or a woman, but because I'm me." Winfrey and her team are planning to do a segregation story in Atlanta, Georgia. She'll let the racists speak because she knows it will be better propaganda than any march; better television too. She rolls her eyes at one of her producers. After that, she's flying to Washington to give a talk at the Pentagon. It's Black History Month and Caspar Weinberger is a fan. `What's he doing watching Oprah Winfrey in the afternoons when he should be running the country?' Her audience, besides the Defence Secretary, is mostly middle-aged white housewives and her sponsors are food, beauty and fashion firms. "When people watch television, they are looking to see themselves. I think the reason why I work as well as I do is that people sense the realness." Not that she's a real housewife. She eats out most evenings and rarely makes the bed. "I figure I'll be back in it in 12 hours; what's the point?" She has never married but is madly in love with Stedman Graham, director of an anti-drugs programme, who is so tall and so good-looking that her staff, who obviously dote on her, initially worried that there must be something wrong with him. Winfrey discovered her talent for talk when, after college, she worked as anchor-woman on a Baltimore television station and was demoted to co-host of a morning chat show. The ratings soared. She moved to Chicago and the ailing AM Chicago show, which pushed its way up to the number one spot in the ratings and was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. "I don't get butterflies, I never have," she says, "except on the Joan Rivers show. I've been on it three times; the first time I was an absolute wreck, with a capital W and three Ks. The reason people confide in me is that they don't feel intimidated. I try to exude comfort, whether I'm talking to a member of the Ku Klux or a celebrity." @ 3.1 I am up at 5.45 am. I never close my curtains and the sun rises into my room so I never need an alarm clock. I set the alarm every day but I always try to beat it My home in Chicago from Monday to Thursday is an apartment of one of the top floors of a downtown high-rise near Lake Michigan. I leave for Harpo at six, looking like I just woke up, hoping nobody in the elevator talks to me. I work out at the studio gym for an hour and I hate it, really hate it, every day of my life. Until recently I had a personal trainer but now I feel I can accomplish more by myself. When it's over there's a feeling of achievement. It's a tight schedule in the morning because I have to be in the make-up chair by 7.30 to be ready to record my first show of the day at nine. When I meet the guests in the studio I've already been briefed on them by the producer. I have a good memory; I don't use notes or cue-cards but rely on my producer to guide me through my earpiece when I'm in the studio. I've recorded 220 shows a year since 1986. I never get tired of it and I don't see a time when I won't be doing it. There's a message in every show, but the continuing theme is about taking responsibility for your own life. At 11 a.m I record a second show. In the hour in between I change clothes, read some more research and talk with the producer. I feel people talk to me on the show because they know I have problems just like them - celebrity doesn't change that. After the show I shake hands with each member of the audience as they leave. The show which altered me and made me confront the anger and shame I'd carried with me since I was a child was one of my early ones dealing with sexual abuse. I was raped when I was nine and abused for years by members of my family and their friends. By the time I was 13 I'd run away from home and was sexually promiscuous as a direct effect of being abused. During the show I suddenly realised I'd been carrying that emotional damage with me for years. I broke down and couldn't stop crying. I said 'Please stop the tape,' but they didn't and I released all the pain which had built up. I realised what had happened wasn't my fault and I could stop feeling guilty. I still see my parents. I don't blame them any more. Just after noon I take off my false eyelashes and high heels and change into more relaxed clothes. I eat lunch in the studio canteen. Hot dishes are sometimes sent in from my restaurant, The Eccentric, or there's a salad bar. Right now I'm 60 pounds overweight. Being thin was wonderful and I vowed I'd never gain weight again. But I've always been a compulsive eater. I love to eat junk food, any time of the day or night. I've tried every crash, cranky, harm- your-body diet in the world. Now I eat healthy food, I never weigh myself and I'll never go on another diet. When I have time I do enjoy cooking and find it relaxing. The afternoon is devoted to corporate work: I'm trying to build a fully fledged production company. My ambition is to both produce and act in more movies. I've bought the screen rights to three books so I go to a lot of screen meetings. The Academy Award nomination for my role in The Color Purple was one of the finest moments of my life. The part of Sofia was my first acting job. I'd read the book and so admired what the author, Alice Walker, had to say about the experience of being black in the South. I knew I wanted to be part of the film but I didn't have the guts to call Quincy Jones or Steven Spielberg. I thought, 'They don't know me so why should they take my call?' Then Quincy Jones saw my show and offered me Sofia. I can only say it was divine intervention. I read the newspapers in the afternooon to stay in form for the show and to get ideas, although some of the most powerful subjects I've dealt with, like battered women or alcholism in families, have been generated by the two and a half thousand viewers' letters I get every week. I feel a responsibility towards combating racism in this country so I devote time and resources to helping several charities which work in this field. I've given $1 million to a fund to educate black men in Atlanta. At least women can work as domestics, but there are very few jobs for unskilled black men. I also support a rape treatment centre. Since 1976 I've talked every day on the phone to my best girlfriend, Gayle, in Connecticut. We talk for hours about nothing of any significance to anyone on this planet. I'm not a very social person. If I have to entertain I take guests to my restaurant. Marriage is not a major concern of mine righ now. I've been with my boyfriend, Stedman Graham, for five years. He has a PR company here in Chicago. I do love him but if you're starting a movie company and doing six or eight shows a week you need a lot of focus and energy, and marriage is just not compatible with that right now. On Friday nights Stedman and I drive to my farm in Indiana for the weekend. I was born in the country so that's where my roots are. On the 200 acres I have sheep, cattle, horses and four dogs. I collect Shaker furniture for the house. Bill Cosby introduced me to it and I love the simplicity of it and what the Shakers stood for. Only very special people in my life are asked to the farm, like my wisest friend, the writer, Maya Angelou. I have problem-solving sessions with Maya, when she spoon- feeds me knowledge and helps me make sense of my life. During the week, if Stedman's out of town, I often sleep at the studio on a futon on the floor. Late at night is often the best time to do some creative thinking and read up the research for the next day's shows. I'm basically a Christian and I believe absolutely in life after death. I've kept a diary since I was 15. Sometimes a day will have been so wonderful that at night before I go to sleep I just write 'Great day'. @ 3.3 CHAT show host Oprah Winfrey is trying to shed 50lb on her latest diet while everyone around her is tucking into Christmas goodies. She recently paid Ł1,500 a night at a Caribbean hotel - famous for its exotic foods - for the privilege of pounding out the miles on a walking machine. Oprah, now past the half-way stage of her target, said: "I'm exercising and I'm eating smart. I've stopped pigging out." Her fluctuating weight is more volatile than TV ratings. Three years ago she trimmed her size 16 figure down to size 10 by losing five stones on a 400-calorie-a She slowly piled the pounds back on again and forlornly admitted: "food is my drug." The Grand Oprah finally reached 205lb recently and called in ruthless diet cop Rosie Daley to act as a personal chef. When Oprah hired a private jet to fly her and lover Stedman Graham to the Four Seasons Hotel on the Caribbean's Nevis Island it was probably reward for hard work in losing 35lb. Calorie-minder Rosie stayed behind but 37-year-old Oprah diligently resisted the fattening treats on offer everywhere. WORKOUT She arrived each day at the hotel gym at 10am for a blistering 90-minute workout during which she even kept fellow guests entertained by holding court on the glitzy William Kennedy Smith rape trial being shown on a gym TV. Dressed in multi-coloured Spandex leggings and a billowing orange shirt, she pedalled an exercise bike for 15 minutes while yelling, "Tell the truth" to alleged rape victim Patti Bowman. Then she climbed a muscle-burning Stairmaster walking machine for 35 minutes while loudly offering her opinions on the sensational evidence. She finished off with a 25-minute brisk walk on the treadmill and 15 sit-ups. Other holidaymakers were full of praise for Oprah's stamina. "She worked out and kept us entertained on the rape trial without even pausing to catch her breath," one said. Although fiance Stedman, 39, says he finds her "quite sexy", Oprah has postponed their wedding until she has defeated her current weight problem. She told friends after the holiday: "I'm going to stick to the diet and exercise until I'm back to 150lb. "I'll never go on a crazy binge again. I just want to be a normal weight."