SURELY the most embarrassing scenario a taxi driver could face is having to be push-started to pick up a fare.

Exactly that fate befell a hapless cabbie at York Railway Station on Tuesday night, just as the busy 10pm GNER service from King's Cross was pulling into the platform.

As is common practice in the taxi rank under the portico at York Station, this driver-for-hire switched off the ignition during a lull before the GNER storm. That was his first mistake.

He then briefly left his car, incidentally a 16-year-old model which has clearly seen better days, to engage in some banter in the cab firm's office.

With the line beginning to move as the first rail passengers emerged, our hero hot-footed it back to the rank, only to find his car wouldn't start.

In desperation, not one but two sets of jump leads were hauled from the boot and the bonnet was popped open. Alas, to no avail.

When all else failed, five fellow drivers were summoned; the helpers reluctantly abandoning half-full coffee cups to push their red-faced colleague to his position.

By that time he was second in the queue, engine running in the nick of time.

This comic scene was played out in front of an increasingly bulging - and aghast - line of would-be fare payers.

You can only imagine what went through the minds of those poor souls who had to watch as their intended chariot was jump-started before their very eyes. WE can only hope they weren't going far.

Were you that cold-start cabbie in distress? If so, could you contact the Diary to put our minds at rest, and reassure us that you got home safely? Send an email to diary@ycp.co.uk

There's the good, the bad and the ugly - and that's just the city's parking attendants.

So here's a rare tale... of a York traffic warden who actually took time off from dishing out tickets to help a damsel tourist in distress yesterday.

Her cash card had been swallowed by a city centre money machine and she turned to one Barry Sellers in the queue asking in broken English for help. He directed her round the corner into the bank but minutes later our hero traffic warden came along, heard a beeping from the machine and saw her card coughed out. Mr Sellers told him who it belonged to and took the warden into the bank to point her out.

Feeling all warm and rosy after his good deed, Sellers bade the girl and the warden farewell, turned the corner into Fossgate, and saw... another parking attendant attaching a ticket to a tourist's car.

Oops! Love can do funny things to the heart and mind. An elixir of love might even send people off the rails. Like the Diary's correspondent who yesterday told us Clive Goodhead's production of Donizetti's The Elixir Of Love was being performed later this month. When he comes back down to earth, our mistaken informant will realise the production was staged last week at York's National Centre For Early Music - and won a favourable review from this newspaper.

Updated: 09:36 Thursday, May 25, 2006