IN a plea by church leaders to include more religious programming on "yoof" radio station BBC Radio 1, an unusual voice popped up as a representative of the younger generation. Arun Arora, aged 34, was quoted as a "regular Radio 1 listener" who is "due to be ordained in the Church of England".

To back up the church's contention that the station's youthful audience has a "thirst for spiritual input", Mr Arora complained that he had heard no mention of Easter on its news bulletins when listening on Easter Sunday.

He grumbled: "While every other BBC news bulletin made reference to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York, there was no mention on Radio 1.

"You would not have known, listening to Radio 1, what Easter was about, or the fact that Easter was a Christian festival just by listening to Radio 1."

All quite unsurprising really, for what the report published by the Press Association news agency failed to make clear was how Mr Arora occupies his time when not listening to Chris Moyles and co - as press officer to our very own Archbishop, Dr John Sentamu.


It really is just a matter of class

THE saying that birds of a feather stick together really is true, according to a North Yorkshire dating expert.

With the breakdown of the relationship between Prince William and Kate Middleton, Lesley Brewer, who runs the Introduction Company at Brawby, near Malton, says class remains an issue.

She said: "It's neither a matter of class prejudice nor is it snobbery. The issue many of my clients have is that of social differences.

"Prince William and Kate Middleton were from quite different backgrounds - he is royalty whereas her family work in trade running a mail order company - and this has been heavily illustrated by recent comments about Kate's mum. Two people must be emotionally and physically suited, and that can often mean that class will dominate when looking for love."

This is bad news for The Diary. It seems our bitter-drinking, bread and dripping-eating ways are never going to cut it with the type of woman who can keep us in the style we so desperately aspire to.


This itch needs a big scratch

ONE of the compensations for our chief reporter Mike Laycock, as he waited at the Nationwide Building Society to report how he had fallen victim to a credit card scam, was to watch the BBC 24 news reports on a big screen.

Mike was much taken with the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Clearly written at high-speed and live, these were full of daft errors and crazy literals.

The best one accompanied a report about AC Milan's game at Manchester United, which referred to "Italy's Max itching scandal." Presumably intended to refer to the fixing of matches, one supposes this could be described as a corrupted sentence.