"IT'S always nice when a new person hands me a dirty glove in the pub."

That is normally the sort of statement to have you checking your watch and scanning for the nearest exit. But not when the speaker is Annie Johnson.

Annie is a York woman on a mission. She is in the middle of a three-year project to collect, log and photograph every lost glove she stumbles upon.

This highly serious assignment began as a joke. Annie told her boyfriend Jon that she could win the Turner Prize by putting a year's worth of discarded gloves between two pieces of Perspex, and calling it modern art.

But Annie, 27, could not leave it there. After all, this is a researcher for the National Foundation for Educational Research in Heslington. "As a compulsive over-analyser by nature, I couldn't resist the temptation to begin logging the lost gloves according to date, time and place spotted," she confessed.

She has transferred all the information on to her website, lostglove.co.uk, which went live last month. It contains fascinating photos of the discarded gloves, as well as a rigorous statistical analysis of these discoveries (now you can see why the Diary decided not to publish this item tomorrow...)

"I got a digital camera last Christmas, so from 2005, all the gloves I've found myself have got 'in situ' photos as well as pictures once they've been cleaned up," she said.

Annie is not on her own. She has recruited a squad known as the Glove Patrol to scour the streets for abandoned handwear.

"Most people who I've told are really into the idea and have voluntarily become involved," she said.

Thrillingly, the 500th glove was found earlier this month - a yellow protective one.

"I'd also like the project to be interactive, so hopefully (and with thanks to publicity like yours) people will begin to reclaim their lost gloves and we can have a 'gloves reunited' function as well."

More from Annie, and our pick of her collection of lost gloves, to follow.

DUE to unforeseen circumstances, plans to reveal the frontrunner to be Republican Ascot figurehead are put on hold till next week. Get well soon, Berwick!

TALK of the now legendary eight-hour marathon meeting at York council had a former Press man recalling a similar ordeal.

Planners recently took from 3 till 11.30pm to reach a decision on expansion plans for the University of York - but at least they were covering new ground.

Ex-Evening Press journalist Mike Chaddock, who now runs an antiquarian bookshop in Scarborough, recalls a meeting at the Guildhall about 20 years ago.

"There were about a dozen people sitting around this table," said the 59-year-old. "They started discussing something, but it dragged on and on."

Discussions on the topic stretched out for well over an hour. But they ended when a council officer arrived for a topic later on the agenda, and asked the chair: "Why are we discussing this again? We discussed it fully at the last meeting and you made a decision on it then."

Whoops! We inadvertently printed an old Wolf cartoon yesterday. And they say the BBC is bad for repeats... Apologies.

Updated: 09:23 Thursday, March 31, 2005