THE Diary is always on the lookout for a money-making scheme, and Graham Taylor has inspired us.

Not the hapless ex-England football manager but Rev Graham Taylor, the vicar from Scarborough who has just sold the movie rights for his first novel Shadowmancer, for potentially millions of pounds.

There is a lot of money in film deals. So we have entered into highly delicate negotiations to sell the rights to the Evening Press Letters Page to a major Hollywood studio.

This could be the biggest blockbuster of the decade. Imagine it. York is at war. Gang leader Mike Usherwood, played with otherworldly determination by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is fighting to ensure the car rules the streets.

He is faced by Paul Hepworth (Joe Pesci) and Graham Horne (Russell Crowe), both prepared to ride roughshod over their enemy on their push-bikes.

What neither side realises is that they are being secretly manipulated by two women who both wish to become the all-powerful Queen of the Road: the feisty Ann Reid (Catherine Zeta Jones) and the wilful Tracey Simpson-Laing (Helen Hunt).

Robert de Niro stars as PR Willey, a man with a mission to clean up the chaos. He is in love with the divine Margaret Lawson (Juliette Binoche), but her heart belongs to mysterious pressman Julian Cole (John Malkovich).

Judi Dench is a cert for another Oscar for her overpowering portrayal as Ida Mary Goodrick, who leads an incursion from Tadcaster. And for light relief Jim Carrey is Dale Minks. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, it will make a mint. The Diary, all rights reserved.

ON Radio York, a reporter was talking to two Ripon brothers who have a vintage car. They are, he said, "renowned for their Victorian cars, some of which are more than 100 years old". Well fancy that.

YORK is officially no longer crap.

Like the rest of the media, the Diary is obsessed with tenuous anniversaries. And they don't come more feeble than this.

It is exactly two years since we last received word on the future of the website, www.yorkiscrap.org.

Those with an exceptional memory might recall that this page was set up by disgruntled revellers in 2001. They wanted to dance till dawn, but it wasn't happening in York.

"If enough people out there help us, then there is no reason why we can't bring York into the 21st century," the site stated. "If you sit back and do nothing, then 2am at Ziggy's will probably be the best you'll get."

The creators went on to set up a hall of shame, with your diarist's picture the only one ever displayed. That was because they took umbrage at being called "scaredy-cats" in a brilliantly mature analysis.

Then silence. The last we heard, in March 2002, the web page was to be developed further. "I will make a real effort to launch the site again," emailed Chip in a response to our inquiry. But this week we tried to track it down, and it has vanished. We take it that this means York's beggar-snogging night life is no longer considered rubbish.

Mind you, the site's disappearance could be due to something else.

"It was supposed to be a cheeky way of making a serious point with an aim to develop it into an open forum and possibly get people talking," Chip wrote in his last email.

"I wish I had more time to take it a more seriously but I have to work on: www.scarboroughislessthanideal.org."

Updated: 11:02 Tuesday, March 30, 2004