Regular readers of me column will by now have realised that I'm moody, withdrawn, humourless, and reluctant to say anything at all; but when I do, I'm totally inarticulate.

So read on at your peril. On January 1, 2000, I'm convinced I'm going to wake up and find an alien spaceship parked outside me two-up, two-down in Acomb (they won't be able to park anywhere else in York).

Perhaps I'll wake up with three heads and green skin, instead of my usual headache.

Now why should a scatter-brained uneducated moron like moi think on these thought-provoking rational lines?

Because I desperately want something to happen with the dawn of the new millennium!

I've seen 29 summers (Editor's note: not to mention 52 winters) and I'm desperate for change.

But being a great believer in non-sequiturs, I instantly say to the dog Jessie "do we really need aliens to change our world for us?"

The dog just looked at me as if I was mad and then put a collar and lead on Mrs Fitzackerly and took her for a walk down the A1.

There is too much change for change's sake going on.

Let's not go forward, let's go backwards and learn from our mistakes and put them right, then we can go forward!

Anyway, the first thing I'm going to do when I become Prime Minister of Acomb is go backwards.

I'm going to get rid of the House of Lords and bring in a House of Dames. 'Backwards into the Future' will be our slogan.

Tomorrow night the final curtain of Beauty And The Beast will fall for the very last time.

The audience will leave their beloved Theatre Royal shell-shocked, shattered and severely exhausted.

Every bone in their bodies will ache with the affects of convulsive laughter, their voices hoarse. How can your old Millennium Dame predict all this?

Because it's happened on every last night for the past two decades and it's got absolutely now't to do with all the gifted actors on that stage!

It's got everything to do with the technical stage crew. This is the night they get their revenge on moi and my troupe of strolling players.

The only rule we adhere to is that all the actors must try and remember the original script (always a stumbling block for me) and perform it normally so that Matt Savage (the greatest sound engineer on the planet) and the talented crew can slaughter us with their antics.

It's a riotous evening at the cast's expense, the only sadness being when I burst into tears half way down the M1 when I recall some of the last night gags and scream to passing motorists "why didn't I think of that gag!"

It would be a poor world if we could only be friends with those who share our views.

That goes for comedy, too. I hope we have given the vast majority of our audience a good laugh with our latest offerings.

For those of you out there screaming for new blood in the millennium, you shall get it - I've booked myself in to York District Hospital on December 31, 1999 for a complete blood transfusion.

Don't miss the Millennium Dame's farewell column next Friday.

29/01/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.