I'm home to stay

It was like a manic moment from You've Been Tango'd.

There was our very own TV star cum eternal panto dame Berwick Kaler playing host to international rock superstar Suzi Quatro in York - and he refused to take her out to dinner until he had dragged her round B & Q. "I needed some floor brads - 6cm ones, mind - and B & Q is the only place I can get them," confessed our Berwick, currently wowing television viewers in the wacky Tango advert.

"Suzi wanted to go somewhere posh, but I insisted it was B & Q first for my DIY supplies," he said.

Trouble is, when they got to the check-out to pay for his brads (nails) the computer would not accept his cash card.

He had apparently just bought a £1,200 wide-screen TV and gone over his daily spending limit. Now isn't that a way to impress a girl. Still, they had the queues in uproar as Berwick tried to cough up for his nails. And he insisted Suzi did not step in to pay.

Good job they had just waved off Alvin Stardust as well as the Rubettes who had also popped over to York for the day to say hello after appearing in a seventies music extravaganza in Leeds.

But why did Berwick need DIY supplies in York in the first place? All right, me babbies me bairns, he's finally come clean - he's bought a house in York. He has kept on his London 'hovel' - that's like a shovel but smaller - and he's not saying where his new property is. But if you hear a demented neighbour walking round and round his lounge muttering "I love this place, oh yes I do," you'll know Mr Kaler has moved in next door.

As British spies were sticking on fake beards and dying their hair after allegedly being outed on the Internet by one of their sacked former colleagues, there was anger, fear and loathing in York's Roman Baths ale house.

Sipping a flagon of the foaming and earwigging at the same time, I heard from the next table this shrill outburst from a bottle blonde bimbo with the novel, yet thought-provoking, answer to the problem.

"The Government should send in MFI and sort the bugger out." Ikea what you say... they would soon get him fitted up.

Talking of howlers, must share these six priceless quotes from desperate Dan Quayle, former Vice President of the United States:

We are ready for any unseen event that may or may not occur.

This president is going to lead us out of this recovery.

I stand by all the mis-statements that I've made.

If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.

I have made good judgements in the past, I have made good judgements in the future.

It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. This is the man who says he plans to run for President next year! Imagine his finger on the button? It could happen, after all, they elected a B-movie cowboy.

London one York seven. This the result of a national survey into the top ten places in Britain most visited by foreign tourists. I can understand 1,100,000 visitors putting Edinburgh in second slot but can't think why 490,000 would put Birmingham in fourth place while this sceptred city attracted 380,000. If the world had piles they'd be in Brum.

One York curry freak is birybarmy. After a night on the neck oil he rang his local tikkaway ordered his favourite gob-scorcher and asked for it to be delivered. It was.

But he had fallen asleep and when he stepped out of his front door next morning there it was... in its little brown bag showing only marginal seepage. He said he was going to complain to the trusting take-away. "Well, it was stone cold!" Makes you want to give up the ghost.

Ace of signs Paul Kirkwood of Green Hammerton is eagle-eyed when it comes to spotting off-beat legends.

"As superfluous road signs go the one on the A59 westbound to Harrogate takes some beating.

"It says Welcome To North Yorkshire... OK so far. But underneath it there's a new sign which announces The Home Of Yorkshire Tea. "Well, I never," says Paul, "I thought it came from Cornwall. Whatever next? Scottish Provident effectively sponsoring the whole of Scotland this way? No, the Scots have more pride than to allow their identity to be crudely appended by commerce."

The Coastliner coach was already late when it pulled up in Stonebow to pick up passengers to Tadcaster and Leeds. Then it was delayed further as cars clogged the roads after York races.

On its way down the A64 it unexpectedly pulled into a petrol station to top up with diesel. The driver raced to the pump then belted to the kiosk with £10 to pay for it as the weary travellers aboard looked at each other in disbelief.

A journey that normally takes one York-Tadcaster commuter about 45 minutes at that time of the afternoon took one hour and ten.

"There was a McDonalds right next to petrol station but happily the driver gave it a miss."

A Coastliner spokesman said: "He was a new driver and the tank had not been topped up the night before."Fuel gauges on buses are not reliable anyway.

"He thought he might not make it back to Leeds so he rang me and I told him to get more diesel.

"As it happened he would have made it back, but we didn't want to risk it.

"We reimbursed the driver."

The answer is simple, next time you go coach-to-coast cancel the milk and papers, inform your next of kin and take a drum of diesel.

15/05/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.