THE hairs on the back of Jo's neck stood up when she stepped into the lift of a swish New York hotel to be confronted by three cool dudes in dark suits.

She stood with her back to them as beads of perspiration ran into her mascara making her blink.

This was the third day of her swish four-day break in the Big Apple and here she was alone in a lift with three men.

Then one of them barked: "Hit the floor."

Jo didn't hang about. She flung herself, face-down, to the floor of the lift pleading: "Take my bag but don't hurt me, please!"

Gales of laughter broke out from the dudes behind her.

They were holding their sides. They were rolling about, they were creased up.

"When I said 'hit the floor' I meant press the button for the level you want to get out at," said a tear-streaked face which Jo recognised but could not place.

Fast forward to the reception desk the following day when Jo went to pay her bill.

"It's already been taken care of," smiled the desk clerk, "Mr Murphy paid your hotel bill."

Still the penny hadn't dropped with Jo.

"Which room is he in, I want to thank him," pleaded Jo.

"You will have to speak to him through his agent," said the desk clerk.

"Agent? Agent?," said Jo as she began to realise...

"You mean to say that was Eddie Murphy who told me to hit the floor in the lift?" she blurted.

"Elevator, ma'am," corrected the amused deskman. "And yes, it was Eddie Murphy."

The story gets better. When Jo returned to her home in the North of England she received a letter from Murphy asking if she would let him include the "hit-the-floor" line in one of his movies.

"You bet", she told my spy, "whenever you're ready, Eddie!"

FOR crying out loud. York has a levitating town crier? Loud-mouth John Redpath stopped me in town the other day and whispered mysteriously in my ear: "Want to see me floating on air?"

"I'm up for it," I said, "...if you are up to it."

He was on his way to the York Dungeon where he was to be locked up for charity.

But, obviously, put off by the thought of the ghosts and ghouls lurking in the dark waiting for him, he'd decided to make sure he had an escape route - a pair of floating shoes to lift him to safety.

With a nudge and a wink he led me round a corner for a private demonstration.

"I've got a pair of shoes like that magician David Blaine uses for levitating," he explained in a low voice, slipping off his own silver-buckled footwear and replacing it with the new shoes.

Grabbing a black embroidered cloth, he hopped off round Coppergate looking for somewhere to show off his levitating skills.

He opted for a bench beneath a dripping tree, climbed up and hid his lower legs, but not his feet, behind the cloth. And then - yes, no doubt about it - his feet rose off the bench, four or five inches at least.

He'd obviously not got the magic under full control, because he was wobbling about like nobody's business and looked as though he could end up on his bum at any moment.

So how did he do it?

Unlike crier John, my lips are sealed. All I can say is he rose to the occasion.

HOW'S this for coming up in the world?

When you're on the dole your fortnightly Giro comes in a brown envelope. If you are among those sent to a training-for-work course your Giro comes in a white Royal Mail-franked, 'First Class Postage Paid' envelope.

The York guy who told me this said: "Many of the people on training schemes are only there because, in the eyes of the powers that be, they are officially off the unemployment register, and of course, they don't want to lose their benefit.

"It's just so the Government - doesn't matter which colour - can say 'Look, the jobless figures are coming down - aren't we brilliant?"

He added: "To show how daft it all gets, I was told the dole office couldn't leave me without a penny in my pocket. So they posted me a Giro for 10p in a separate envelope to my fortnightly one.

"Strewth, the 10p Giro was worth less than the postage it cost to get to me!"

BILLY the York taxi driver went to Scotland to see his dad last weekend. They were having a pint 'o heavy in a pub near Motherwell FC's ground, Fir Park, next to a couple of German guys of about 24 or 25 years, who were in Britain for England's Wembley World Cup qualifier clash with Germany today.

One of the Germans peered at an old picture on the wall showing the football ground in the early 1940s and some strange little buildings huddled close by.

"What are those things," one of the Germans asked Billy's dad.

"They are air-raid shelters... you know, to protect us from the Luftwaffe," replied the aged gentleman.

The young German looked stunned, puzzled and hurt as he spluttered: "But we never bombed Scotland. Did we?"

"Gizza break will ya?" replied Billy's auld da, "you bombed the height outta us!"

PANIC-STRICKEN, a man shouted down the phone: "My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart!"

"Is this her first child?" asked the doctor, coolly.

"No!" the man yelled, "This is her husband!"

Not many people know this...

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

A shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes.

The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."

No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt".

Almonds are a member of the peach family.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

A cat has 32 muscles in each ear.

An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

Defining moment:

Hollywood is the only place where an amicable divorce means each one gets 50 per cent of the publicity - Actress Lauren Bacall