THE Diary has rejoined the Tufty Club. This organisation was originally fronted by a safety-minded squirrel who guided children through the highway code.

Today, however, your diarist is less fearful of crossing the road and more worried about the clumps of hair sprouting from nose and ears. Tufty is the word for it.

So it was with some interest that we read a flier which dropped through the letterbox the other day.

It was advertising the Mediterranean Barber Shop on Goodramgate, York. As well as standard services such as haircuts and shaves, it boasted "The Flame... which is used to burn the hair off your ears and face".

Was it time to be fired?

"It's a pair of tweezers with cotton wool wrapped around it, like a large cotton bud, and dipped into methylated spirit, then lit," explained the barber shop's manager Natalie Nicklin.

"The flame is swept across the ears. As it singes, it seals the ends of the hair so it doesn't grow back as quickly as when you wax or pluck it."

It's a traditional Turkish practice, carried out by traditional Turk Alex Yilmaz. The barber has 23 years' experience at wafting burning tweezers around men's heads, one and a half years of which have been spent in York.

Apparently Alex will also crack your neck, back and arms. But only if you ask.

Just one tip from Natalie for anyone going for The Flame. "You have to keep your head still."

BEST not to go mad with the hair removal, however. A new survey says that hairy chests are back in favour, especially on men. It's all to do with the new film of Starsky and Hutch, apparently.

More than eight out of ten hirsute he-males told some infantile men's magazine that their chest fuzz made them feel more manly.

And two thirds of women prefer men with a tousled torso. So now you know.

QUITE how to move from these revelations to Ann Widdecombe, we're not sure. But it turns out that the combative Tory MP was seated opposite Press man Matthew Woodcock and York town crier John Redpath on the train yesterday.

Our pair were travelling back from London after delivering the Save The Odeon petition to the cinema chain's HQ.

Ann spent most of the journey fending off calls from journalists on her mobile phone. So when she was buttonholed by Matthew as she went to leave the train, accompanied by a man in full red tunic holding a bell, she responded with creditable aplomb.

The former minister told them she was going to an event in Pocklington before throwing her considerable political weight behind the Odeon campaign.

She even asked John: "Are you cold under there?"

The journey down to London was quite surreal too, the Diary is told. John was clanging his bell, doing card tricks and telling inappropriate jokes on the train (luckily it wasn't the quiet carriage). And on the Tube, this man in his tricorn was... completely ignored by commuters.

WHAT is it about Clifton? York's late council leader Rod Hills represented the ward for many years, and it latterly became known that he was in a relationship with a former prostitute.

Then the Evening Press exposed a suburban brothel at Clifton Moor.

And this week Christine Cranfield was on the front page for running a pornographic website from her home while being a parish councillor for... Clifton Without.

Are Clifton folk all sex mad?

From this safe distance it seems to be a case of "Clifton Within, Clifton Without, shake it all about."

Updated: 10:47 Friday, March 12, 2004