TV JOURNALIST George Allegiah, satirist Jeremy Hardy and popular poet Wendy Cope are among the celebrities being lined up to take part in the 2005 Devizes Festival.

Patrons of the festival will also be able to learn how to tango, meet a famous children's author and see John Schlesinger's 1967 film of Far From the Madding Crowd, which was largely filmed in Devizes.

Mr Allegiah, who was a BBC foreign correspondent for many years before fronting the channel's main news programme, will be speaking at the town hall on Tuesday June 7.

The following evening Jeremy Hardy, a regular on Radio 4's News Quiz and TV's Have I Got News For You, will deliver his own brand of anarchic humour at the Corn Exchange.

The 2005 festival will coincide with Devizes hosting the annual twinning conference with delegates from twin towns of Mayenne, in France, and Waiblingen, in Germany, coming to the town for a weekend of discussions and events.

Wendy Cope, whose bittersweet but very funny verse on male-female relations has made her the best-selling poet in Britain, returns to the festival to read her verse and answer questions at the town hall on Saturday June 18.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company, which took the West End by storm with their hilarious condensing of the plays of the Bard of Avon, is scheduled to perform at the Corn Exchange on Tuesday June 21.

As ever, there is a varied programme of music, including classical, jazz, blues, folk, boogie woogie, soul and rock, as well as modern dance, theatre, the annual archaeology lecture and tours around Wadworth's Northgate brewery.

Festival chairman, Stephen Brazier, has reported that the 2004 festival, with 35 ticketed events and 13 free fringe events, was the biggest programme the festival had ever offered, although, for the first time, the festival accounts had ended up in the red.