A MAGISTRATE and motorcycle paramedic will be fired from both posts after he was convicted of making a malicious 999 call to police about a fellow ambulance worker, a court heard.

Michael Waudby, 50, of Forest Grove, Stockton Lane, York, a paramedic for 25 years and a city magistrate for four years, who is also a member of the East Yorkshire Motorcycle Action Group, denied making a malicious phone call.

District Judge Roy Anderson, sitting at Harrogate Magistrates Court yesterday, heard how the emergency call, made from a public phone at the junction of Melrosegate and Heworth Hall Drive - said to be on a route Waudby could use from York ambulance station to his home - had been the first of a number of incidents involving fellow ambulance worker Kerry Byrne.

Prosecutor Andrew Wallington said as Miss Bryne, a union representative, drove home to Thirsk on May 29 last year, two police cars swooped and she was accused of drink-driving.

A breath test was negative, but the following day a note was pinned to the door of her locker which read: ''Have fun with the pigs, ha, ha.''

Miss Byrne told the court her car tyres had been let down on the day she found the note, and on three occasions in June. And, in September, a car drove alongside her car on the Easingwold bypass and a gun was pulled on her.

Cross-examined by defence counsel John Lodge, Miss Bryne said when police played her the tape of the drink-drive 999 call she had known without doubt that the voice was Waudby's.

Her partner, Amanda Hartland, said she was 100 per cent certain Waudby had made the call.

Voice expert Dr John French, who examined the phone call tape and a recording of Waudby's police interview, said the voice and speech patterns of the caller were consistent with Waudby's in all significant respects.

In evidence, Waudby denied being responsible for the phone call, which had been made at 10.26pm from a phone box he said he had never been inside.

Two minutes before that, he had logged on to the internet at his home, and within five minutes had sent an email to one of the organisers of the motorcycle action group.

He said the first he had known of the 999 call had been when he returned to work from holiday on August 10, to work on a ''beat'' including Malton, Thirsk, Harrogate, Whitby and Scarborough, to face immediate suspension.

He told the judge he had nothing to do with the call, had not written the note or been responsible for the car tyre incidents involving a colleague, and had no animosity against Miss Byrne.

Judge Anderson said there were a number of puzzling aspects to the case, not least who had been responsible for the other harassment Miss Bryne had suffered - but he was satisfied Waudby had made the phone call.

Fining Waudby £500 with £400 costs, the judge said: ''It is a matter of regret that I have to deal with somebody who will lose both his job and his career as a magistrate.''

A Tees, East and North Yorkshire Ambulance spokesman said: "An internal investigation is under way and we cannot comment further at this stage."

York Magistrates Court confirmed that Waudby is a magistrate based at the Clifford Street courthouse.

Updated: 09:11 Thursday, June 16, 2005