THANKS to Kenneth Barnes, who has put me right in my effing place.

Responding to the Diary's suggestion that there is more bad language heard in York than aired on TV, he emails: "Tell that to the Marines!"

"I have heard far worse filth on telly, including on female afternoon programmes, than I ever heard during my two-year stint for Queen and country," the Catterton commentator adds.

"I stay up late but it has reached the point where there is very little I

can watch on public telly after 11pm."

He concludes: "All the foul language on telly and in films is totally gratuitous and only goes to prove the superiority of the actors of yesteryear who achieved the required dramatic effect without the need for 'reality'."

Perhaps we need some new swear words, which can lend an earthy veneer to screen dramas without causing offence. The Diary will put some thought to this if you promise to do the same.

SO York men win the sack race. We are faster lovers than fellas from any other city. Those hardy, nautical Bristol types topped the stamina league, supposedly lasting 44 minutes. The average was about half an hour. York chaps could only scrape together ten minutes.

But does that make us lousy lovers - or just more honest?

GOOD news for all fans of the unexplained. No, it's not another fleet of UFOs flying over Filey, but the reopening of the Museum of Psychic Experience.

Two-hour private tours start again from tomorrow, in preparation for the Stonegate attraction's public debut later this year. Groups of 12 will be led through "mind-opening experiments, providing a personal encounter of psychic power and potential".

The museum, backed by York astrologer Jonathan Cainer and Uri Geller, has changed its tour since the Diary tried it out last May.

But the 650-year-old building's no different, and it is worth the tour to see inside.

Anyone with a healthy curiosity about the power of the mind should enjoy the trip.

THE museum has its own ghost, as confirmed by blind clairvoyant Sharon Neill. Which we only mention to link to York Ghostfinder General Rachel Lacy.

We wanted to share the joke Rachel told us, prompted by the Evening Press's trip to Birmingham to see the Big Wheel.

Best to say this in a West Midlands accent: A man is walking along the canal bank when he sees a little boy crying his heart out, so he stops and asks him why.

Between sobs, the boy tells him "Me mate's fallen in the canal."

The man pulls off his jacket and shoes and dives into the filthy water, but is unable to find the child. He shouts to the boy on the bank: "Are you sure your friend is in here?"

To which the local lad replies: "Friend? It's the mate out of me sandwich that fell in."

ONE to file under the heading: "Human nature: faith restored in".

The Evening Press published a letter yesterday from a reader whose pushchair was stolen. By 5.15pm, a woman who did not want to be identified had rung to offer a replacement. What a terrific bunch you are.

Updated: 08:36 Friday, March 04, 2005