Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 21, 1994                   TAG: 9405210043
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PEOPLE

During the May 6 show, Goldthwait stood up in the middle of his interview with Jay Leno and set his chair on fire. It was doused with cups of water.

Goldthwait used a lighter and lighter fluid to ignite the chair, the city attorney's office said. "His actions created a significant danger of harm to himself and others."

Goldthwait was charged with unlawfully causing a fire and possession of a flammable substance or device with the intent to burn property. Each count carries a maximum $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Arraignment was scheduled for June 23.

Now that he pays income tax, Prince Charles is watching over his overflowing coffers like a hawk, and he is said to be in a royal snit over official accounts that reveal that his estranged wife's shopping therapy is running up a hefty bill.

Princess Diana is spending more than $4,500 a week of Charles' not-so-hard-earned dollars on looking and feeling mah-velous, the British tabloids say. Diana is said to have spent, from March 1993 to 1994:

$137,400 on clothes.

$33,420 on beauty treatments.

$14,070 to coif her hair.

It's never too late, said 78-year-old Mona Freye, who graduates today with a degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley.

Freye's education was interrupted as a high school freshman in New York City when her father died. She quit school and got a job selling hosiery to help her mother and two siblings.

While her formal education lapsed, Freye kept reading and following the arts. At 71, she recalled, she "got up one day and said, `I've got to get my high school diploma. The time has come.' "

Freye contended with arthritis, a broken arm and illness that dragged college out to six years. A scholarship covered fees and the school's disabled students' program provided volunteers to take notes when her arthritis was severe.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn left his Cavendish, Vt., home Friday for his first trip to his Russian homeland in 20 years.

Solzhenitsyn's wife, Natalia, said the Nobel laureate flew to the eastern city of Vladivostok for the start of a trip across Russia "to acquaint himself with the current condition of our homeland."

Considered Russia's greatest living writer, Solzhenitsyn came to America after his 1974 expulsion from the Soviet Union for exposing the workings of its police state in his novels.

Melanie Griffith has been living apart from Don Johnson and plans a move to the Big Apple. The New York Post says the actress, who filed for divorce from Johnson in March but withdrew the motion days later, has had her own apartment in Aspen, Colo., for almost four weeks.

Johnson entered alcohol rehabilitation when Griffith canned her divorce action. The couple, twice married to each other, has a daughter, Dakota Mayi, 4.