FORGET the glitz and glamour of London's Leicester Square.

An East Yorkshire town is set to be deluged by film fans after its cinema scooped a prized preview for one of the hottest tickets around.

Oak House, Pocklington's Civic Arts Centre, is to be the sole venue outside of five cinemas in London to show Antipodean heartthrob Russell Crowe's hotly-tipped new film, A Beautiful Mind, before it goes on general release on March 1.

The exclusive one-off showing, at 8pm on Friday, February 22, will kick off the centre's week-long film festival, which boasts a packed programme of other flicks.

The preview coup was achieved with backing from sponsors The Rocking Horse Shop, in nearby Fangfoss, and through the tireless work of James Duffy, who is working at Oak House on the New Deal employment training scheme.

Janet Farmer, Oak House's manager, said: "We are really pleased to have the film because we are Pocklington and we are nobodies in the film world. We have only got the film thanks to James' hard work. He kept ringing up the distributors and he wouldn't take no for an answer."

Anthony Dew, from The Rocking Horse Shop, which mainly sells rocking horse kits which take about 80 hours to build, said: "Creating a handcarved rocking horse is an art and gives untold pleasure for years to come. Films do the same and I am thrilled that A Beautiful Mind is being previewed in the north."

The film stars Russell Crowe as mathematical genius John Forbes Nash jnr, whose life is thrown into turmoil by undiagnosed schizophrenia.

It won the Golden Globe for best film and is set to be a hit at the Oscars.

When asked if there was any chance Mr Crowe might put in a personal appearance, Janet joked: "I did leave it to James to sort out but even he couldn't manage that. I'll just have to make do with the cardboard cut-out we have been sent."

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Updated: 12:44 Tuesday, February 12, 2002