BEING a living leg-end as York fork-lift driver Mick Pugh undoubtedly is - "Remember the blessed trinity, Pugh, Piggott and Pele..." he always tells anyone daft enough to listen, usually me - can have its drawbacks when you're nudging 60.

It was his 57th birthday last Sunday so after a few slurps at lunchtime, he went home, had some scoff and went upstairs for a couple of hours' kip before nipping down to his local, the Waggon And Horses, in Lawrence Street, with his lovely family where hosts Gerry and Stan had laid all sorts of nibbles. Peanuts on sticks, sweet and sour Oxo cubes, iguana tail - that sort of thing.

Mick woke up, got washed and shaved and put his working clothes on thinking it was 7.30am Monday morning.

When he went downstairs his wife Anna was watching Coronation Street.

Bleary and blinking, Mick said to Anna: "What's Coronation Street doing on this early in the morning and why is it still dark?"

Anna burst into laughter 'cos it was still Sunday evening and the birthday bash down the Waggon was still very much on.

Mick doesn't know I know this... so don't tell him.

I don't want him to think I'm taking the Mick out of a living leg-end.

- A handbag?

Lady Bracknell's famous line from Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance Of Being Earnest, must have flashed across Peter Wallis's mind when he found one in a trolley outside Sainsbury's Foss Bank emporium.

The clinical hypnotherapist dropped in at the store after visiting his son. Being a good citizen, he took the bag back into the store where, for security reasons, a guard and Peter went through its contents together.

It contained a full wallet, a grocery receipt cheque book, and... a letter bearing Peter's surname and his son's previous address at Halifax Court.

Bag owner Mrs Woods had crossed out the name and placed the envelope in her bag, intending to redirect the letter.

Peter puts finding the bag down to destiny.

Amazingly it had been in the trolley for more than half an hour before Peter found it.

Mrs Woods rang Peter to thank him and tell him she, too, thought the address business was... very, very spooky.

- MY old pal Dr Rock of Radio York fame rang to shout at me the other day. Not that he had anything to shout at me about, he just likes shouting.

Anyway, he wants me to urge you to listen to his Saturday show on Radio York at 7pm tonight when he interviews Chris Jagger and his father Joe.

You may recall both have a famous relation called Mick, he of Rolling Stones fame.

Dr Rock said he was expecting Chris to be a bit of a big-head given his familial proximity to rock royalty... but not so.

"Chris is a better singer and musician than Mick," opines the good doctor, "and his dad Joe, now 89, is a smashing fella.

"Joe's dad used to be a headmaster at a Sheffield school and was once invited to play cricket for Yorkshire," says Dr Rock.

It also transpires that Joe didn't want his son Mick to go into the pop business because, "I thought rock wouldn't last."

Stone me, Joe!

You read it here first, but hear all about it tonight on Radio York.

Thank God that's over... I can feel my hearing coming back.

- THIS appears in the latest York Business and Professional Women's Association newsletter:

"From the first of next month, Brussels introduces standardised Euro-CVs allowing only metric units and Euros.

The CV forms will have the honorifics Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms/Dr pre-printed in all 17 standard EU languages.

Completed CVs must be translated into the language of the country holding the current presidency of the EU and French. Non-compliance can result in a hefty fine and any job offer being invalid.

A Translation Agency based in the pleasant, but simple town of Poisson d'Avril, France will check sample CVs.

Accuracy is essential. The Chief Translator translates as: "A bad computer translation she enough not well good is to be!"

Eurobabble rules, nokay?

- JUNK mail is the pits at any time. But when the junkers get it wrong it just adds insult to injury.

Mike McCulloch, a retired 60-year-old of Bishopthorpe, York, sent me this:

"I enclose a communication received this morning stating that I have reached Stage 5 of a competition (never having previously heard of this organisation, this somewhat surprises me) and attempting to sell me lotto numbers or some such nonsense. As this is plainly junk mail, I was just about to consign it for recycling when I noticed a grave and unforgivable error, which you will notice on the address.

To put York in Lincolnshire, is an insult not to be tolerated by any self-respecting Yorkshireman - no disrespect to the inhabitants of lovely Lincolnshire.

It certainly does nothing to encourage one to fall for their advertising! I write this letter as a salutary reminder of the trash to which one is subjected these days."

I'm with you all the way to bin on that, Mike.

Only this morning I was talking to Postman Mick, who's being doing the job around York since before the wheel was invented. He confided: "If it wasn't for junk mail, many of us we be out of a job!"

Then handed me some junk mail to prove the point.

- EVER wondered where the term standing ovation came from?

Well, on this day in 1743 during the first London performance of Handel's messiah, George II rose to his feet at the beginning of the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.

He was followed by the rest of the audience, and so the standing ovation tradition was established.

Deserves a big hand, what?

Updated: 11:45 Saturday, March 23, 2002