A new sense of confidence aided by financial growth throughout Europe caused a ''white robe of churches to be spread

A new sense of confidence, aided by financial growth throughout Europe, caused a ''white robe" of churches to be spread across the continent. It was time for serious ''thank you'' offerings, in the form of human approximations of the Holy City which had been predicted by Revelations, a City which "shone with the glory of God''. But, the passing of the year 1000 demonstrated that Armageddon - although as inescapable a fact as the nuclear bomb in the late 20th century - was not worth holding one's breath for. A monk at Cluny, writing three years after the great non-event, said: "It was as if the whole world, having cast off its age by shaking itself, were clothing itself everywhere in a white robe of churches."For what was to follow the non-appearance of Armageddon was the biggest building boom in Western European history. There were still some visionaries, such as the southern Italian, Joachim, Abbot of Fiore, who reckoned the year 1260 was the second favourite: in that year, he wrote, the final epoch of human history, the epoch of "the new spiritual order", would begin with a bang. Theologians who studied the Book of Revelation tried hard to fill the gap by calculating it - and by far the most obvious date was the year 1000.

THE YEAR 1000 came and went with a huge, collective sigh of relief across Europe. Most people had expected that the end of the first millennium (the first, that is, by Christian calculations) would be accompanied by the end of the world. The Bible had confidently predicted the end - complete with a detailed description of the battles, disasters and plagues which would precede the descent of the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, from the skies But it had somehow omitted to mention the exact date. Brian prefers to stand back, direct and produce.In the meantime, Brian's company is bringing over $50 million worth of film and television production into this country, so we must all hope that he and Charlie Rivkin succeed. The Muppets and Britain go back a long way, as the Oxford Union welcome to Kermit proved "My popularity surprised me 30 years ago," Kermit says "I don't understand why things are popular, really I just try to keep a pretty level head about it It gets me a good seat at restaurants." !. It may be that his strengths lie in bringing the best out of other people. His father loved to do the puppets' voices (he was the original voice of Kermit until his death).

He has also directed a feature film, Muppet Christmas Carol (with Michael Caine as Scrooge), which was a commercial success, and is working on his second. But has he the raw talent to create that most elusive of commodities, a lasting slate of original characters?Wisely, Brian has kept together the puppeteers who worked with his father. No one expects him to be exactly like his father, but he knows the company is looking to him to provide all-round inspiration and energy. According to some of his colleagues, Jim was a more canny businessman than is often realised and he only kept the company small because he preferred it that way. "Jim used to blow my socks off," remembers Martin Baker, Henson vice-president of production "He would pull apart a contract having only glanced at it. He was always driven by the creative idea, but business considerations were never far behind. Brian has picked up many of the same genes."Brian has already proved himself a capable businessman, guiding the firm through a difficult time.

It strengthens their position as a major producer of a major product."The next five years are going to be important for Brian. They are older and wiser, no longer children of the Seventies, and they want to join the big time themselves."The Sony deal is an important step to becoming a big player," says Michael Garin, of Furman Selz Inc, a Wall Street investment firm " Up until now they've been on a picture-by-picture basis A multi-picture deal like this is a real coup. The deal with Sony, however, is a medium-term partnership rather than a merger Perhaps the Henson family has learnt its lesson. The puppets' operators almost always did the voices."It was really a mismatch of cultures," Brian remembers. "There are too many reasons why the deal didn't work." One obvious reason is that Jim Henson Productions was non-hierarchical and sprawling, whereas Disney was an intricately tiered organisation, much like Sony is today.

There was talk of using different people to do the puppets' voices - out of the question as far as Jim was concerned. Some claim it was because Jim had lost his own creative nerve after a series of failures, others say he wanted to give Kermit and Miss Piggy the sort of immortality enjoyed by Mickey Mouse. Whatever his reasons, he began to regret making the approach when he discovered how Disney proposed to manage the Muppets. Clifford was, however, created when Jim was alive.The new partnership with Sony, engineered by Rivkin, has also surprised many people, given the Henson family's poor track-record of dealing with large corporations.