In our concern for our own US Y2k problems, we've ignored the terrible problems of our folk brothers in the UK. The following was sent to me recently.

CERTAIN changes to the much-loved song Green Grow the Rushes-O are to be officially unveiled this week. The line "Six for the six proud walkers" will be adjusted so that it becomes "04016 for the 04016 proud walkers". Unless you live in Coventry where it will be the 0316 proud walkers. And, of course, people singing the song in central London will omit the second zero.

These moves are necessary because of the declining national stock of numerals. The telecommunications watchdog, Oftel, announced last week that millions of homes and businesses are to have their telephone numbers changed, in order to have enough codes to go round in the next century; now it emerges that Oftune, which oversees the music business, is facing the same problem.

It is likely that even more changes will have to be made to Green Grow the Rushes-O. By the year 2002 "Three, three the rivals" - the bit where many singers tend to show off - will be phased out, so that people will move from the two lily-white boys straight on to the four Gospel makers.

By making these changes, Oftune will take pressure off Three Blind Mice, which is important for children learning to play the violin. In order to differentiate between sightless rodents and the royal personages in the Christmas carol, the public is being asked, after next June 1, to sing "We 0971(3) Kings of Orient are". There will continue to be three coins in the fountain until a review takes place in five years' time. The title of The Threepenny Opera will be adjusted annually to keep in line with inflation.

The rapid growth in information technology, the increase in car number-plates and the explosion in the use of mobile phones has led to this digit crisis and to the need to redistribute numbers.

To give an example of the sort of problem we face, the Glenn Miller classic Pennsylvania 6-5000 is too close to the bar-code number for a packet of Sainsbury's own brand of prepared fish, so every time the Glenn Miller piece is played a computer in Fife orders 14 tons of cod in parsley sauce to be delivered to the Sainsbury's store in Canterbury.

Oftune, with the co-operation of Oftel, has arranged to change the Glenn Miller work to Pennsylvania the number you have dialled has not been recognised.

Some numbers are in danger of "wearing out" because of over-use. This particularly applies to "two" - because it rhymes so conveniently with "blue", "true" and "you". Oftune has therefore set itself a target to weed 1,500 "twos" from the stock of music output.

To give an example, simply by changing the song to Tea for Fourteen it is possible to release enough twos to wipe out the post-code log-jam for the whole of West Yorkshire. For the moment there are no plans to abolish the two turtle doves from the (renamed) The Dozen Days of Christmas.

Another problem number is "seven" - because of the way it rhymes with heaven. The immediate crisis has been averted by changing the name of the film to Seven Brides for Five Brothers. This will involve the British Board of Film Classification redesignating it as a film for those aged 18 and over.

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is safe for the time being, but is likely to become 6A when Oftune puts through its second phase of changes. However, The Sound of Music must give up its song You Are Sixteen Going on Seventeen because 1617 happens to be the fax number of the British Institute of Numerology.

Obviously, a great many new zeros are required to slot into new dialling codes, so a line such as "I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles" cannot really be justified in the present climate, as it uses up six zeros, which would be extremely useful to telephone subscribers in the Ipswich area. Anyway, "I'd walk a very long way for one of your smiles" has a sort of ring to it.

Similarly, by singing "I was a fair distance from Tulsa", Gene Pitney could be doing a great favour to people keying in the first two digits of the VAT number of a petrol station on the A4.