1.   Bill Maher hoists a fat folder filled with newspaper clippings on to a virtually empty desk in his new Los Angeles office.

2.   Chandeliers swayed as chunks of plaster and gilt from the ornate Senate ceiling rained down on to empty desks.

3.   I stepped out on to a floor of empty desks set on an acre or more of thick carpet.

4.   Miss Abbot led me through the classroom to an empty desk in the front.

5.   There are one or two empty desks in the office.

6.   An empty desk and bare walls, he said, will have to stay that way for now.

7.   As an arts and entertainment correspondent, she has interviewed, among others, Placido Domingo and Denyce Graves, whose picture hangs above her almost empty desk.

8.   Bill Maher hoists a fat folder filled with newspaper clippings onto a virtually empty desk in his new Los Angeles office.

9.   But he stressed that empty desks alone are not a solution to overcrowding.

10.   But there were empty desks representing children and a teacher their classmates knew would not be coming back.