WE were surprised to learn that Philip Hayton had quit the BBC this week over a frosty working relationship with a colleague.

After all, this is the man who weathered far stormier conditions in his first broadcasting job off the North Yorkshire coast.

Hayton has left his role as BBC News 24 anchorman with six months of his contract to run, citing "incompatibility" with his colleague Kate Silverton. Thus stalls a broadcast career which began with Radio 270, the pirate station once moored off Scarborough.

Forty years ago this week Scarborough entrepreneur Don Robinson announced that Radio Yorkshire was on its way (hastily rechristening it Radio 270 after learning the original name had already been taken).

Keighley-born "Phil" Hayton wrote to the station asking for a job and was taken on as newsreader on £8 a week in spring 1967. He also did some presenting after, he claimed later, one of his stir-crazy colleagues decided he couldn't stand ship's rations any longer, jumped overboard and started to swim for shore.

Phil was one of the hardiest members of the crew of the Oceaan 7, Radio 270's ship moored off Scarborough and Bridlington. On a particularly tempestuous day all his colleagues were waylaid by seasickness. As Phil was the only one able to take to the microphone he broadcast all day single-handed (perfect training for BBC News 24 in fact).

When the pirate station was closed down on August 27, he joined Radio Leeds beginning the 37-year-long BBC career which has just ended.

Our favourite Hayton moment? On air he once turned the Turkish Kurds into the "Kurdish Turds".

DON'T feel too sorry for Phil, sorry, Philip. According to the US-based Leading Authorities Speakers Bureau, the ex-newsreader's "corporate clients include the International Herald Tribune, Unisys, Texaco, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, the British Government, ICI, Peugeot, the Ocean Group, etc." One of his hobbies is "investment".

He's gone a long way from "Your swinging boat on the North-East coast..."

OUR final visit, for the moment, to York Minister in the company of guide John Robson.

It was another incident involving one of the younger visitors which led to "the only time I have ever had inspiration in the Minster," he tells the Diary. He was showing a party the cathedra. This, he explained, is the throne retained exclusively for the Archbishop of York. A little boy "took that as a challenge", ducked under the rope and headed for a sit down on the sacred seat.

Ignoring his parents' attempts to call him back, "he was almost on the chair. Then I had my inspiration." John hailed the boy and asked for his help. "It's a very old building. I'm not saying that Robin Hood ever came here, but it's just possible he might have done," he told him. Then he added that not even Robin's priest, Friar Tuck, would have been allowed to sit in the cathedra.

That was enough to stop the boy and leave the Archbishop's seat untouched.

MINSTER guides are expected to learn answers to the 150 questions most commonly asked by visitors. The second most popular query is: "what's the difference between a minster and a cathedral?"

Answer: a minster is a church set up by a missionary priest, while a cathedral is established by a bishop or archbishop.

So what is at number one? The most frequently asked question by those gazing in awe at the majesty of the Minster is... "Where are the toilets?"

Updated: 11:21 Thursday, September 29, 2005