A WOMAN was driven from her own home yesterday after being inundated with callers trying to order tickets for the England-Scotland match.

Ellen Dineen's telephone number is only a couple of digits different to that of the Wembley box office.

As soon as tickets went on sale for the crunch Euro 2000 play-off

yesterday, the phone at Ellen's home in Hairbell Drive, Hove, started ringing - and carried on all day long.

Football fans calling from the Brighton area were dialling the Wembley number so quickly they were missing out the first couple of digits, getting through to Ellen instead.

Ellen and her husband Tony were receiving calls at the rate of 35 every 15 minutes.

Exasperated, Ellen switched on her answer machine - which was then filled with abusive messages from frustrated fans.

She said: "It was going non-stop. People were so excited when they thought they had got through, but then the answering machine would kick in and we had a few swear words."

The total of messages left soon hit 59 and the machine refused to take any more calls.

Ellen said: "My husband cracked first and left the house and I took the phone off the hook for a while. But it's Tony's birthday today and we were waiting for calls from our family in Ireland and friends."

Tony added: "It's driving me crazy. I tried to phone my son and daughter and all I got was 'Can I have tickets for the football"

A Cable and Wireless spokesman said: "It is a really exceptional circumstance caused by people who are very eager to get tickets getting frustrated when they can't get through."

"The ticket hotline is not run by Cable and Wireless. Unfortunately unless we change Mrs Dineen's number there is nothing we can do."

A spokesman for Wembley Stadium said: "There is nothing we can do from this end, I'm afraid".

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