Bunhill: Bloomer

IT could only happen in England. Sir Lawrie Barratt will be reading the lesson today in the annual Daffodil service at St Mary's Church on his Farndale Estate on the North Yorkshire Moors.

The service will be led by the Archbishop of York, who, in full ceremonial robes, will later join Sir Lawrie and the congregation on the traditional two-mile walk through the daffodils, which flank the river Dove, to the nearby hamlet of Low Mill for tea.

Sadly, though, the homebuilding, helicopter-flying Sir Lawrie, who bought the 4,500-acre estate for pounds 1.5m in 1982, has never been the most popular man in Farndale. He doesn't live there - preferring to stay in Northumberland - and has incurred the wrath of locals by applying to fell four woods in the dale.

His plan was scuppered after the residents convinced the local National Park that the idea was 'environmentally unacceptable'. To cap it all, Charles Scott, a district councillor locally famous for being the father of Selina Scott, went on local TV and accused Barratt of 'asset-stripping'. It could only happen in England.