It's makers say their video guide to Yorkshire is an appealing souvenir. But it actually resembles an 80-minute entry to You've Been Framed.

Viewers who enjoy camcorder clangers will love this unintentional addition to the genre. Chortle - as Clifford's Tower is renamed Clifford Tower! Howl - when York Minster is called York Cathedral! Guffaw - as the pictures go out of synchronisation with the commentary!

This leads to a particularly comical moment when the narrator invites us to enjoy "an example of one of many of the fine churches in York", over footage of the Golden Fleece. The public house may inspire devotion among its regulars, but the refreshment offered is not usually of the spiritual kind.

Even when sound and vision coincide, the howlers continue. Presenter Beryl Carswell is unable to make up her mind on the pronunciation of Eboracum. And she mangles the name of the internationally-famous Viking Centre, calling it 'Jaw-vic'. Perhaps we should be grateful that the city itself is not renamed 'Jawk'.

This may seem harmless, but turning our city into a laughing stock is a serious matter. Certainly bosses at the York Tourism Bureau are not smiling. Chief executive Gillian Cruddas is right to label the video "amateurish". A presentation as error-strewn and poorly produced as this can only send out the wrong messages. Tourists from across the world visit York. Showing this film back home will do little to encourage their friends to visit.

No doubt officers at the Inward Investment Board will also take a dim view of the video. It hardly helps their attempts to portray York as a professional, efficient city.

Any business man or woman who happens upon this work will gain an entirely misleading impression.

The video makers' efforts to justify the many mistakes are not convincing. Their admission that "we are not the BBC" is self-evident.

They plea in mitigation that the film is a few years old but "the information was correct at the time we made it". Not quite. The Cathedral Church of St Peter has been known as York Minster since the present building was erected, and possibly dates back to the Anglo Saxon Church that preceded it.

It is disappointing that York traders stock the video - made, incidentally, by a Lancashire firm. But its popularity shows there is a market for such a video.

The best answer is for tourism bosses to produce their own film souvenir. Then, they could ensure that the contents were accurate and that York was portrayed as they would wish. With backing from a private firm, the official video guide would soon become a local best-seller.

see NEWS 'York video comedy of errors'

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.