Arts Diary: Will Marriott

"I spent far too much time online, hanging around various sites and searching out ever more ingenious ways of evading reality," says Harris.

"Under a pseudonym, I made a number of online friends, and began to understand how emotionally dependent people can sometimes become on these virtual communities, even though there

can be no way of knowing how honest these avenues of communication are."

Thankfully, Harris did emerge from cyberspace for long enough to complete the novel which is out on March 31.

It was one of the performances of last year, and now Lenny Henry's Othello is to be preserved for posterity.

When Northern Broadsides announced they had cast the comedian in Shakespeare's tragedy, there was a sharp intake of breath, but Henry silenced the critics and won the Evening Standard's Best Newcomer Award for his performance.

For those who didn't manage to catch the production, which premiered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, in Leeds, the BBC has just released an audio version of the play complete with original music by Conrad Nelson, who also plays Iago.

The music business may have found its very own superhero in the guise of Leeds Festival organiser Melvin Benn.

Disturbed by the increasingly devious tactics used by touts, who try to rip off fans first by selling bogus tickets online and then again at the gates of events, Benn is turning to state-of-the-art technology.

"This is extremely clever, organised crime. It isn't just a few Arthur Daley spivs outside a venue," he says.

"They produce counterfeit wristbands and have touts outside the venues knowing that they're going to get several hundred people, who unwittingly bought fake tickets online, turning up who won't get in, but who are going to be looking for a way to get in. So then they have a second bite of the cherry."

Benn is now on a mission to get every major UK festival to introduce electronic scanning systems for "barcoded" wristbands by 2013, to help wipe out the problem.

He's been dead for hundreds of years, but next week the Gristhorpe man will finally get a chance to talk.

The 6ft Bronze Age warrior is a popular attraction at the Rotunda Museum, in Scarborough, and on Tuesday, visitors will hear how he might have sounded, thanks to Dr Alan Ogden of the University of Bradford.

The event is being billed as the first talking facial reconstruction, though exactly what tales the Gristhorpe Man has to tell are being kept firmly under wraps.