IT'S a rollercoaster ride being an actress. One moment you are starring in one of the most-watched programmes on television, the next you are flogging your wedding dress over the Internet.

Glenda McKay will be well remembered by Emmerdale fans for playing sexpot Rachel Hughes for ten years. Rachel had a series of affairs and was ultimately chucked over a cliff by her psychotic boyfriend, Graham Clark.

That's soaps for you.

An Evening Press interview with Glenda to coincide with her departure from Emmerdale in May 1999 revealed she was bringing out a fitness video and courting York-based quantity surveyor Anthony Kelly.

The next thing we know, the Leeds-born actress was pictured in Hello! magazine last summer, marrying Kenneth Cumberland, "props manager on Heartbeat".

Then nothing. Until this.

"Hi, I am Glenda McKay and I used to play Rachel in Emmerdale," begins the entry on Internet auction site Ebay.

"My wedding was featured in Hello magazine in July last year and I should have been wearing this beautiful dress but, sadly, it was not ready in time."

In a selection of pictures on the web page, Glenda models the "wonderful ivory duchess satin halter neck" dress.

"I would love someone else to get the chance to wear it on their big day. It was designed and made especially for me by a company in Yorkshire."

It cost her £1,500. But anything connected with a celebrity has added value these days, so naturally the ex-soap siren is selling the dress for, er, £500.

Mystifyingly, the deadline passed with the number of bids recorded as zero.

So if you are a size 12, 5ft 2in bride-to-be with a 36B chest and no dress, you know where to go.

THE Diary moves seamlessly from Glenda to gasometers. Last week we published extracts from a letter written by the mythical Sir Arthur Cresswood, calling for York's gas holder in Layerthorpe to be made the centrepiece of a National Gasometer Collection.

An email then arrived from leading York conservationist Alison Sinclair. (Alison definitely exists, as anyone from the York planning department will tell you).

She was involved in re-classifying York's listed buildings a few years ago. "We did then consider including the Layerthorpe gasometer on the York list, on the grounds that so many gasometers were being disposed of that they were becoming a rarity," she writes.

"However, powers superior to me concluded that our very own gasometer did not qualify for preservation and celebration as the best of Britain's gas-holding heritage.

"Which brings us back to Sir Arthur... I think I should be put in touch with him!"

If he contacts us again, Alison, we will endeavour to set up negotiations.

TALK about student hardship. As we reported on Friday, one York undergraduate is living in unbelievable conditions - a riverside penthouse flat bought for him by mummy and daddy.

If it weren't for the £18,500 he hopes to make renting out his hovel to racegoers during Ascot week, he would hardly have enough for text books.

Mind you, the apartment is only his "show home" and he doesn't use it very often.

The Diary is confident of speaking for many readers when we wish the young man everything he deserves next year.

Updated: 09:14 Monday, April 12, 2004