John's story

For many years John McCarthy would shudder if he heard someone tearing off a strip of parcel tape. During his 1,943 days as a hostage of fundamentalist militiamen in Beirut he and fellow captive Brian Keenan were often moved by their kidnappers. Every time they would be mummified in tape, with only a tiny airhole under their noses.

The pair were bundled into the boot of a car and driven for miles. They never knew if another filthy dungeon or a bullet in the head awaited them. "Horrible," whispers McCarthy, still visibly traumatised. "That awful screech of tape - for a long time I found it terrifying."

Thirteen years after his release, McCarthy is more relaxed with that sound. "Thanks to moving house and packing stuff into boxes a few times," he grins. Time has been a great healer. He left dank cells, blindfolds and beatings behind. He seldom thinks about the "dark days" of Beirut. Although sometimes he must confront his past.

McCarthy's wife, Anna, who he married in 1999, found watching the upcoming film about his kidnapping (Blind Flight) a tough experience. "Particularly the taping up," says McCarthy. "Although she'd read about it and heard me talk about it, seeing that on screen was upsetting."

Yet life is pretty dreamy these days for McCarthy. "Sometimes," he says, "I'll be sitting at 11am drinking a cup of coffee and reading a really interesting book, and I have to kick myself. I love my work. I enjoy exploring the world. I'll have been married for five years this April - and that's really, really lovely." (His previous longtime relationship with researcher Jill Morrell, who had campaigned ceaselessly for his release, subsequently collapsed under the glare of publicity.)

McCarthy and his wife divide their time between a flat in the Barbican and a house in Suffolk. They also own a boat - a motor cruiser they keep in Suffolk. "Every year I promise I'm going to spend a whole month on the boat but work inevitably gets in the way. But this summer [he laughs] I will definitely do that."

Meeting McCarthy, it is immediately apparent why people feel such affection for him. He radiates affability and charm from the moment he enters the room. He is shorter than you imagine (I had envisaged a rugged version of Richard Madeley) and greyer, but still the same handsome, charismatic figure we remember emerging into the glare of flashbulbs in Damascus with such grace and fortitude.

Since then, he's carved out a prosperous career, dividing his time between writing books and making TV programmes which have seen him travelling to India, Iran, Brazil, Russia and the Middle East. Most of his TV work now is unconnected to his experiences in Lebanon between 1986 and 1991, when he was snatched off the street while covering Brian Keenan's disappearance. And yet he recognises that his name will probably always bear the prefix of "former Beirut hostage".

"Labels are necessary," he says sanguinely. "And when you consider that I've written books about my experiences, firstly with Jill [Morrell - Some Other Rainbow], and then another with Brian [Keenan - An Evil Cradling], and I'm now promoting the Blind Flight movie, it would be hard for me to sit there and say, 'Don't ever refer to me as an ex-hostage'.''

It is easy to forget that, at the time of his kidnapping, McCarthy was a happy-go-lucky 29-year-old whose priorities were forging a career in TV journalism, enjoying a drink and seeing the world. Now he's a household name. The first thing he said to Keenan, when thrown into the Irishman's cell at the beginning of their joint incarceration, was: "I came here to cover your story. It was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life."

Perhaps it would be cynical to suggest it was something of a perverse masterstroke? "Yes, I can see the irony. Even while we were in captivity, I remember thinking, 'How the hell am I ever going to get back into journalism? I'm five years out of it.'

"During the last year [after Keenan was released and replaced by Tom Sutherland and Terry Anderson] we had a radio. We heard about the internet and I was like, 'What's that? What about the Telex?' But because of the celebrity that we curiously garnered through being stuck in a hole in the ground, and thanks to Jill's efforts, we found when we came out that we were suddenly able to get jobs and leapfrog those dark years. So, without obviously thinking, 'Oh, that was a good thing that happened', I could think, 'Well that was an awful thing that happened, but my life is now in a place where I would always have loved it to have been.'''

These words are typical of a man who has always considered the bigger picture. He remains deeply sympathetic to the troubles in the Middle East. Yet one element of his captors' behaviour remains unfathomable. When he departed for the Lebanon, McCarthy's mother Sheila had just been diagnosed with cancer. She died in 1989, not knowing if he was dead or alive, even though he pleaded with the kidnappers to send some kind of message to her. After 13 years, can he finally forgive them?

"No," he says without hesitation. "That's the thing that still bemuses me, family is a huge issue for Lebanese people. They could so easily have stuck a photo of me in the newspaper with a date, saying, 'Look, he's alive.' They didn't. That seems like a wanton level of cruelty against an innocent woman. Yes, it was a dark period of Lebanese history. I hope they can move on from it. Certainly I want to. I don't want to be stuck there for ever thinking, 'Those bastards, those bastards.'"

Those recollections formed an important part of his memoir, A Ghost Upon Your Path. However much he has moved on from Beirut, a certain amount of his work has involved - indirectly at least - issues thrown up by his kidnapping. He has only recently tackled it full-on, returning last month for the first time to film an ITV documentary which included him interviewing the leader of Hezbollah - reputedly the organisation behind the kidnappings.

He feels very strongly about Blind Flight, the film of his incarceration. "It was really important to me that the people who kidnapped us weren't shown as some bunch of raghead lunatics," he says. "While there was a fair bit of violence perpetrated against us, I hope the film shows a balanced picture of those guys."

I ask him how would he react if he met one of his guards now, and for the first time in our conversation he seems troubled. "I don't really know," he says, pausing for a few seconds with a furrowed brow. "I really don't know. If I met one of the guys like Said, who did abuse us badly at times, I've no idea whether I would find a rage that I've held inside me. I don't know if that anger would suddenly express itself with leaping on the bloke regardless of how big or small he was. Or whether I'd just want to walk away and say, 'I'm leaving that [part of my life] where it is, in the past.'''

He has had surprisingly little counselling. Just a few sessions when he was first released and about four times over the next two years. He didn't really feel he needed it, stiff upper lip and all that. Indeed, there is something quintessentially English about McCarthy. Born in Barnet, Herts, he still comes across as a sturdily middle-class chap, from his blue Oxford shirt and brown checked blazer to the signet ring he fiddles with when he is nervous. He reminds one of a well-liked Classics master at a minor public school.

He sees his brother Terence often - their father died in 1994 - but relationships tend to suffer, he says, when people he comes across hold an unrealistic expectation of him. Indeed, what made the years after his release even harder was dealing with what people thought he should be: seeing him as "heroic" when he felt like an "ordinary little bloke". It was, he says, like a bizarre and painful case of overnight stardom.

Public scrutiny added extra pressure to his relationship with Jill Morrell. They split four years after his return, though he insists their parting was little to do with the goldfish bowl of publicity. Did he ever sense that people felt cheated out of a fairytale ending?

"Yes, at the time people probably were thinking, 'Oh, there's going to be a lovely happy ending', which is fair enough. But once it was known that we'd just split up, the press didn't hassle us at all. I never got the feeling they were thinking, 'Gosh, you could have done better than that, mate.' Let's face it, most people have been through relationships that didn't go the distance." .

He is, of course, profoundly grateful for the years Morrell devoted to his cause - making sure he wasn't left "buried". "She invested so much on my behalf in my absence," he said. "I will never forget that." And yet the only time during our interview when he shows any irritation is when I ask him when he last spoke to Morrell. "Oh God," he says wearily. "That question. I think it was a couple of months ago - around Christmas time."

Are they still in regular contact? "Not to a huge degree. Though I think we'll always be friendly."

It is perfectly understandable that being linked to someone you stopped having a relationship with nine years ago - a love-life fossilised in amber - might rankle, especially if you are happily married. McCarthy wed former BBC Books editor Anna Ottewill in 1999. They met while working together on his book collaboration with comedienne Sandi Toksvig, though Anna now works as a photographer.

McCarthy once described himself as having been "marooned" in his late 20s thanks to his years in captivity, mummified not only with parcel tape but also in his emotional development. "I'd forgotten I said that," he smiles. "But, in retrospect, that makes even more sense now. I was 29 when I went in and there was an element of coming home and the world having moved on. Friends had got married, some were having children. I'd been dealing with incredible stresses, strains and responsibilities but they weren't in the real world. So coming back, it did take a lot longer than I realised to actually find my feet again."

Now, finally, he seems at peace. When interviewed a couple of years ago, McCarthy admitted he and Anna were in a dilemma about having children. "I think we are decided now," he grins. "We'd both like to have children. We've got over the hurdle of thinking, 'We haven't done this yet, we haven't done that.' Particularly because I'm bloody 47! Anna's 10 years younger, so we should be all right on that score but, really, I think it's time to get on with it. I do feel I want to have what I've seen some of my friends have. It seems such a wonderful thing. I haven't met anybody who said having children was a bad idea."

For McCarthy, watching Blind Flight made him realise how far he's progressed in the past 13 years: "Yes," he says, "it did stir up old emotions. But even though you remember the sharpness of a particular moment, you know it's not going to leave you depressed or agitated. You can come out of the cinema, hug your wife, and realise you really have to let it go."