SO what's this big wheel like then? For an answer the Diary turned to York ex-pat Annie Wright, a regular contributor to our letters page from her home in Brum.

"I see York may be getting Birmingham's old ferris wheel," she writes.

"It was so popular here that when the original wheel moved to Manchester, Brummies replaced it with a new Swiss one with air-conditioned gondolas.

"The original wheel came from Paris and has a Gallic look about it.

"Brummies even took to the wheel's initial problems - where a French commentary extolled the views of Paris - as adding to the exotic experience."

Not everyone enjoyed it. "One person I spoke went up at night. She said the open gondolas were cold and draughty and swung as the wheel revolved."

Annie declined the chance to go for a spin. "I spent eight years working in a tenth-floor Birmingham office overlooking the Bull Ring.

"Looking at the city's street network, car park collection and even the excitement of its famous inner ring road can pall in that time.

"Being a true-born Yorkie, I could not bring myself to pay £5 for another ten minutes of those views.

"But it's good to see that York's tourists may soon be clamouring to get sky-eyed rather than just pie-eyed."

WE like to answer readers' questions here at the Diary. Mrs May Dupname wrote to us with this query:

"Dear Diary,

"York-born Dame Judi Dench has long had a strikingly short hairstyle. Was this always the case, or was there some key moment when she adopted the look?"

Well, May, exhaustive research has found the answer (we didn't just happen to come across it while looking up something else).

It all happened 40 years ago, as this extract from Mr Nobody's Diary, published in the Evening Press on January 28, 1965, explains.

"York actress Judi Dench has had most of her hair cut off - in the cause of the theatre.

"She is playing that most disreputable character Dol Common, in the Oxford Meadow Players' production of The Alchemist.

"The producer, Frank Hauser, explained: 'I told her that that sort of woman had close-cropped hair, so she's had it cropped, which is very obliging of her.'

"The revival of the Ben Johnson play was presented at the Oxford Playhouse last week and is at Cambridge this week.

"Incidentally I learn that Judi - daughter of Mrs Olave Dench, of 21 Askham Grove, Acomb, and the late Dr RA Dench - has been invited by Dame Edith Evans to play Juliet to her Nurse in ITV's celebration of the living theatre, The Golden Hour, this coming Sunday.

"She says, 'I have never appeared with Dame Edith in Romeo and Juliet before. It is a tremendous honour to be asked.'"

YORK reader Chris Wood has an observation on an item in the Evening Press a week ago.

"The report on GNER's revised cleaning operations puts a new impetus on the need 'to reserve one's seat'," he emails.

"Among improvements announced will be 'steam cleaning toilets at Kings Cross'. Hell's teeth, that sounds painful: what's wrong with good old-fashioned bog rolls?

"As a regular on GNER services, I'm used to having tears brought to my eyes, but this is one customer service too far..."

PERHAPS we should have realised that Allders was in trouble. Signs in the Coppergate store promising 60 per cent off "zillions" of items does smack of desperation. My dictionary defines "zillion" as an indefinitely large number. If it's bigger than a trillion (a million million million) that's a lot of bargains.

Updated: 09:17 Friday, January 28, 2005