ROLAND Gift, the Fine Young Cannibals singer of She Drives Me Crazy fame, returns to the Grand Opera House stage in York tonight for the first time since starring in Romeo And Juliet.

He cannot recall the date precisely - "it must have been 14 years at least", he says - but he does remember the last night of the Hull Truck production, when Saturday was not all right for fighting.

"I remember it because there was a fight back stage. In the play the guy playing Tybalt has a swordfight with Mercutio, and each night he was supposed to nick him but he was always drawing blood for real," says Roland.

"That night, the guy playing Mercutio had had enough of it. I was carrying on Romeo's speech about how sad it was that Mercutio was dead, but I could hear Mercutio off stage saying 'Oh no, not again'.

"Tybalt turned and said: 'What are you saying?'

"So there they were, two actors being precious, having a catfight. It all ended up with Tybalt calling the police."

AND they say humour doesn't travel.

The second York Comedy Festival, now underway, is not only entertaining those within the city walls.

Organisers have received an email from Germany, whose people are renowned for its sense of humour, revealing the international face of the jollity jamboree.

"I hope you will understand what I try to tell you although my English isn't so good," writes Natascha Scherer, with a grasp of our tongue which puts your diarist's CSE Grade 2 German to shame. "The reason for writing this mail is that my little sister Katharina (eight years old) found one of your comedy festival balloons in our garden.

"After showing me the balloon I found the comedy festival homepage with your address. It was quite surprising to see that the balloon really comes from York in just one day.

"We live with our family in the south-west of Germany (Saarland) near the border to French so your balloon arrived here after a long long journey (about 800 kilometres)."

Which just goes to show that the festival really is a gas. In any language.

READERS may recall that the Diary sent Prince Charles one of his favourite treats, a Chocolate Orange, to alert him to our fight to Save Terry's.

We have received an encouraging reply, marked "Private And Confidential". In clear breach of the journalistic code we intend to honour that, but are hoping Clarence House will allow us to reveal a little more soon.

TODAY is your last chance to try to vote in the great European election postal lottery. The Diary's Ryedale reader is in touch with his observations on democracy by delivery.

He received no fewer than - wait for it - four postal vote forms. "I was surprised to see that at least two of the forms were addressed to people who moved out from here nearly three years ago," the voter, who wishes to remain nameless, revealed.

"Initially I was going to return them but after I'd looked through mine, seen all the stuff about getting bar codes the right way up and realising I'd have to find someone to witness the damn thing, I threw them all in the bin."

Later that evening, he recounted this tale in his local to find "at least three other people had done the same thing with theirs".

Write to: The Diary, Chris Titley, The Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN

Email diary@ycp.co.uk

Telephone (01904) 653051 ext 337

Updated: 09:23 Tuesday, June 08, 2004