DON'T sniff at York's whiffs. They are just as much a part of the city as lupins and Dame Judi Stench. Sorry, Dench.

So says reader Linda Wallis. She is kicking up a stink about the aroma moaners after reading last Friday's Evening Press.

It was then that we reported how people living on the pong side of the tracks to York's sugar beet factory were not best pleased about the Boroughbridge Road bouquet.

"It's like being locked in a room with someone who has got rampant diarrhoea," one man commented.

In an email, Linda hits back. "I am sick of people moaning about 'the smells of York'," she writes.

"I was brought up in York during the 50s and 60s. York was full of smells. Diesel from the carriage works. Toffee from Cravens, mint chocolate from Rowntree's, orange chocolate from Terry's and the offending sugar beet from the factory.

"People who have come to live in this wonderful city and the youngsters cannot imagine what it was like to live with these smells.

"The smells you get now are nothing like what they were.

"European legislation has reduced the smells considerably by forcing these companies to install high filtration and venting systems at a great cost.

"We were a great industrial city with little unemployment. So stop the moaning, if it has become intolerable, move out.

"We are Yorkies, and proud of our smells." Blimey. It just proves one man's reek is another's odour cologne.

WHAT are the best and worst smells you have ever inhaled in York?

Let the Diary know, and perhaps we can ask those clever smellologists at the Jorvik centre to recreate them.

YESTERDAY we reported how North Yorkshire church leaders were furious with the Department of Culture.

The Government ministry is sending out cards with no mention of Christmas, for fear of offending people of other faiths.

This excuse strikes the Diary as daft. If anyone sent us a Diwali card or a Yom Kippur cracker we would be delighted, not offended.

Anyway, the actions of one York firm will no doubt delight the collective clergy. They have not merely sent out Christmas-themed Christmas cards, but recreated the nativity scene on the front.

Staff at Fishergate creative consultancy Stone Soup posed for a typically unique take on the first Christmas for their card.

A member of the crew's two Weimaraner dogs, dressed in fur coats and false ears, play the part of the animals in the stable.

And the three wise men are not carrying the traditional gifts. They bear a gold can of San Miguel beer, a paperback copy of Frankenstein and a Blur CD.

TALKING of clergy, it was good to see a former Evening Press columnist on the box the other day. It was none other than Peter Mullen, aka the "Talk of York".

Any TV appearance by someone once of this parish is inspiring.

But Peter achieved a rare accolade: his old programme, the Epilogue, was named as one of the 100 Greatest TV Moments From Hell, as voted by Channel 4 viewers.

Write to: The Diary, Chris Titley, The Evening Press, 76-86 Walmgate, York YO1 9YN

Email diary@ycp.co.uk

Telephone (01904) 653051 ext 337

Updated: 09:42 Wednesday, December 17, 2003