THE media in the Czech Republic have made Craven District Council's chief executive something of a celebrity.

Dr Gillian Taylor has just arrived back from a week-long stint helping to monitor the country's election procedures, a post which put her in the glare of press and TV cameras.

She was invited to take up the prestigious position as part of an independent delegation of working and retired council chief officers, who were flown into the newly-democratic country from all over the world.

In touring polling stations in the South Bohemia region, Dr Taylor attracted much media attention as part of the only all-women team, being paired with an Italian authority chief.

She said: "We were treated like mini-celebrities. Everywhere we went there was great interest in what we were doing, and we featured on the radio, TV and on the front pages of newspapers.

"It's only the third parliamentary election the country has had since the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and people out there love democracy. It was amazing to see the turn-out compared with the UK. The elections took place over two days, last Friday and Saturday, and there were often queues of more than 30 people at polling booths until the ballot boxes closed."

Dr Taylor was also fascinated to see the geographical make-up of the electorate, with the rural community still clinging to socialist ideals and the younger, urban populous veering to the new right.

She was one of five Brits sent out by the Foreign Office for the six day "Observation Mission" last week.

The 50 or so election monitors were there purely in an observatory and advisory capacity as representatives of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, based in Warsaw.

Due to work commitments Dr Taylor has had to turn down another invitation to accept a more hands-on role in the Bosnian elections in September.

She added: "The Bosnian mission would have involved actually running the elections in the country which has no effective government.

"Unfortunately I can't make that one, but it was a real privilege to be asked to monitor the Czech elections, especially for such a small authority like Craven."

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