"IS there something in the water in Newbridge?" First Minister Rhodri Morgan, who has built up a reputation for his off-the-cuff remarks, took this reporter by surprise when he posed that question.

But it all became a little clearer when Mr Morgan explained that, like Newbridge-born billionaire Terry Matthews, entrepreneur Huw Price-Stephens, of Yes Television, which is creating 200 jobs in a £23m scheme in South Wales, is also from the former mining town. Mr Price-Stephens, chief technical officer with Yes Television, is the technical guru behind the revolutionary digital interactive TV.

Mr Morgan said: "What do they put in the water in Newbridge? There must be something. "First we have Terry Matthews and now Huw Price-Stephens, who are both from Newbridge."

Yes Television is creating 210 jobs in Cardiff, where it already employs 100 people. Mr Morgan said the hi-tech jobs, paying salaries of around £30,000 a year to employees in their twenties, were very welcome. He said the move proved that the M4 corridor for hi-tech jobs creation now extends over the Severn Bridge and does not, as a report recently suggested, end in Bristol.

He said: "Yes Television is establishing itself as a world leader in digital interactive television and is on target to become one of Wales' finest blue- chip companies.

"Yes Television is exactly the type of knowledge-based company we need to encourage and grow in Wales and up to 210 highly skilled, high- quality, new-technology jobs will be created in Cardiff over the next four years."

Huw Price-Stephens said: "Yes Television is a fun, exciting and fast-moving team. No-one else in the world is doing quite what we do."