A Bradford Methodist minister is demanding to know why the city has been missed off the map by the main Irish phone company.

The Reverend Geoff Reid was idly flicking through a phone directory in a Dublin hotel room when he was shocked to discover that Bradford did not appear in the list of UK dialling codes.

And he became cross after finding that much smaller places, including Bognor Regis and Stonehenge, were on the list, while England's fourth largest metropolitan district was not.

He has now written to the phone company, Eircom, to demand an explanation.

He discovered the error while on a short break in the Irish capital.

"It was chucking it down with rain and the wind was howling around the roof so I picked up the phone directory and had a look," he said.

"I was amazed to find Bradford had been missed out and as soon as I got back, I wrote to Eircom."

In his letter, Mr Reid wrote: "I find it very odd that we should be excluded while you include Barnsley, Bishop's Stortford, Blairgowrie and Bognor Regis, all of which are considerably smaller than this city.

"Even Cowdenbeath and Stonehenge are in your list!

"Bradford has a Premiership football team, a leading Rugby League club, a cathedral and an airport with flights to the Irish republic, as well as a direct coach service to Dublin. It is somewhat larger than the fine city of Cork!"

Mr Reid has not yet had a response from the Dublin-based telecoms company.

Mr Reid added: "There are many Bradford residents who have strong personal and family links with the Republic of Ireland.

"Meanwhile, we live in a city which often suffers unfair media treatment from outside of Yorkshire.

"Whether removing Bradford from the map is deliberate or accidental, we need to be vigilant in ensuring that such omissions are corrected."

A spokesman from Eircom said: "We are concerned that the Rev Geoff Reid thinks we have missed off Bradford deliberately.

"The main reason for it is because there are at least 800 area codes in the UK and we only have room for 215 area codes in the telephone book.

"These are picked at random from certain geographical areas."

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