Appeal Sounded For Bell Ringers

Needed: Quasimodo.

Or anyone with stamina and a good sense of rhythm.

Britain wants to ring in the millennium with a national peal of bells on Jan. 1, 2000.

The call is going out for 10,000 volunteers to ring the country’s 1,200 unused sets of chimes, most of them in churches belonging to the state Church of England. Some have been silent for a century.

The country’s 40,000 existing ringers aren’t enough for the planned festivities, said Harold Rogers of the Central Council of Church Bellringers, which has overseen the ringing of Britain’s 5,000 sets of bells since 1891.

“So in January, we launch the ‘big push’ to recruit some more, with adverts on TV, radio and in the press,” he said.