SO one of our southern social superiors is not travelling to Royal Ascot At York because the racing festival has "gone tacky" this year.

Well we have a question for Lady Muck, also known as Viscountess Gormanston. If the June meeting is so tacky, how come Coleen McLoughlin is on her way?

The epitome of class and style, the future Mrs Wayne Rooney is already planning her outfit for the York spectacular, according to Alexandra Shulman, editor of fashion bible Vogue.

Coleen is featured in a six-page fashion spread in the magazine. Gone are the jeans and T-shirts she wears in all those paparazzi photographs favoured by the national tabloids. Instead she poses in designer clothes including an Alexander McQueen black cocktail dress and an Yves Saint Laurent jacket.

"She wanted to buy the Saint Laurent outfit to wear to Ascot for Ladies' Day," reports Alexandra.

We can hardly wait for her arrival. No doubt a Burberry limousine will disgorge the delightful Coleen along with her beau, Wayne, sporting Union flag shinpads over his white tuxedo trousers. It is a moment which will surely upstage the Queen's procession.

That's certainly one in the aristocratic eye of Viscountess Gorman-ston, who felt compelled to organise a Ladies' Day at Epsom in Surrey rather than sully her soul in the soot of the north.

She also reportedly said that those gathered in the Royal Enclosure at York "might find themselves standing between some transvestites and the Queen".

Such remarks would appal her father. Before she married the Viscount, she was plain Lucy Fox, daughter of actor Edward Fox.

The great grandson of a Yorkshire steelworker, he told the Daily Telegraph last year that tracing his family history is "a healthy corrective to silly snobbery".

Perhaps he should enrol Lucy on a genealogy course.

SOON after our revelations about accident-prone snooker champion Steve Davis cracking his nugget on beams at the Merchant Taylors Hall in York, we learn he has had another mishap.

In the World Snooker Champion-ships, Steve lost in the quarter finals to outsider Shaun Murphy, who went on to stun sport by lifting the trophy this week.

Shaun could hardly believe he had beaten Steve, his childhood idol. But he got a grip in time for the post-match photos. Too much of a grip in fact - the overwrought outsider grasped his hero so hard for the official handshake that he broke Steve's knuckle.

GOOD to see Tory leader Michael Howard on the ball. He would love York City to be promoted as "a reward for the supporters who fought so hard to save the club and Bootham Crescent" he told the Evening Press yesterday.

Bootham where? Has this champion of private enterprise not heard of KitKat Crescent?

HE was never keen on Bishopthorpe Palace, and now we know why.

Former Archbishop of York David Hope is loving his new role as a parish priest near Ilkley. A modest vicarage is better than a palace where, he tells an interviewer, "there was no such thing as privacy. I was always afraid of going for a shower because you never knew who you would meet on the stairs while in your dressing gown".

Could anyone who did meet Father David in such circumstances kindly get in touch...

Updated: 09:21 Thursday, May 05, 2005