YORK actor Ralph Ineson, the man with a voice so deep it sometimes almost drops below hearing range, is probably best known for his role as oafish, despicable boss Finchy in The Office.

But his distinctive voice has been heard in many places, from doing voice-overs for the BBC to appearing in big-name films.

The actor tells the Diary of a conversation he had with Sean Connery, another actor with a deep rumbling voice. They met on the set of 1995 Hollywood film First Knight.

"I seized my moment and introduced myself," he says. "He turned around and said, I'm Sean', and I thought, well you don't need to say that. He said to me, You've got a bit of an accent there', and I was thinking, well you can talk.

"He asked me where I was from and I told him York, and he said, Ah Yorkie!', and then got whisked off. But whenever he saw me after that he'd go, Hello Yorkie'. I grew about six inches because I had my own nickname from Sean Connery," he says.

"He's one of those people who, however much you say we're all just actors doing the same job and we're just playing different parts, when you're stood next to him, you can't help but go, Wow, it's Sean Connery'."

TALKING about Yorkies, or ex-Yorkies, Terry's chocolates have started appearing in the supermarkets with a vengeance for Christmas. But folk around here have long memories and don't forgive easily.

A lady shopping in Selby Morrisons the other day went gooey-eyed over a box of Terry's All Gold and started to put it in her trolley. At which point, her husband replaced it on the shelf and rebuked her with: "It's not Terry's of York, anymore. We don't want that foreign stuff."

Wow. The Nestl Rowntree workers who travelled to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester to protest about massive job losses thought they felt (justifiably) pretty angry and bitter, but the guy who confronted them after they got off the coach was in a different league.

He delivered a spectacular five-minute rant against the Government, and in particular its Deputy Prime Minister, and his handling of the Millennium Dome.

Diary will not be reporting the nature of his allegations, not least because of the libel laws, but also remembering an occasion when Chief Reporter Mike Laycock answered the phone one day during the 2000 floods to find a fuming John Prescott on the other end.

The DPM had taken time out from his busy schedule to complain about claims by Ryedale MP "John Greendale" that he (Prescott) had been sent to see the flood damage in Malton by the Prime Minister. The gist of his rant was that no one ever told him where to go or what to do, not even Mr Blair.