YORK Opera have staged a dramatic double dig at the council's evening parking charges during their production of The Mikado this week.

In the finest traditions of Gilbert & Sullivan, the company is having a satirical swipe at the powers-that-be during their stay at the Theatre Royal, which concludes tomorrow night.

As mentioned in Martin Dreyer's review on Wednesday, the company have altered the libretto of one of the show's most memorable songs, Ko-Ko's List, to express widespread disdain at the introduction of evening parking fees in York.

Not only that, members of York Opera are avoiding the car parking charges themselves with a wily ruse.

"We are boycotting the car parks," says York Opera's Wendy Binns. "We have made alternative arrangements with a kind benefactor.

"We pay £40 a year to York Opera: £4.50 a night parking for seven nights would add more than £30."

Director of The Mikado, Pauline Marshall, said the car park charge reference - sung by John Soper as Ko-Ko - was a huge hit.

"Last night the show stopped at that point," she told the Diary. "There was such a roar of approval.

"If the musical director had gone on the words would have been covered by the applause."

Here for you to sing at home, or at the next council meeting, are some of the words, on parking and more:

There's the idiots on York council

who've put up the parking fees -

they've brought us to our knees,

those blasted parking fees!

Big Brother house contestants

and all game show panellists,

They'll none of them be missed -

I've got 'em on the list.

And warmongering statesmen

of a transatlantic kind

Such as - what d'ye call him - thingamebob and likewise - never mind...

They'll none of 'em be missed.

AN e-mail arrives purportedly from former England striker Stan Collymore.

Stan, if it is him, had read last week's report about his favourite hobby, dogging - where people watch each other having sex in their cars. The activity had reached Bishop Wood car park near Selby, we revealed.

In an email to the Diary's friend Simon Eldritch, "Stan" wrote: "Like councillor John McCartney's quote in the Evening Press, responding to the closure of the dogging-infested car park, I too wondered where else this perverted activity is going on when I heard of the sad closure of these leisure facilities.

"Thankfully, the Evening Press comes to the rescue in our hour of need and helpfully informs us that 'a second car park, near the middle of the forest, remains open'.

"Without your help I don't know what I would have done with myself. Ahem.

"Now come on, Evening Press, let's get together a 'Save Dogging Campaign' because, as Mr McCartney goes on to say, 'it's a real shame that a handful of people are ruining it for everybody else'.

"I assume he means those responsible for its closure."

IF you see someone staring intently at your number plate, it is either a traffic warden or the sender of a strange postcard to land on the Diary's desk.

Addressed to the "Trivia Section" of the Diary - what else is there? - it carries an old picture of the "blessed Margaret Clitherow Oratory, Shambles, York" on the front.

On the back are some personalised numberplates "recently seen in York".

These include G8 POO and 16 OLD and, on the Senior Driving School, S5 SNR.

The author of the postcard? "Autolycus". All most strange.

Updated: 09:35 Friday, June 18, 2004