THE highlight of a very different social calendar got underway last night.

It would be stretching credibility to call York Beer Festival the Royal Ascot of the working man's drink, but it is a fine event in its own right.

The Evening Press-sponsored drinkathon at the Priory Street Centre, has a ghostly theme, and beer connoisseurs will be downing some fiendishly good ales over the course of the festival.

And at the end of a night's session, they might well see an apparition or two.

Updated: 10:24 Friday, March 28, 2003