For more than 30 years, Gurdus, 58, has been listening in to army frequencies while scanning radio and television channels from around the world as part of his work for the Israeli media, all from his tiny apartment in Tel Aviv.

The office is half Aladdin's cave and half control tower, a labyrinth of television screens, radios, remote controls, electric wires, speakers, model airplanes and photos of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush stuck on the walls.

At the moment, his sattelite dishes on the roof and his long-range antennae are "all turned toward the Gulf," says the renowned media figure who speaks fluent Hebrew, English, Arabic, French, Russian and Polish.

He listens to the Americans above all in order to be up to the minute on the bombardments.

"It goes on all day," he says with a sweet smile. He says the coalition forces refer to the Iraqis as "kebabs" or "bad cows."

The Iraqi army, whose wavelength he cannot pick up in the evening, is less interesting, he says.

"You can only pick up snippets. You sometimes hear a soldier say he's come under fire and that's it."

No scoop for the moment, unlike in his glory days: in 1990, he was the first to report the Iraqi army crossing into Kuwait, the move that has inexorably led to the current showdown.

Gurdus was born to the job.

His father, a correspondent for the British paper the Daily Mail, listened to east European radios from Warsaw and was later to become the first correspondent for Agence France-Presse in Tel Aviv.

"The AFP bureau was in our apartment. At an early age, he gave me a love for the work," Gurdus said.

Gurdus junior went on to create his legend as he picked up the turmoil rocking one of the world's most volatile regions decade after decade.

In 1974, he was the only person to register a distress signal by Archbishop Makarios, toppled from power by a coup d'etat in Cyprus and thought to be dead after seeking refuge on the island.

"He was calling for help, I heard him, and he was saved," recalls Gurdus.

In 1976, he was the first to hear that a Palestinian cell had hijacked an Air France jet that had taken off from Athens and was heading for Entebbe in Uganda.

He was also first to hear that Germany was dispatching a special commando team in 1977 to rescue a Lufthansa plane hijacked in Mogadishu.

His boss at Israeli television, unable to resist the scoop, broadcast the information five hours before the commandos struck: the German government scrambled its diplomats to ensure the news did not come out anywhere else.

Those were the great years. "I was crazy, obsessed with scoops. I worked day and night, it was like a drug," says Gurdus, married with three children.

Despite his worldwide firsts, he has not left Israel in 20 years and never takes more than one day off at a time.

"I have the impression of being everywhere. The world seems so small here," he says.

In 1995, though, he says he decided to put his feet up and take it easy. Now, wearing his tartan slippers, he rarely puts in more than 17 hours a day.

But the multiplication in the number of television channels plus the advent of videophones, has meant more news outlets to monitor.

"These videophones are a real revolution. You never used to see journalists doing live to camera broadcasts during combat," he says.

"I have more and more work and my eyes feel it," he says.

In fact, Gurdus complains of "having a white cloud in front of my eyes" and, much to the amusement of friends and family, wears sunglasses to watch his televisions.

"I need a week without TV," he laughs, without really meaning it. As he speaks, his eyes are fixed on a screen showing a fixed-camera shot of a Baghdad street with a sandstorm blowing down it. cls/jh/tm

WAR.WIRE