THE DIARY: Tequila, cider, whisky, advocaat - never again

With it being Halloween, I go to see The Blair Witch Project - the movie, I mean, not Cherie's court case. Claims that "this is the film that terrified America" only reinforce my belief that the Yanks are an impressionable lot. Am bored stiff. I am the scariest thing in the cinema.

Drive to Yorkshire. Well I don't, Murphy the manager does. Sample the delights of Julie's Pantry and pay over pounds 12 for something calling itself shepherd's pie which looks like the contents of a colostomy bag. I'm opening a car showroom in Bradford tonight and starting a six-week run in the musical Annie, kicking off at the Grand Theatre, Leeds. I like Yorkshire. Leeds has a fabulous nightlife, great shops and I get to stay in digs in a lovely village called Saltaire.

Open the garage, chat to all the regional managers, do a little turn on the makeshift stage, feel like a dancehall hostess. Go home, have a bacon buttie, go to bed.

TAKE BUSTER, my dog, to the vet's. He's had mange, he caught it off the foxes - I don't know how because he's got the mange in a very strange area. Go to the Grand for a technical rehearsal. It's a truly magnificent venue - out front. My dressing-room, however, looks like the kind of place you would keep sick cattle. But, what the hell, that's life in the theartre dahling. I've been very vocal about the conditions an International Sex Kitten like myself has to endure.

Do the evening show: full house, goes very well, get mobbed in the street afterwards. The mounted police are called and two pensioners are crushed in the melee. A nice police officer tells me they haven't seen the likes since Gracie Fields arrived to publicise her new film Sing As We Go. I'm sharing digs with Andrew Kennedy, the young man who plays my evil brother in the show. Of course, the rumours are rife but there's really nothing in it. Home to bed, as Pepys would say.

TWO BLOODY shows today. I hate matinees - hate them. It's not natural to be doing this kind of thing at two o'clock in the afternoon. Matinees always attract the "professional autograph hunter". They never go and see the show, they just hang around outside the stage door all day, all night, expecting you to sign half a dozen newspaper clippings, magazine covers and various items of soiled apparel. Today's little lot have had everything off me bar a urine sample and the way I feel they're gonna get one.

Had a lie-down between shows. The management thoughtfully provided me with an ex-army-issue camp bed. Lay in the dark for half an hour with my mangey dog lying on my chest listening to Radio 4. Why does everybody on Radio 4 talk so posh? The only time you hear a regional dialect is when they have those plays with someone playing a drug addict. Liverpudlians are always car thieves, pushers or a comic turn. However, I have discovered that The Archers is a more effective sleeping tablet than anything available in Boots, and it's free. Do the second show. Go home, have a can of lager, a bacon buttie, a good wash and bed.

TWO SHOWS again. Sick to death of it. Life would be easier on Tenko. After the second show go to the casino. Lose pounds 50 and sulk all the way home. Andrew won pounds 200. I hate Andrew. Have a can of cider, a sausage buttie (we've run out of bacon) and a good wash. Bed.

TWO SHOWS again. Trying to compete with the noise of fireworks outside the theatre. It worries me that my local newsagent's is selling more gunpowder and high explosives than could be found under a terrorist's bed. Buster's having a nervous breakdown, and so is every other dog, cat and budgie in the neighbourhood.

The local kids and a few moronic adults are building a bonfire right outside my flat window. It makes me a little uneasy, probably because I was burnt as a witch in a past life. Decide to stay in a hotel in Leeds for the night. Have a few members of the company back for drinks. Drink three minibars and then send down for more booze. I'm gonna regret this by tomorrow's matinee.

I WAS QUITE right, I feel and look like death warmed up. I'll never drink tequila, cider, whisky, port, advocaat or Babycham again. Lie on my camp bed between shows. Am just nodding off into a coma when all the orphans in the show burst into my dressing-room, blow a whistle and scream "We love you, Miss Savage". Thank God for Valium. Do the second show. Feel a bit better now that I've lined my stomach with corned beef hash and onion gravy.

Travel to Manchester after the show as I'm going to Liz Dawn's birthday party (Vera Duckworth from Coronation Street). The taxi driver turns out to be an old friend who I haven't seen since he took me to Liverpool Magistrates' Court 15 years ago (I got off). Consequently, I ended up in the Press Club, whereupon a slimy little toad of a man slithered up to me and said he was a freelance journalist from the Sunday Mirror and that they were doing a huge expose and would I co-operate. Well, dear reader, I won't repeat my reply. Hope there is an expose - I love it when the press prints racy things about me. Claims of drugs, prostitution, illegitimate children and loose men always gladden a girl's heart when she's lying in bed with her head full of rollers drinking her Ovaltine.