GOOD grief, Godfrey's up for a gong!

More astonishing still, Yorkshire MEP Godfrey Bloom stands to win an award for promoting... women's rights.

Not bad for a man who whipped up a media froth last year by saying he represented "Yorkshire women who always have dinner on the table when you get home". Women remember with particular fondness his remark that "I just don't think they clean behind the fridge enough".

A few months on, and he has been nominated for the Equal Opportunities Prize for International Women's Day.

Hmm. Isn't that a bit like crowning Steve Galloway the "Motorist's Champion"?

Not according to Polish MEP Urszula Krupa, who nominated Bloomers. "Godfrey has spoken out highlighting specific areas of employment legislation that mitigate against the employment of younger women," says Urszula.

"He has also spoken on the radio, and in the press, calling for the repeal of legislation that he considers unfair on younger women."

Bloomers was abroad when the Diary tried to contact him and was routing all his calls through to Selby, where he lives. So we couldn't get his reaction.

Mind you, Bloomers is a mass of contradictions. After all he is a member of the UK Independence Party, dedicated to removing Britain from Europe - and yet is a sitting European MP.

STILL with politics, the Diary is sad to report that the split in the York Loonies is getting worse. In fact, the city branch of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party is close to civil war.

York artist Andy Hinkles, who goes by the chucklesome nickname of Milladdio, has confirmed he wishes to replace Eddie Vee as the loony candidate in the general election.

If Eddie does not step aside - and he has no intention of doing so - Andy will stand against him for the New Loonies.

Having been hit with an inflatable club by the founder of the party Screaming Lord Sutch in York 20 years ago, Andy feels touched by destiny. And he claims his quiff is longer than Eddie's.

A change of candidate might bring back one man to the fold: in an email to us former Loony voter Bob Bob writes: "I have read with dismay over the recent years the sensible letters Eddie Vee writes to your paper.

"I feel he is in the wrong party; where are his loony ideas? The most recent of his letters about teenage drinkers - how sensible will he get?

"Get a grip Eddie and start to be a proper loony: you are letting down the whole party and us supporters."

Instead of an unseemly public squabble Andy suggests a man's way to settle the loony dispute: a custard pie fight in the Tap & Spile car park, Monkgate.

Incidentally, we were misled by the caption on Milladdio's loony postcard, published a week ago: so the man we said was John E Morris was actually former patron Lord Bicester.

THE Diary's man in Portland Street, Chris Wood, has an answer to our question: on what criteria is York Minster regarded as the biggest Gothic cathedral in Europe?

"The answer is volume," he writes. "What you have to do in the case of religious buildings is to imagine immersing the structure in a giant glass of water, and then measure the volume of water it displaces.

"They used to do this centuries ago until an unfortunate incident at

Waltham Abbey - which was built out of Alka-Seltzer - led to the Dissolution of the Monasteries..."

Updated: 10:36 Monday, February 21, 2005