ONLY a cynic would think York actor Ian Kelsey, who plays Dr Patrick Spiller in Casualty, is getting a bit too big headed for his stethoscope after his remarks in this week's TV Times.

He tells the mag's reporter: "Life's a game of poker, isn't it? Ten years ago, I'd just started drama school in Surrey having spent years working as a vehicle builder on the railways in York.

"You had to spin out three days' worth of work to cover a week. It was incredibly tedious, brain-numbingly boring."

Let me remind you Ian, or Ian Terry as you used to be before basking in the bright lights of fame, your old carriageworks colleagues did that job to keep a roof over their families' heads and food in their bellies.

Someone, more famous than you, once said: "Be nice to people on the way up and they will be nice to you on the way down."

You may now be a TV heart-throb, Ian, but have a heart...

- THERE I was sitting in Strands in York's Walmgate next to a twinkly-eyed old dear getting her blue rinse buffed up when in burst a distraught woman.

She collared the stylist snipping my flowing locks.

"You've got to help me. Look at my hair! I put blonde colouring on it last night and it's gone all wrong," she wailed. "I'm going to a do tonight but I can't go looking like this."

Her barnet looked like an explosion in paint factory.

The obliging stylist agreed to re-do her calamitous colouring, despite fears that her hair could be damaged by too much colour so soon after the disaster.

The shop was closing early that day but the stylist booked the woman in for a one hour 15-minute appointment so she "could go to the ball," so to speak.

Blue Rinse next to me perked up when the woman bounced out of the salon having been assured her hair would be sorted out.

She said to the stylist: "All her hair will fall out and it will be on your head!"

Neither Blue Rinse nor stylist noticed anything amusing is this prophecy...

- IT was her first afternoon behind the bar of a busy York pub in Gillygate and, to be fair, Mary was not the brightest light in the harbour.

Her boss was trying to keep a watchful, caring eye on her as a drinker ordered a Stella Artois then was called away for a moment.

The astonished lone drinker blinked when three foaming pints of Stella appeared on the bar before him.

"I only wanted one," he moaned.

As landlord Stan caught up with the action, Mary told the tippler: "I thought artois was three in French so I pulled three."

She later excused her cock-up by telling Stan: "Well, he was talking posh and I really thought he meant three lagers."

- NOTICE in a railway station in Agra, India: "The time indicated on the timetable is not the time at which the train will leave. It is the time before which the train will definitely not leave."

- A TALE to bring a lump to your throat.

The trend for thick sauces has left Brussels eurocrats in a stew.

An obscure EU body met in Brussels to decide how many lumps a sauce can contain before it ceases to be classified as a sauce and is officially regarded as a vegetable.

Regulation 288/97 states: "The expression 'sauce' does not cover a preparation of vegetables, fruit or other edible plants if the percentage of those ingredients passing through a metal wire sieve with an aperture of five millimetres is, after rinsing in water of a temperature of 20C, less than 80 per cent by weight calculated on the original preparation."

It means that a tinned sauce does not qualify as a sauce if it is more than one-fifth lumps.

This euro lunacy is getting harder to swallow.

- BET they wished they had never said this:

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1949.

"The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no use to us."

Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society 1895.

"There is no reason why anybody would want a computer in their home."

Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp, 1977.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Charles H Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill in the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."

Response to Edwin L Drake's attempts to hire men to drill for oil in 1859.

"We don't like their sound and guitar music is on the way out."

Decca records rejecting The Beatles in 1962.

- A YORK spinster who revels in the name of Scarlet because her surname is O'Hara laments...

"I haven't found Mr Right yet.

"I have found Mr Cheap, Mr Sleazy, Mr Lazy, Mr Sneaky, Mr Dirty, Mr Dopey and Mr Wrong!"

- NO sooner had President Bush suffered his fainting indignity at the hands of a pretzel than a York foodie shop was taking advantage of the commercial potential of Dubya's misfortune.

The very next day, newly prominent on the counter of Newgate delicatessen Lawrie's was a tray of pretzel packets with the message: Go On... Live Dangerously!

Updated: 09:33 Saturday, January 19, 2002