The 50 Biggest Movies of 2009

Our selection of the fifty most exciting blockbuster films for the year ahead

2008 was something of a vintage year for popcorn-munchers. But is there a 2009 film that can equal the colossal success of The Dark Knight? Which hot franchises will step up to fill the spaces left by Batman, Bond and Indy?

We’ve taken a look through the studio schedules and picked out the most promising prospects for the coming year. History tells us that when times are tough, box office takings boom. Here’s our selection of the best films Hollywood has to offer us in 2009.

Click on the links to discover movie trailers, stills, official sites and more.

Do you agree with our selection? What have we missed? Have your say in the comments.

50: The Pink Panther 2 (February 2009)

Moviegoers might well be tempted by the impressive cast lining up for this wholly unnecessary sequel to a completely superfluous continuation of the once mighty comedy franchise. Steve Martin, Jean Reno, John Cleese and Andy Garcia may be acting greats, but for signing up to this they should hang their heads in shame.

49: Friday the 13th (February)

Back to Camp Crystal Lake again. The twelfth (couldn’t they have made it 13?) Friday the 13th movie is apparently a remake of the first film in the venerable teen slasher series, so long-time fans will have a fair idea what to expect. Probably not the ideal date movie for February 14.

48: Red Sonja (No release date announced)

Despite months of rumour about a new Conan movie, it’s his female counterpart Red Sonja who seems to be returning to the big screen first. There's some confusion about a release date for this film although the generally reliable IMDB has it hitting screens in late 2009. Planet Terror and Sin City director Robert Rodriguez re-teams with Grindhouse alumna Rose McGowan, who seems a somewhat unlikely choice as the Xena-type who fights her way across a sword-and-sorcery Hyborian landscape wearing as little as the censors will allow.

47: Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian (May)

A repeat of 2006’s ‘museum comes to life’ cameo jamboree with more or less everyone except Robin Williams back at the end of May to ham it up for the entertainment of young and undemanding cinemagoers. The film will need something very special in terms of advance reviews to give it any commercial visibility in what promises to be a very busy month at the movies. Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson and Ricky Gervais are already crossing their fingers.

46: Fast & Furious (June)

Fourth in the franchise but (and pay attention, there will be a test) occupying the number three slot in the series narrative, the movie will take the story back to its very beginnings. Paul Walker and Vin Diesel reunite in the franchise that inspired a million minor motoring offences.

45: Spy Hunter (no release date announced)

Video game adaptations are rarely beloved of the cinema cognoscenti and there’s little likelihood that Spy Hunter will break that honourable tradition. The game is a fairly routine ‘heavily armed spy and supercar’ adventure distinguished only by a voice and motion capture contribution from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson who, one imagines, must be favourite to play the lead in what we can safely assume will be an undemanding popcorner. Englishman Paul WS Anderson, of Alien vs Predator and Resident Evil fame, is slated to direct.

44: Nine (December)

In a year packed with remakes, this is perhaps the bravest of all: taking on Fellini’s hugely influential 8½ but going just that little bit further, it’s the behind-the-scenes story of an Italian movie director featuring a stellar cast (Including Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sophia Loren, Penelope Cruz and Dame Judi Dench), some of whom will be singing. The purists will be furious, the rest of us merely sceptical. Mamma Mia it isn’t.

43: Knowing (March)

A teacher (Nicolas Cage) opens a time capsule that has been dug up at his son's elementary school; in it are some chilling predictions -- some of events that have already occurred and others that are about to -- that lead him to believe his family plays a role in the events that are due to unfold

42: Them (no release date announced)

Them, a recently announced feature to be directed by Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz’s Edgar Wright, is not, as far as we can tell, an update of the hoary old giant ant chiller but a fictionalised adaptation of Jon Ronson’s investigative book about the shadowy conspiracies that operate behind our notional governments. Unless it turns out that the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group actually are all enormous ants.

41: Ninja Assassin (no release date announced)

Few star names – unless you remember Korean pop star Rain from the Wachowskis hallucinogenic Speed Racer – feature in this standard ‘assassin rebels against his masters’ tale. The title alone though promises to give Ninja Assassin that internet-friendly Snakes on a Plane appeal that should ensure a decent performance at the box office.

40: The Proposal (August)

A rom-com based on the morally rather questionable premise of a book editor (hence the title) forcing one of her subordinates to marry her so that she can gain US citizenship. Sandra Bullock is probably due another hit, and Malin Akerman still be surfing on the huge wave of excitement about Watchmen will but whether audiences will buy this rather dubious plot (remember Green Card?) remains to be seen.

39: Planet 51 (November)

A classic 1950s B-Movie plot – alien lands among the white picket fences of a fearful, simple small-town community. The twist is that the alien is an Earthly astronaut and the small town folk are little green men. A promising CG-animated caper for younger cinemagoers in the 2009 Christmas holiday.

38: The Box (March)

Set, apparently, in the Seventies, The Box is the story of a young married couple who are given a mysterious box that has uncanny, deadly powers. Somehow connecting time travel, the 1976 Viking Mars lander, teleportation and kipper ties. With former X-Man James Marsden, the always watchable Cameron Diaz and the sinister presence of Frank Langella it’s an intriguing prospect indeed.

37: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (January)

ona Mitra takes over from Kate Beckinsale as the female lead in the third instalment of the Vampires versus Werewolves saga. A prequel, it’s set before the birth of Beckinsale’s character, neatly sidestepping complaints about the regrettable absence of her PVC clad form. Unlikely to attract quite as many cinemagoers as its predecessor, it might still fill a dull winter’s evening.

36: Creature from the Black Lagoon (no release date announced)

Little is known so far of this planned remake of the classic 1954 creature feature which is to be helmed by Sahara director Breck Eisner. Bill Paxton is rumoured to be leading the team, which discovers a hitherto undocumented amphibious humanoid in the depths of the South American jungle. In keeping with the current remake mania, Eisners next project is expected to be a new version of Flash Gordon.

35: G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra (August)

G.I Joe is a bigger name in the US: the toy line that we called Action Man gave rise to a popular 1980s cartoon series and long-running comics franchise. Without the solid bed of nostalgia that will give it a running start in its homeland, the movie’s appeal over here stands or falls on its star director – Stephen Sommers from the enjoyably silly Mummy films - and stellar cast, including Christopher Eccleston and Sienna Miller as well as Sommers’s old Mummy pals Brendan Fraser and Arnold Vosloo. If August 2009 is as much of a washout as 2008’s, summer legions of staycationers will be flocking to cinemas looking for some easygoing escapism, and this might just be it.

34: Fanboys (February)

The long-delayed comedy which sees a group of rabid Star Wars fanatics attempting to steal an early print of The Phantom Menace for their dying pal finally gets a release early in 2009. A version of the movie with the cancer-stricken fan removed nearly made it to cinemas in 2008 but was met with a vast internet campaign that demonstrated the awesome power of the fanboy. We’re assured that the movie will finally be released in early 2009

33: Inkheart (January)

Brendan Fraser, fast becoming Hollywood’s go-to guy whenever kiddie-friendly action is required, joins with Andy Serkis, the man behind Gollum and King Kong, in this umpteenth attempt at the now-traditional ‘storybook miraculously comes to life’ plot. A little early for the half term crowd, but Fraser’s undeniable charm should bring in a few viewers.

32: The Surrogates (December)

A promisingly thoughtful sci-fi concept. Humanity is housebound and relies on remote-controlled drones to handle all the outdoors work. Bruce Willis stars as a futuristic detective investigating the apparent murder of these ‘surrogates’alongside former Bond Girl Rosamund Pike and charismatic bruiser Ving Rhames.

31: The International (February)

What could be more timely than a drama about the international banking system? Clearly, the producers didn’t appreciate the serendipity because it was delayed while additional, more action-packed, scenes were added. Will the world be tired of hearing about bankers by February? Naomi Watts and the thinking woman’s action man Clive Owen rather hope not.

30: The Wolf Man (April)

We’ve had modern takes on Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and The Mummy, so it was only a matter of time before The Wolfman was disinterred for another howl around the moors. More important than star Benicio Del Toro will be the inclusion of everybody’s favourite wolfman, makeup supremo Rick Baker who provided the eye-popping transformations in American Werewolf in London and The Howling. Anthony Hopkins turns up as the unfortunate lycanthrope’s father. Art Malik and Hugo Weaving will also be along for what promises to be a dark and disturbing ride.

29: The Spirit (January)

Will Eisner was one of the first comics writers to achieve personal fame and his best known creation, The Spirit, is considered by aficionados to be one of the great heroes of comics’ Golden Age. It’s surprising that we’ve had to wait this long to see the lighthearted Noir detective on the big screen. The director who has brought The Spirit to life is Frank Miller, himself a star comics writer (he wrote 300 and completely reinvigorated the industry in the 1980s with his Dark Knight Batman miniseries). Featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes the movie is shot in the same stylised hyper-realistic way that characterized Miller’s previous movie, Sin City. The Spirit is unlikely to break out of the fanboy demographic, but should provide undemanding comic book thrills in the long, cold weeks before Watchmen appears

28: A Perfect Getaway (March)

A complex twisty-turny chase thriller filmed in Puerto Rico but set in Hawaii and starring Milla Jovovich and, in a rare lead role, Hitman star Timothy Olyphant. Ideal for movie fans who like to be kept guessing until the final scene, it’s about a honeymooning couple pursued across the picturesque island by a pair of relentless killers. Expect the unexpected.

27: The Birds (no release date announced)

Few details are available about this re-make of Hitchcock’s strangest movie. Naomi Watts is reputedly playing Melanie Daniels, the mischievous socialite portrayed byTippi Hedren in the 1963 film, and there’s talk of George Clooney for the role of Mitch Brenner, the smoothly irresistible lawyer who draws her to the doomed township of Bodega Bay.

26: S. Darko (no release date announced)

An unexpected sequel to 2001’s hallucinatory time loop brain-teaser Donnie Darko, which already has fans of the original film near-apoplectic at its superfluity. Curiosity value alone guarantees S. Darko a strong opening weekend. Word of mouth will determine whether it can survive in theatres for more than a week, but it could equally become a cult smash.

25: Hannah Montana (May)

Dolly Parton, Tyra Banks, Heather Locklear and of course Billy Ray Cyrus help Destiny 'Miley' Cyrus bring the massively popular tween pop character to the big screen. In the wake of the vast box office for High School Musical 3, Hannah Montana looks like a safe bet for the big cinema smash of the Easter school break.Disney site

24: Dorian Gray (November)

The classic Oscar Wilde fable retold by an impressive collection of British thespian eye-candy including Colin Firth and Emilia Fox. Ben Barnes, little known outside the Narnia cognoscenti or the few remaining fans of doomed boyband Hyrise, plays the dissipated fop with the magical portrait.

23: Sherlock Holmes (November)

Some extraordinary casting distinguishes the umpteenth Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. as a tough, sword-flourishing Holmes and Jude Law as an even tougher, no-nonsense Watson in Guy Ritchie’s ‘reimagining’ of the ultimate sleuth. Based on Lionel Wigram’s comic book about the consulting detective rather than directly upon Conan Doyle’s books, the film also features Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, the captivating femme fatale introduced in an 1891 Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia

22: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (July)

Playing fast and loose with the accepted chronology of the age of the dinosaurs this third instalment of the CGI school holiday favourite has the primitive mammal heroes of the first two films somehow getting mixed up with a ‘lost world’ of surviving dinosaurs trapped beneath a glacier. John Leguizamo, Queen Latifah, and Denis Leary provide voices for the computer created critters. Certain to both entertain undemanding under-fives and infuriate palaeontologists in equal measure, this has the air of being the last film in the series.

21: Nottingham (November)

Russell Crowe plays dual roles in this revision of the Robin Hood legend. If you can trust anyone, it’s a bona fide cinema genius like director Ridley Scott but Hood and Nottingham with the same face sounds like a recipe for chuckles rather than thrills.

20: Bride Wars (January)

Bride Wars is evidence that blockbuster movies aren’t always for the boys. With a near-unbeatable chick flick cast (Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Candice Bergen), it’s an implausible tale of best friends clashing over a wedding day scheduling conflict. With the release date close enough to Valentine’s Day to warrant inclusion on the schedule of a fair percentage of early February dinner dates, it stands a reasonable chance of a strong mid-table performance on the box-office charts for the year.

19: 2012 (July)

Master of disaster Roland Emmerich (The Day after Tomorrow, Godzilla, Independence Day) assembles an impressive cast including John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Woody Harrelson and Danny Glover for an apocalyptic epic based on a 7th Century Mayan prophecy. Never one to do things by halves, Emmerich will apparently open the film with the end of the world as we know it and let things escalate from there.

18: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (January)

rad Pitt leads the cast of this fable taken from an F.Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who is born in his seventies and ages in reverse. Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton feature in a story that spans a lifetime.

17: The Lovely Bones (March)

Saoirse Ronan narrates from beyond the grave in this brave adaptation of Alice Sebold’s practically unfilmable novel. A fine cast (not only Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon but also Stanley Tucci, former Soprano and now Life on Mars star Michael Imperioli and winner of the ‘most unpredictable career choices’ award Mark Wahlberg) added to Lord of the Rings (and more importantly Heavenly Creatures) director Peter Jackson’s formidable talent promise a thoughtful, thought-provoking gem.

16: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (no release date announced)

A Terry Gilliam film is always something of a curiosity: ploughing his own off-kilter furrow away from the calcified strictures of Hollywood cliché, he has made films that, while differing wildly in subject matter (Brazil, The Fisher King, Baron Munchausen), share a distinctively baroque surrealism. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a curiosity even among Gilliam films, containing as it does the final performance of Heath Ledger. Because Ledger did not survive to complete the movie, Gilliam has enlisted Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to share the lead role with the departed star. Adding an extra surreal twist to the Faustian fantasy, this is sure to be one of the most talked-about films of 2009.

15: Coraline (May)

Cult author Neil Gaiman’s dark fairytale gets a faithful adaptation which will entrance anyone who enjoyed Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas or, indeed, anyone who has ever escaped through a secret door in their bedroom that leads to a mysterious parallel version of their own home.

14: They Came from Upstairs (July)

Ashley Tisdale, the delightfully pushy blonde Sharpay from High School Musical, leads a group of teens fighting an alien invasion in this light-hearted family adventure. Closer to Gremlins or Critters than War of the Worlds, They Came from Upstairs will be one of those guilty movie gems films you might take a young relative along to, but secretly quite enjoy.

13: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (June)

The inevitable sequel to last year’s surprise hit features more action, more laughs, and more shape-shifting robots. Michael Bay and Shia LeBoef return as director and star respectively with the astoundingly attractive Megan Fox as Shia’s love interest, a more international battleground and the eagerly anticipated introduction of fan favourite Soundwave.

12: The Taking of Pelham 123 (August)

If there’s a unifying trend to 2009 it’s the classic remake, and The Taking of Pelham 123 is nothing if not a classic. A major influence on new genre filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino (note the colour-coded names for the main characters) the 1970s original doesn’t seem in much need of an update. Nevertheless director Tony Scott, who’s been a little quiet for the last few years, has recruited old pal Denzel Washington as well as John Travolta and James Gandolfini to revisit the brilliantly improbable tube train hijack caper. Purists who are wincing at the thought should probably know now that Scott plans to start work on a retread of The Warriors next.

1: The Informant (September)

Matt Damon and Scott Bakula star in Steven Soderbergh’s promising black comedy based on a true story about the ostensibly dull world of agribusiness price fixing. If you enjoyed The Insider and would like to see much the same film again, but this time laced with some mordant humour and featuring a bipolar hero, this might be just the movie for you.

10: Inglourious Basterds (June)

Quentin Tarantino returns with an eclectic cast (Brad Pitt, Mike Myers and star of Hitcock's The Birds Rod Taylor) and another one of his playful reinventions of 1970s genre cinema. This time he moves from the American underworld to World War 2, with a team of Jewish-American special forces operating behind German lines, terminating Nazi commanders with extreme prejudice. Anyone who likes Tarantino, war movies in the vein of The Dirty Dozen or Nazis getting their comeuppance will undoubtedly love this movie. Fans of correct spelling may be less thrilled.

9: Terminator Salvation (June

The long-awaited ‘future war’ segment of the Terminator saga, previously only hinted at in the first three movies, dominates proceedings in Charlie’s Angels director McG’s bold reawakening of the killer robot franchise. Christian Bale, fresh from his spectacular triumph as one fanboy hero in Dark Knight essays another - John Connor, charismatic leader of the anti-Skynet forces who the Terminators have been trying to eliminate for the last three films. Roland Kickinger will be the principal Terminator this because Arnold Schwarzenegger is said to be too busy running California to appear as the iconic cyborg killing machine and Anton Yelchin, Sam Worthington and Helena Bonham-Carter are along for the ride.

8: Monsters vs. Aliens (April)

A CGI mock-B-movie with a distinctly eclectic cast list - Kiefer Sutherland, Hugh Laurie, and Stephen Colbert lend their voices., Monsters v Aliens will go some of the way towards sating the enormous demand for a second Incredibles movie. Reese Witherspoon provides the voice of a young Californian woman who grows to gigantic size, after a freak meteorite encounter, and is recruited into a secret agency of super-freaks who are sent to battle a gigantic alien robot.

7: Avatar (December)

James Cameron’s long-awaited high-technology blockbuster shares some basic ideas with The Surrogates (Humans use humanoid remote drones, in this case to explore an alien planet) and some with Planet 51 (we are the invaders). In terms of technological ambition and cinematic reach though, this movie should be without equal. Sigourney Weaver, who combined so well for Cameron in the past reunites with her Aliens director As long as Cameron doesn’t allow the story to become too cerebral for mainstream audiences Avatar stands a fair chance of being the biggest movie of the year.

6: Angels & Demons (May)

In the wake of the Da Vinci Code, another recklessly improbable Dan Brown adventure gets the Tom Hanks treatment. Ewan McGregor comes on board this time for a breakneck chase around Vatican City in search of some antimatter, the Illuminati and a decent haircut. The critics will snigger, and Dan Brown fans (of whom there are many) will ignore them and make May one of the busiest months at the box office.

5: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (May)

Hugh Jackman’s back for an X-Men prequel set 17 years before the action of the first movie.The film traces the early career of Logan, the indestructible mutant who will one day be X-Man Wolverine. Cameos from future X-Men and the chance to see how Logan acquired his deadly claws and curious hairdo give the film a geek power that will set the internet buzzing ahead of the premiere. It will be interesting to see how this performs after thethird X-Men movie was seen by many to be something of a mis-step in the X-franchise.

4: Watchmen (March)

Alan Moore’s superlative comic book finally, against the author’s will, reaches the big screen. There’s little doubt for anyone who’s read the original comic that this movie will be a huge triumph. We know the ending has been amended but every scene that’s been seen so far is slavishly faithful to Dave Gibbons’s original drawings, with just a few costume tweaks to make Nite Owl look a little less ridiculous and Silk Spectre a little bit sexier. How Watchmen will play to audiences who haven’t already been seduced by Moore’s vision of a parallel universe Cold War showdown between the members of a disbanded hero team remains to be seen. You can be sure, however, that every comic geek in the western world will see this film, and either rave about it or rail against it on the internet for evermore.

3: Star Trek (May)

J.J. Abrams attempts to reinvigorate the slightly tired Star Trek franchise with a story set immediately before the action of the first TV series. Winona Ryder looks set for a return to the big leagues as Amanda Grayson – Spock’s mum. British geek god Simon Pegg turns up as Scotty, and Zachary Quinto the dark presence at the heart of TV’s Heroes certainly looks the part as a young Spock. Expect tricksy time travel shenanigans, freak transporter accidents and a clever, ubiquitous and ultimately slightly annoying viral marketing campaign

2: Public Enemies (July)

Creator of Miami Vice Michael Mann guides the apparently tireless Christian Bale (who appears to be in every movie of any note these days) and Johnny Depp in a period gangster romp about the FBI’s search for John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd that is perfectly timed to chime with the new Great Depression

1: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July)

Harry Potter fans will already have a fairly good idea of what happens in this, the sixth film in the hugely popular boy wizard film adapted from JK Rowling’s all-conquering books. It was an early script draft of this film that prompted Rowling to ‘out’ Dumbledore while promoting the final Potter book

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The Kercher trial: Amanda Knox snared by her lust and her lies

What really happened on the night that Meredith Kercher was brutally murdered has become obscured amid endlessly changing alibis and disputed evidence

For 11 months Amanda Knox remained impassive as she sat in a Perugia courtroom, assailed by the accusations of prosecutors and a series of harrowing crime-scene photographs and films.

Even when she was sentenced to 26 years in prison for murdering the 21-year-old British exchange student Meredith Kercher, she bowed her head and wept noiselessly, burying her head in her lawyer’s chest.

It was only as she was leaving the courtroom just after midnight yesterday morning and was being led back to the prison van by armed guards that she truly cracked. “No, no, no!” she shouted in desperation.

After 12 hours of deliberations with a colleague and six jurors, Judge Giancarlo Massei read the verdict in a low monotone in the frescoed courtroom in the picturesque hilltop city of Perugia in central Italy.

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Seattle-born Knox, 22, and her ex-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 25, an IT graduate from southern Italy, were pronounced guilty of sexually abusing and murdering Kercher. Sollecito was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Both will appeal against the verdict.

The victim’s parents, Arline and John, her sister, Stephanie, and her brothers, John Jr and Lyle, were in court. Yesterday Lyle Kercher said at a news conference: “We are pleased with the decision but this is not a time for celebration; it’s not a moment of triumph. We got here because our sister was brutally murdered.”

Meredith Kercher was indeed only a fleeting figure in the trial, with attention both in and outside the courtroom focusing on Knox.

“Foxy Knoxy” — a nickname earned from her footballing skills as a child — was an intriguing figure. She came from a good home, was highly intelligent and had lots of friends: could she really have been involved in such a vicious murder?

Was she “an unscrupulous and manipulative she-devil”, as alleged by the prosecution, or “a wholesome girl” wrongly accused, as the defence said?

The protracted nature of the trial — with sittings taking place on three days a week at most — added to the confusion in many minds. Ever-evolving alibis, new witnesses, disputes over forensic evidence and the fact that a third man — Rudy Guede, a 22-year-old Ivorian drifter — had already been convicted of the murder after a fast-track trial last October only made matters worse.

Even now there are many gaps in the story but, after the guilty verdicts, the events that led to the murder of Kercher on November 1, 2007, can be pieced together.

IT WAS the foreigner’s “Italian dream” that brought victim and killer together. Both Kercher, from Coulsdon, Surrey, and Knox, from Seattle, in America’s northwest, were embarking on a year abroad to improve their Italian, which they were studying as part of their degrees.

They chose Perugia, which was popular among overseas students as a small but vibrant walled city in Umbria with a large population of fellow undergraduates. Both enrolled at its University for Foreigners.

In the summer of 2007 Kercher and two other girls were already living at the whitewashed cottage with views of rolling hills and cypress trees when Knox moved in. At first, the two women were friendly.

Kercher, reading politics and language at Leeds University, introduced Knox, a gifted, Jesuit-educated student, to her English friends, showed her where to shop and toured a chocolate festival with her.

But the relationship soon soured. Kercher, a cheerful and hard-working young woman, had budding reservations about her flatmate. According to friends, she grew more and more exasperated by Knox’s behaviour — she failed to flush the toilet, kept strumming the same chord on her guitar, and brought “strange men” to the cottage.

Indeed, it appears that it was Knox’s sex life that really drove a wedge between the women.

Knox’s sexuality featured heavily in the prosecution case, illuminated by a diary entry in which she listed seven partners, three of whom she slept with after her arrival in Italy (the list excluded Sollecito). Among them was a man she met and had sex with on the train on her way to Perugia. On Facebook, she put down as her interests “men”.

Kercher had already remarked to her father that “Amanda arrived only a week ago and she already has a boyfriend”. Later she told friends that she was shocked to see Knox leave a beauty case with a vibrator and condoms in open view in the bathroom.

We do not know what comments passed between the women, but the prosecution argued that Kercher’s criticism of Knox’s sex life — whether perceived or direct — helped spark in the American a deep hatred of her flatmate, which eventually led to her murder.

If that motive seems slim, it was just part of what was a perplexing case for both prosecutors and observers.

On November 1, Kercher spent the early part of her last evening watching the romantic film The Notebook and eating a home-made pizza at the home of English friends.

Shortly before nine o’clock she left with her friend Sophie Purton; the two parted company outside the latter’s house and Kercher walked on alone, heading down a winding, cobbled alley that leads towards the cottage.

When Giuliano Mignini, the lead prosecutor, offered his reconstruction of what followed he was careful to point out that nobody knew for certain how events spiralled into sexual abuse and murder. A colleague said that precisely what happened that night “is known only to God”. Nevertheless, the reconstruction was based on examination of Kercher’s 43 wounds and bruises, on forensic evidence such as Guede’s DNA found in her body, and on studies such as a blood-splatter analysis on the cupboard in Kercher’s room.

According to Mignini’s reconstruction, Kercher arrived home and shortly afterwards Knox turned up with Sollecito and Guede, who was strongly attracted to Knox. The two other housemates were away.

The prosecutor believes Knox and Kercher started rowing — either because Kercher was looking for some missing money or was annoyed by Knox bringing both Sollecito and Guede to the cottage.

The row soon escalated. Knox, Sollecito and Guede, “under the influence of drugs and maybe of alcohol, decided in any case to involve Kercher in a heavy sex game”, Mignini said. The two young men took part in the assault “to please Knox, because they were competing to please her”.

Kercher was grabbed by the throat — by Knox, said Mignini — flung against the cupboard and then threatened with a kitchen knife with a 6½in blade. Sollecito, standing next to Knox, grabbed Kercher’s hair.

Kercher fell between the bed and the cupboard and her jeans were pulled off. Forensic evidence indicated that Guede groped her and Sollecito produced a second knife and ripped off Kercher’s bra.

Realising that the violence was unstoppable, Kercher gave a desperate scream — a cry that was heard by Nara Capezzali, an elderly neighbour who said it was so chilling she felt as if she was “in a house of horrors”.

Knox then stabbed Kercher, inflicting the deepest of three wounds to her neck. The American’s DNA was later found on the handle of a kitchen knife which had Kercher’s blood on the blade.

As Kercher lay dying in agony — the autopsy found it took her several minutes to die as she inhaled her own blood — Knox and Sollecito fled. Guede stayed and tried to stop the blood coming out of Kercher’s neck with a couple of towels. He, too, then fled.

The scene was discovered the next day when police came to investigate why two mobile phones that belonged to Kercher had been thrown into a neighbour’s garden. They found Knox and Sollecito sitting outside and a house that had apparently been burgled.

Some time during the night, the couple had returned to the cottage and faked a burglary in the room of another housemate. But as the police picked through the broken glass they were told that nothing had been stolen.

They would have left it at that had not the housemate asked insistently why the door to Kercher’s room was locked shut. Eventually, it was knocked down.

Kercher lay virtually naked on the floor, her two cotton tops rolled up above her chest. Oddly, her body was partly covered by a beige quilt.

Investigators were initially perplexed. Who could want to kill Kercher? They turned first to the students downstairs and then to her acquaintances.

However, attention soon turned to Knox. Her cold, detached manner at the police station a few hours later stunned both investigators and Kercher’s friends. When one friend, Natalie Hayward, said she hoped Kercher did not suffer, Knox burst out: “What do you think? They cut her throat, Natalie. She f****** bled to death!”

Investigators were also struck by a gesture she made repeatedly in front of them over the next few days. “She’d press her hands to her temples and shake her head, as if she was trying to empty her brain of something she’d been through,” one of them recalled.

A short story she had written for her creative writing class at the University of Washington in Seattle also attracted attention. Entitled Baby Brother, it told of a young woman drugged and raped by another young woman. One passage read: “She fell on the floor, she felt the blood on her mouth and swallowed it. She couldn’t move her jaw and felt as if someone was moving a razor on the left side of her face.”

While the defence could dismiss this as the product of an active imagination, it was more difficult to explain the emerging DNA evidence, including the knife that was found not at the cottage but at Sollecito’s flat.

On the clasp of Kercher’s bloodied bra, tests also found DNA belonging to her, Sollecito and Guede. Tests with luminol — a chemical that turns blue in the search for blood — detected bloody footprints in the cottage that matched those of Knox and Sollecito.

The quilt, said the prosecution, was also a sign of Knox’s guilt: she could not stand the sight of Kercher’s wounded body, and had covered it in a gesture of female pity.

Although Sollecito claimed he had never met Guede, a university graduate testified he had seen them together with Kercher and Knox outside the cottage two days before the murder.

Knox also had to explain why she had initially accused Patrick Lumumba, owner of the bar Le Chic, where she worked, of killing Kercher. She had said she was cowering in the kitchen covering her ears while he committed the crime.

Lumumba was cleared after witnesses testified that he was at Le Chic on the night of the murder, claims backed up by till receipts. Knox said she had made the accusation because she was exhausted and stressed by a total of more than 50 hours of police questioning.

Knox and Sollecito have insisted that they had spent the evening and night of the murder at his flat, and that she returned to the cottage only the following morning. They had watched the French romantic comedy Amélie — one lawyer compared Knox to the film’s faux-naive heroine, played by Audrey Tautou — had fish for dinner, smoked cannabis and made love.

In court, the defence of Knox and Sollecito pinned all the blame for the murder on Guede and rubbished the forensic evidence — apart, of course, from that which implicated the Ivorian.

They claimed that the clasp of Kercher’s bloodied bra had been “accidentally contaminated” with Sollecito’s trace in the laboratory of the forensic police in Rome; that the kitchen knife was inconsistent with Kercher’s wounds and was wrongly handled by forensic scientists. All of this will form part of their appeal.

Before the verdict, Knox’s family disclosed they had a bought a plane ticket for her return home to Seattle. Afterwards, her father branded the verdict “a failure of the Italian judicial system and literally a failure for the city of Perugia ... as well as Italy as a whole”.

The character of his daughter continues to be a subject of public fascination, with a girl-next-door now convicted of murdering her flatmate.

Professor David Canter, director of the centre for investigative psychology at Liverpool University, said Knox seemed to lack many of the typical hallmarks of sexually motivated murderers and as such she presented an unlikely offender profile.

“Most bizarre murders, particularly those with a lot of sexual activity and if there are drugs involved, come out of a lifestyle that’s pretty dysfunctional in which there’s some sort of build-up. So it’s unusual for apparently capable and functioning youngsters to get caught up in all this,” he said.

Under the media spotlight at the trial, Knox appeared at first relaxed and even cheerful, chatting happily with her lawyers and prison guards as she gesticulated Italian-style with her hands. After this behaviour drew unfavourable headlines, she turned more sober, sitting mostly immobile, frowning slightly in concentration.

She then stunned many in court by wearing an oversized white T-shirt for a hearing on St Valentine’s Day. On it, marked in big red letters, was a lyric by her favourite group, the Beatles: “All you need is love.”

In the women’s wing of the Capanne prison outside Perugia, she has kept up an impressive pace in studying languages including German, Russian and Chinese, taking guitar lessons, teaching yoga and English to fellow prisoners and reading widely, including Anna Karenina and books on philosophy and religion.

She spent the first night of her sentence in tears, according to a visitor. Her appeal will not be heard until the autumn of next year. If the conviction is confirmed, she has one last resort — Italy’s Supreme Court.

KERCHER was largely lost in the hue and cry surrounding Knox. Her story was not often brought up at the trial — except at its very end.

As he requested the life sentences, Mignini told the court: “The most serious mistake you could make now is to look only at the accused, forgetting what they are accused of and the victim of the crime. Instead you must remember her, especially now.”

When she was killed, Kercher had been due to go home to London to celebrate the birthday of her mother, Arline. Instead, said Mignini, “she will never go home again to hug her loved ones. She was killed in a horrifying way and now her relatives can only go to the cemetery and stand quietly in front of her grave”.

Death in Perugia: The definitive account of the murder of Meredith Kercher, by John Follain, will be published in January 2011

THE REACTION IN AMERICA

In Amanda Knox’s home city of Seattle, there was a predictably appalled reaction to her guilty verdict, writes Tony Allen-Mills in New York.

The Seattle Times newspaper noted that “her battle for freedom headed sharply uphill”, while profiling those who had campaigned for her.

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Knox’s home state of Washington, said she was “saddened” by the verdict. “I have serious questions about the Italian justice system and whether anti-Americanism tainted this trial.”

Other US experts who followed the case have warned that attacking Italy’s system of justice might prove counterproductive. “I’m not sure I would have tried to indict the criminal justice system in defending her,” said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler. “That may come back to haunt them.”

Peggy Ganong, an Italian-speaking Seattle blogger who followed the case closely, said: “The implication was that Italian forensics are inferior to American forensics, and I think that’s just not true. The forensic evidence was a lot stronger than her supporters said.”

Online reaction was divided, with some commentators outraged by what they saw as politically motivated Italian chicanery, and others reluctant to believe an Italian jury would act any differently from an American one.

One online comment noted wryly: “If she wanted an American trial, she should have murdered in America.”

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Shady lady: The truth about pop's Lady Gaga

She’s loud, brash, trashy and sexually ambiguous, but this shameless self-publicist claims to be traditional at heart

Lady Gaga is only 70 minutes late, which I suppose (sigh) is quite good by pop-star standards. This gives me ample time to case the pavements round the May Fair hotel for the packs of paparazzi who are supposed to follow her everywhere she goes — but there are disappointingly none.

Her young English PR, Adrian, tells me that she is busy putting on her make-up, to which I respond rather forcefully that she really need not bother because I won’t notice whether she’s wearing 10 layers of slap or none. But according to Adrian, she won’t ever leave her room without full make-up. He takes me up to the penthouse suite where the interview will take place. All very Kelly Hoppen, black-and-gold upholstery, lacquer tables, buddhas, white orchids, bamboo, the usual. “Have a look at the bathroom!” Adrian says excitedly. It has a freestanding granite tub exactly like a sarcophagus. “And the master bedroom!” Circular white bed, ginormous flatscreen, more white orchids. Yes, the decor is impressive, but the waiting is long.

Eventually she appears, a frail little body tottering along on absurdly high platform heels, in fishnet tights, a rather skewwhiff Marilyn Monroe wig, and a short, black silk wrap, which keeps falling open to reveal her somewhat undernourished breasts. I preferred the photos of her at Glastonbury with flames shooting out of her bra. Her skin is pale, almost milk-white, but she has thick black hairs on her arms and a hodgepodge of tattoos (a ban-the-bomb sign, some lines of poetry), which spoils the porcelain effect. But she is very polite. She takes her sunglasses off as soon as we start talking, revealing lovely, big hazel eyes, and — best of all — produces two ashtrays, some cigs and a lighter, and tells me that, though she doesn’t smoke on performance days, she can today.

If you google Lady Gaga the first thing you see is a related search asking “Is Lady Gaga a hermaphrodite?” Naturally this question has been weighing on my mind and I have spent an unseemly amount of time studying close-ups of her crotch on YouTube. Jonathan Ross raised the question when she came on his show and received the immortal reply “I do have a really big donkey dick,” which certainly shut him up. Her early career seems to have been dogged by rumours that she was a man in drag, and Christina Aguilera said dismissively: “I don’t know if it is a man or a woman.” But why should she be a man, or even a hermaphrodite? She does have a deep voice but she is quite clearly a woman. The whole hermaphrodite story has the feel of a rather desperate publicity ploy.

One of the problems with — and for — Lady Gaga is that the music industry and publicity machine don’t quite know what to make of her. She writes these catchy, feel-good electro-pop tunes that go down a storm in clubs, but then talks a load of impenetrable art bollocks in interviews. Her heroes are the utterly predictable Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Madonna, Grace Jones, and of course she claims to be a “performance artist” rather than a singer. Don’t they all? She complains that just because she is blonde, people treat her like an airhead, but she has to dye her hair, she explains, because otherwise she gets mistaken for Amy Winehouse, and I can see that — yes — with her long face and big schnozz there is a distinct resemblance.

She is a 23-year-old New York singer-songwriter, née Stefani Joanne Germanotta, daughter of an Italian-American internet entrepreneur. She went to the same Convent of the Sacred Heart school in Manhattan as Paris and Nicky Hilton (though she didn’t know them), and says she got “an incredible education”. She started at the Tisch School of the Arts at 17 but dropped out after a year when her singing career took off. She began singing at open-mic nights from when she was 14 — her mother accompanied her — and was contracted to write songs for Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls by the time she was 20. Eventually she was signed by Interscope and released her first album, The Fame, in 2007. It has sold 4m copies worldwide and spawned two No 1 singles — Just Dance and Poker Face.

Now it is being re-released with eight new tracks (including a duet with Beyoncé) as a two-disc set called The Fame Monster. She is currently on a tour called the Monster Ball, and coming to the UK in February and March, playing the O2 Arena on February 26 and 27. Whether or not she will prove to be “the next Madonna”, as frequently promised, she is more than happy with the idea: “I love and appreciate Madonna comparisons. I know her and I think she’s wonderful. And I love pop music done the right way.” Her ambitions are actually limitless: “I don’t wanna be one song. I wanna be the next 25 years of pop music.”

She is here in London to work on the visuals for her new show with the photographer Nick Knight and is wildly excited. “I love Nick Knight’s work, I’m such a fan — he’s like God. I was in America, shooting another video, and the whole Haus of Gaga [her retinue] was, like, sitting round talking about video, and I was saying I hate just hiring these hack photographers — it’s meaningless. So they said, ‘Who do you want?’

I said, ‘Well, Nick Knight is God.’ And they all go, ‘Yes, Nick Knight is God. Why don’t we just give God a call?’ So we called him and he was up for it — he knew my work and liked it, or I hope he liked it. I don’t know much about the enigma of Nick Knight, but I know I love his work.”

“What are visuals?” I ask casually, and then regret it as she spends the next half-hour showing me designs for sets and costumes on her manager’s computer. Every time she hits the wrong button, we revert to a screensaver of the manager’s dog. Gaga insists on explaining the concept of her show, which is on the wildly original theme of evolution. “It’s part pop show, part performance art, part fashion installation. It came about because as an artist, as a writer, as a woman, I feel I’ve evolved so much.”

So far so predictable, but then she goes on: “My evolution is from the beginning of time, so I start as a cell [she shows me a costume like a geodesic dome], and then I become a vertebrate, and then I become a full animal, and there’s the birth of the economy, and trade and war, and then it’s the Apocalypse. Because we as a society are taught politically and religiously that the Apocalypse is coming, it’s on its way. But what I’m saying with my show is, ‘We’re there right now: this is the Apocalypse.’ The fact that we’re surrounded by cement and we’ve already killed everything means the Apocalypse has happened.

So the idea for me is to give a sense of repose and solace to my fans, that we’re here, we did it already, and now it’s about accepting where we are and looking more joyfully into the future. And then the Apocalypse is over and the stage becomes very minimal and all that’s left is me with a piano, in the middle of the destruction.”

Hope that’s clear. I’m not absolutely sure I followed the plot, but I enjoyed the costumes — especially one that seemed simultaneously to convey both Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. She says she would have liked the set to be even more ambitious, but everyone kept reminding her that they only had 80 men to erect it. “Like, I tell everybody about my dreams, and they say, ‘Gaga, we love it, but how the f*** are we going to build it?’ ” Moreover, the whole show has been put together at speed, because she was meant to be touring with Kanye West, but that tour was cancelled so she had to organise her own show very quickly — her band and dancers are currently rehearsing in New York, while she commutes between them and Nick Knight.

“I have resigned myself to this ridiculous schedule,” she says grandly, “because I feel that it is my destiny to provide for my fans.”

Her life, she says in every interview, is dedicated to her fans. She is married to her work, she has no time for any personal distractions. She will take Christmas Day off — and spend it with her parents — but otherwise she works nonstop. When I ask where she lives, she says flatly: “The May Fair hotel.” But she must have a home somewhere? “My home is onstage.” Where does she keep her things? “I have storage.” Not even an apartment? “No. I don’t care about those things. I tell my fans this little poem I wrote:

For every minute of the day,

The truth is that I’m dead,

Until I’m here onstage with you —

Then I’m alive instead.”

That’s kind of sad, surely? Can’t she ever do normal things? Walk in the park, go to galleries? No, she says, because of paparazzi, though it’s better in New York than here. “I find that when I don’t think about it, it goes better. When I’m worried about not having a normal evening, it’s not normal, but if I allow myself to just go out with some friends and have a drink, it’s okay. I had a great Hallowe’en in New York because I was with lots of friends and nobody noticed me.”

She has no time to meet, or even think about, boyfriends. She had one a few years ago, a heavy-metal drummer, but she has not had one since he left her. “I don’t know enough men and I’m quite isolated. I have basically no friends in the music industry. I’ve stayed away from that life. I don’t go out with celebs, I don’t go to many award shows. I’m sort of in a purgatory right now, and that’s what the album’s about. But to be honest I’m not obsessed with that portion of my life just yet. I’m 23, I’ve got time…”

A line on Poker Face — “I’m bluffin with my muffin”— has been interpreted to mean she is bisexual, but she says she’s never been in love with a girl. And she hopes she’ll marry eventually: ‘I’m a very traditional person in that my mother and father never got divorced and I had a lovely family growing up, so I believe that is in the cards for me for sure, but at this moment my destiny is to be a storyteller.”

She says the habit of working hard comes from her parents. “They both came from lower-class families, so we’ve worked for everything — my mother worked eight to eight out of the house, in telecommunications, and so did my father. I had jobs when I was 16, I had tons of jobs when I dropped out of school, I come from this hustling background so for me it was just normal to do it this way.” Did they talk about money much at home? “No. The one time we talk about money is when my dad’s screaming at me on the phone to save, whereas I want to spend everything on my show. Because I don’t really care about money. I don’t care about having a big fancy car, or going to fancy parties. But this album is about being in the midst of the hustle, grinding for the dreams, and now that the dream is on my finger, I’m a bit more relaxed.”

Whereas at school she felt like a freak. She had jet-black hair when all the other girls were blonde, and “I was kind of darker, theatre-obsessed, always doing music, whereas other girls were kind of having a nice time and enjoying their high-school years. But I was in the grind already, and never really fitted in. I’d see, say, a photo of Boy George and go, ‘I feel like that.’” She had a weird habit, in the evenings, of locking herself in the bathroom with a book of film-star photos and trying to copy their look. When her mother came home she would say: “I did Judy [Garland] today, Mom.” Or Marilyn. And her mother would say: “You look great, but now you should wash your face.”

Her parents never stifled her. When, at four, she started playing her grandmother’s piano, they sent her to piano lessons. When she announced, aged 14, that she wanted to perform in clubs, her mother accompanied her. “She’d say to the manager, ‘Listen, I know she’s too young to be in here, and I’m too old to be in here, but she’s incredibly talented and she’s a singer-songwriter and can she sign up on your open-mic list?’ And we just sat and waited round for them to call my name.” At the beginning she was more of a folk singer — “I was vomiting out emotions, but I didn’t want music to be therapy” — so then she got into pop, and, like Madonna, first made a name for herself in New York’s gay clubs.

When she left school, she got quite heavily into drugs. She says she’s glad she did all that so young, “Because now I’m done with it. But at the time it was like self-discovery and a way for me to feel good about myself. But I don’t want my fans to think that way, I want them to listen to my music. That’s kind of what the Monster Ball is all about — for those who feel like a freak inside, come to my show. I know just how you feel because I used to feel it even more, and I want them to come dressed up and wearing whatever they really want to wear, and coming with their boyfriends and girlfriends and making out and hugging and screaming and crying and it’s like this exorcism. It’s almost like replacement for all the things I did wrong — I just want to give to my fans the music that will be the escape for them.”

Last month she took a rare week off because her father was having heart surgery. “I didn’t want to work, I didn’t care about anything except my father. It was an aortic-valve transplant, but it was really late in the game. He was supposed to have surgery years ago and then he just didn’t, and he was resigned that he wasn’t going to have it, he kept saying, ‘But I feel fine.’ But then all of a sudden he didn’t feel so good and I dropped everything I was doing and went home and just stood over him and said, ‘You. Do. It. Now.’”

She says the theme of death pervades her new album because she’s been worrying about her father for so long. “I wrote this song, Speechless, about the phone calls he would make when I was on the road, and I never knew what to say because I was so sad, and so angry, because I thought he was resigned to dying. So the song is about the things we never say. And is it harder to say these hurtful things, or is it better to say them with the possibility that it could change a life?

It’s very loving in one sense, but in another sense it’s quite ruthless. I think my favourite lines on the whole album are —

And I know that it’s complicated

But I’m a loser in love

So baby, raise a glass to mend

All the broken hearts

Of all my wrecked-up friends.

“So I’m writing about my dad, but not only from my perspective, from the perspective of my mother, and women and men all over the world whose hearts are broken for whatever reason. For me, the whole album lives in that lyric.”

Is she a Daddy’s girl? “Right now I am.” Perhaps that’s why she finds it hard to form relationships — because no man can compete?

“Oh, now you’re trying to analyse me!” she laughs, and shakes her head.

Her closest friends, possibly her only friends, are the seven or so creative assistants who make up the Haus of Gaga. “They’re all young kids who dropped out of school, and most of them were with me from the beginning. Everyone around me knew what I wanted to do, but nobody thought it would become as big as it has become, or as big as they tell me it’s become.

I think we all wondered about the commercial success, based on what I am really trying to do. And for the record company it was a stressful beginning because the music was so pop and I think they didn’t quite see the medicine — the music is the sugar and they couldn’t see the medicine inside it.”

They thought she was just a simple airhead pop singer? “Exactly. Right. But I guess it’s because at this point we don’t expect much of blonde pop singers. And when I came out it was, ‘Oh, she’s attention-seeking!’ Or, ‘She’s trying too hard’, or ‘She wants to be noticed’, whereas the very nature of performance art is that it wants to be noticed, so everyone’s kind of missing the point. But now I actually feel that I’m in a space where they’re not missing the point, because I’ve never let up and I’ve never sold out. There is never a moment that you see me that I’m not working towards something creatively. For me, it’s very simple: I’m not going to allow you to portray me in a way that is your idea of what you think I am. I know who I am and — praise the Lord! — I’m a real artist. Why is this a bad thing? But now I have a lot of fans and they’re spreading the book of Gaga around the world.”

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Gordon Brown snubbed by soldiers' 'curtain' protest

Gordon Brown was snubbed by badly injured Afghan veterans when they closed curtains round their beds during a hospital visit and refused to speak to him.

More than half the soldiers being treated at the Selly Oak hospital ward in Birmingham either asked for the curtains to be closed or deliberately avoided the prime minister, according to several of those present.

The soldiers, who have sustained some of the worst injuries seen in Afghanistan, described his visit as “opportunistic” and a “waste of time”.

Furious about equipment shortages and poor compensation for their injuries, one soldier said: “It is almost as if we are the product of an unwanted affair ... he has done nothing for us.”

Brown visited the military wing of Selly Oak on September 2, where about 25 wounded soldiers were being treated. They were told about the visit in the morning and asked by nurses if they wanted to speak to him.

Sapper Matthew Weston, 20, is one of the most seriously injured soldiers to have survived. He lost both legs and his right arm when a bomb exploded on a dirt track outside Sangin.

He said: “I didn’t want to speak to him, I didn’t want to waste my time talking to someone who was just trying to make themselves look good. I spent the day with my family instead.

“Half the lads didn’t want to speak to him and those that did pretty much blamed him for everything. Many of the lads just closed their curtains and hid themselves away.

“I met Prince Charles and Sir Richard Dannatt [when they visited Selly Oak]. I have respect for them. Prince Charles spoke to me for two hours. I really didn’t want to speak to Gordon Brown.”

Another soldier, who suffered severe injuries when caught in a mine explosion, left the hospital in an attempt to avoid Brown.

He was angry at the government’s attempt to cut compensation payouts for injured soldiers. He said: “I went outside for a fag but when I came back he was still there. Most of us said we wouldn’t like to see him so we drew our curtains and waited for him to go.

“It was a pretty sour thing, we feel a lot of bitterness towards Gordon Brown. The guys read the papers, it is obvious to them that he doesn’t care. Many of us felt like it was an effort to accommodate him.

“At the time the Ministry of Defence were trying to sue wounded British soldiers to cut their compensation. It was so wrong. It doesn’t give the guys any faith in the government, it doesn’t make us feel like they support us or look after us.

“The lads didn’t say much after the visit. Some were grateful he had bothered to come up to see us, others were saying they wished they could have thumped him.”

Another soldier, who lost his right leg after being caught in a mine blast in Afghanistan, said that more than two-thirds of the 25 soldiers on the ward closed their curtains. He, however, decided to speak to Brown.

“I wanted to find out how the guy’s head worked,” he said. “I was interested in what he had made of his trip to Afghanistan and what he had learnt from it.

“I feel that even if someone is a moron, he should have the opportunity to defend his moronity. [His response] all seemed rather textbook and not from the heart.

“It is quite obvious to anyone that Brown is not concerned, it is almost as if we [the soldiers] are the product of an unwanted affair.

“The straight fact is this: we don’t like the man, he has done nothing for us and continues to kick us in the teeth over equipment and compensation.”

The most severely wounded troops are flown from the front line to Selly Oak for treatment, often within 12 hours of being operated on by teams of surgeons in Camp Bastion. The hospital has a specialist, 32-bed military-run ward to help soldiers recover from their injuries alongside other servicemen.

The concerns of the wounded soldiers appear to highlight a disconnection between front line troops in Afghanistan and Brown and his government. Earlier this year an official report suppressed by ministers revealed that soldiers’ lives were being put at risk by “endemic” failures at the Ministry of Defence.

It blamed a “political fudge” and Whitehall incompetence for the failure to provide soldiers in Afghanistan with adequate equipment, and said bungled projects were £35 billion over budget.

At the same time Brown has been accused of failing to give adequate funding to the military. As chancellor he oversaw a dramatic increase in government expenditure on education, welfare and health while the defence budget fell from 2.8% of GDP to 2.2%.

The cuts have continued since he became prime minister. In October he was forced to backtrack over plans to impose a £17.5m cut in the Territorial Army’s training budget, while a month earlier the government took two injured soldiers to court in a test case that would have slashed compensation payments to injured soldiers.

The failings are damaging the morale of troops on the front line. According to a survey of 10,500 Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force personnel, published in August, the majority of servicemen and women feel morale is low, singling out equipment shortages as one of their biggest concerns.

Two days after his visit to Selly Oak, Brown paid tribute to injured soldiers during a speech in London. He said: “There is nothing more heartbreaking than, as I did this week, meeting a teenager who has lost a leg.”

Yesterday a spokesman for the prime minister said: “The prime minister regularly visits wounded service personnel. He has the utmost respect and admiration for the soldiers’ sacrifice, bravery and dignity. As you would expect, we never comment on the PM’s private visits to injured soldiers.”

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Amir Khan looks to United States for next challenge

Amir Khan plans to conquer the United States after a 76-second demolition of Dimitry Salita in defence of his WBA world light-welterweight title in Newcastle last night.

"It's everyone's dream to go over to Las Vegas," the 22-year old from Bolton said. "Next year sometime is what we're looking at and we're going to hopefully shock the world when we go to America."

Frank Warren, Khan's promoter, is considering the option of taking his fighter overseas, but believes Khan has the star quality to pull massive crowds on home soil.

"He will go and fight in the States," Warren said. "What fighter doesn't want to fight at Madison Square Garden or in Las Vegas? He's got the ambition to do that and prove himself over there. He will do that.

"He knows he's got great fans here. He's not fought at a football stadium yet, he's not fought at the Bolton ground yet. Fill that place up and imagine what the atmosphere is going to be like with 40,000 people in there."

No opponent has been named for Khan's next defence, but Warren has ruled out an all-British fight against Ricky Hatton.

"I don't feel Ricky Hatton should fight any more," Warren said. "Maybe he could get himself down to the weight, but one thing's for sure, his reflexes and his legs are gone. For Ricky to be able to fight it would take him about six or seven months to get himself into some shape."

Warren has no immediate plans for Khan to fight Manny Pacquiao either. The pair both train under Freddie Roach, but the Filipino is expected to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr in a superbout in March. "They're professional fighters and maybe a couple of years down the road if Pacquiao's still around, it may be a fight that takes place."

After suffering a spectacular knockout defeat by Breidis Prescott in September 2008, Khan teamed up with Roach to beat Andreas Kotelnik, of Ukraine, in July to claim the WBA title.

Making his first defence against the unbeaten Salita, Khan floored his man ten seconds into the contest and never let up to force a first-round stoppage. Khan was surprised by his quick victory. "We didn't go into the fight looking to knock Salita out because we didn't want to make mistakes," he said.

Salita acknowledged he did not have the chance to get into the fight. "He started fast, faster than most of the people I've fought," he said. "He did what he had to do, caught me with a couple of shots and I really didn't have an opportunity to get myself going."

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Jermain Defoe misses penalty as Everton snatch vital point against Tottenham Hotspur

Everton 2 Tottenham 2

Jermain Defoe, the Tottenham Hotspur striker, missed an injury time penalty as Everton came from two goals behind to snatch a point at Goodison Park.

Tottenham led through Defoe's 13th goal of the season and Michael Dawson's header, both scored early in the second half. However, goals from substitute Louis Saha and Tim Cahill in the last 12 minutes and Howard's spot-kick save earned a point.

The result cost Tottenham the chance of returning to third in the table and despite the morale boost it also extended Everton's woeful run to one win in their past nine Barclays Premier League matches.

David Moyes' side, ravaged by a lengthening injury list, are three points above the relegation zone with little prospect of seeing their major stars return before the new year.

Things started to deteriorate for the hosts after Peter Crouch had fired over when well placed and Howard had denied Defoe's shot when he cut inside Tony Hibbert. Everton had obviously pressed Joseph Yobo into service when he was not fully fit - having missed the midweek Europa League win with a hamstring injury - and in the 15th minute he was replaced by 21-year-old Seamus Coleman, making only his second league appearance.

Jack Rodwell, back after a groin strain, was then booked by referee Andre Marriner for a late tackle on Niko Kranjcar despite appearing to get the ball first. On-loan Manchester City striker Jo continues frustrate Everton fans and he showed why within the space of a couple of minutes midway through the half.

First he fired a low snap-shot from the left of the penalty area just past the far post before inexplicably getting his legs in a tangle six yards out and bundling wide Steven Pienaar's perfect cross. Everton continued to give it their all, however, and Dawson was booked for bringing down Cahill before Leighton Baines curled in a free-kick which had Heurelho Gomes diving to his left.

But Defoe remained a danger and when Wilson Palacios and Kranjcar combined through the inside-right channel the striker whipped a shot inches outside the far post. In the 36th minute Benoit Assou-Ekotto was lucky to escape with only a yellow card after appearing to scrape his boot down the back of Cahill's head as the pair lay on the floor and then pushing the Australia midfielder and Marouane Fellaini.

Fellaini was also cautioned in the same incident, which prompted the Belgian midfielder to explode with rage and he should have been sent off seconds later for elbowing Crouch. Once the football resumed Hibbert's perfectly-timed tackle and Howard's large frame twice denied Defoe.

Assou-Ekotto was replaced at half-time by Gareth Bale but the real impact came from the other flank just two minutes later. Aaron Lennon whipped in a cross from the right and Defoe nipped in front of Hibbert, who was slow to react, at the near post to score.

Crouch almost made it 2-0 seven minutes later when he poked the ball wide, although Howard appeared to get the slightest of touches. Baines was booked for going through the back of Vedran Corluka and then saw his clearance charged down by Lennon who set up Tom Huddlestone for a shot which was deflected behind.

From Kranjcar's 59th-minute corner Lucas Neill allowed Dawson to escape him in the penalty area and the centre-back dived low to score in successive league matches. The goal prompted a double change with Saha and Ayegbeni Yakubu replacing Jo and Rodwell.

With 13 minutes to go Crouch's left-footed shot beat Howard but also the far post before Everton got themselves back in the game. Coleman drove towards the byline before crossing to Saha who fired high into the net.

Diniyar Bilyaletdinov and Saha, with an overhead kick, both went close late on before Cahill equalised with a low header from Baines' cross four minutes from time. Two minutes into added time Hibbert's challenge on Palacios earned Tottenham a penalty but Defoe blasted straight at Howard.

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