THERE have been many "fall guys" since Britain went to war with Iraq. Before the Foreign Affairs Committee, Dr David Kelly himself was told by Andrew Mackinlay MP: "I reckon you are chaff, you have been thrown up to divert our probing. Have you ever felt like a fall guy?"

By chaff, Mr Mackinlay meant the strips of silver foil ejected by military aircraft to obstruct the enemy's radar. By "fall guy", he was probably referring to American wrestling where, 100 years ago, it was decided in advance who would win the bout. The guy who agreed to take a fall - so long as the victor went easy on him - was the loser.

Following Dr Kelly's fall, a new fall guy has been found in the form of Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary with the permanent hang-dog expression. Indeed, The Northern Echo's headline on Thursday read: "Hoon the 'fall guy' refuses to take blame for Kelly tragedy".

If a phrase is in a headline it is because it is widely understood, and this phrase became widely understood not via 19th century American wrestling, but through the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s.

When oil was found in 1912 beneath US government land in Wyoming, President William Taft decided it should be reserved for the US Navy.

But private firms wanted to get at the wells on Teapot Dome Field. In March 1921 the newly-appointed Secretary of the Interior, a fellow named Albert Fall, allowed two of his friends, Harry F Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Corporation and Edward L Doheny of the Pan-American Petroleum and Transport Company, to lease Teapot Dome. But the deal was kept secret.

However, with Mr Fall spending lavish sums of money that no one knew he had, by April 1922 suspicions were such that President Warren Harding issued a statement defending Mr Fall and the Navy Secretary Edwin Denby.

"The policy decided upon and the subsequent acts have at all times had my entire approval," declared the president.

But on August 2, 1923, President Harding died suddenly and a new broom - President Calvin Coolidge - swept clean.

Congressional hearings into the Teapot Dome Affair began and in January 1924, Mr Doheny admitted he had lent Mr Fall $100,000. Mr Fall was charged with accepting a bribe.

Mr Fall came to court in October 1928 and was found guilty of accepting a bribe. He was sentenced to a year prison and fined $100,000.

So in a murky affair approved by the President, implicating other ministers and several of America's largest companies, only one man was convicted. He was the original fall guy. He was Mr Albert Fall.

THE bomb in Bombay this week has caused much confusion, not least because Bombay is no longer Bombay but in fact Mumbai.

It is only in English that Bombay has ever been Bombay - although the name comes from Bom Bahia, or "good bay" which is what the Portugese called the city before the arrival of the Brits.

In Hindi, India's most spoken language, the city is Bambai but in Marathi - the language of the Bombay region - it has always been Mumbai which derives from Mumbadevi who is a goddess with a crimson face.

In 1995, Bombay politicians decided to ditch the English name and revert to the pre-Empire name but only a bomb in 2003 has brought this to the attention of BBC newsreaders.