The numbers pleased the City and the share price breathed a huge sigh of relief, jumping 23.5p to 354.5p.Management proudly boasted that Safeway had reached its pounds 15 sales per square foot target a year early and that it was increasing its share of higher-spending family shoppers which all the supermarkets are targeting. In addition, the proportion of customers who use Safeway for their main shop, as opposed to their secondary top-up option, rose from 23.6 per cent to 25 per cent last year.There were also encouraging signs on margins, which rose by 0.1 percentage points, and on further technological initiatives such as self-scan- ning. This is to be rolled out to 165 stores by the end of the current year.Of course it should be remembered that on many measures Safeway is still lagging behind its rivals. Asda has pushed it from third to fourth in market share in the last two years. In sales per square foot, Safeway's pounds 15 figure compares to pounds 20.75 at Sainsbury pounds 19.85 at Tesco and pounds 16.40 at Asda.And Sainsbury's and Tesco's proportion of primary shoppers is well over 30 per cent.For historical reasons, Safeway has poorer locations with fewer large out-of town-stores, while the perception lives on that its prices are more expensive.All this appears to counsel caution about the group's prospects.

After all, there has long been an argument that the big four supermarkets cannot all prosper at once.That, however, may no longer be true. There is growing evidence that it is the division two supermarkets such as Kwik Save, Iceland and the Co-op which are struggling.Safeway's shares have bucked negative sentiment before: they virtually doubled between 1994 and 1996. Since the warning, they are again looking oversold and could start to make progress. On forecast profits of around pounds 440-pounds 460m they trade on a forward rating of 12 Worth holding.. Sir David Simon, BP's chairman, is leaving the company to become Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe in Tony Blair's new government.It is possible that the arrival of a Labour government has stimulated a change in thought.

I think he enjoys life, I really do."That view is shared by Benn Wett, who has spent three months on a documentary about Ali as he is now that will be shown next week on German television. People say that within its confines Ali remains happy, intellectually sound."When something catches Ali's interest, the response is immediate," Bingham said "For a moment suddenly he rolls back the years. Then pop! I'd stick him with a jab."Partly because it was unusual to hear Ali swear (he first checked to ensure that the ladies were out of earshot), the thing I most remember Ali saying was: "I done fucked up a lot of minds."Sadly, the probable long-term effects of that and subsequent contests (as well as risks taken in sparring to be confident of withstanding the heaviest punishment) has long since occupied our attention.This week, I went along to an exhibition of photographs by Ali's long- time friend Howard Bingham, coinciding with tomorrow's London release of When We Were Kings, a vivid, Oscar-winning account of the most dramatic event sport has ever known.For those of us who rode the jet stream of Ali's stupendous progress, sights of him in full flow, talking up a storm, soaring from one flight of fantasy to the next, are bound to bring on sadness.Motor senses numbed by the onset of Parkinson's Syndrome make him tread carefully now, the measured steps symptomatic of a condition surely caused by too many head punches. The clamour of momentous achievement had yet to descend from Kinshasa and the only other people present were Ali's bodyguard, a Chicago policeman Pat Patterson, his aunt Coretta Clay and the other cook Lanna Shabazz, who was fixing a meal for him. Foreman had landed some heavy punches, but apart from a small bruise beneath the right eye, Ali was unmarked. Dressed in black slacks and matching black shirt, he was sitting back in an easy chair with his legs stretched across a low table. That alarming decision to fight Foreman off the ropes brought to a glorious conclusion, he said.

"There he was swingin' away and all the time I was talkin' to him sayin': 'Hit harder, George That the best you got? Harder, sucker, swing harder You the champion and you gettin' nowhere'. David Walsh yesterday received a four-week ban for failing a drug test. The 22-year-old, who went close to landing the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Barton Bank in March, has been stood down on Saturday until 16 June. Bookmaker Sonny Purcell yesterday lost his Jockey Club appeal against being warned off due to a debt arising from SP Racing Bookmakers Purcell has until 2 June to clear his debt..