WHEN James York put a classified advertisement in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph to sell computer software, he did not expect to be contacted by a customer thousands of miles away.

But long-distance shopper Jim surfed the paper's pages on the Internet in his Arizona home and discovered that James, from Clayton-le-Moors, was selling just the item he wanted.

"He rang at about 11.30pm when I was just about to go to bed," said James' wife.

"He said he was Jim from Arizona and wanted to buy something we were selling for £10. I just laughed at him and told him the phone call would cost more than that.

"He said he had read about it in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. I just thought, hang on, how could he read the Telegraph in Arizona?

"I thought he was just being funny."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.