JIM Ferguson, who several times had proved invaluable to these columns but never more memorably than in the delicate matter of gooly chits, has died aged 79. We were cousins. Even amid the ghoulish gooly chits, Gadfly remained family reading.

Jim had been a wartime bomber navigator, but wore so well that for a long time, it seemed hard to imagine. It was a column in March 2000, alternative euphemisms for what Spike Milligan called "wedding tackle" which promoted Jim's second-finest hour.

The gooly chits, he recalled - and he enclosed one, first class post - were issued in 1944 to RAF men like himself flying operationally over the Middle East. On one side was a £1 note, on the other a message in Arabic to the lucky finder. A similar scheme now operates with packets of crisps.

"We often had to fly over desert areas," Jim recalled. "Apparently, if a crash landing or parachute exit were made in a remote region, the Bedou would take prisoners, remove their aforementioned dangly bits and stuff them in the unfortunates' mouths.

"The chit was presented to their leader, promising to pay an attractive sum of money for the return - intacta - of the body presenting the note.

"The reward was paid in gold. If no one could read the words on the reverse the word feloose - phonetic for cash - might make them perk up."

Cousin Jim, who lived in Bishop Auckland, had also been helpful in running to ground why unlicensed greyhound stadiums are known as flapping tracks - the subject of the very first Backtrack column, 18 years ago - and as a schoolboy had been the only witness to the collapse, beneath weight of snow, of Bishop Auckland FC's stand.

He'd been a pupil at King James I Grammar School, on the other side of the football club fence. "It was absolutely amazing, just imploded, disappeared up its own backside," he recalled.

Jim was an unfailingly charming and genuinely modest fellow. His funeral is at Durham crematorium at 11am today.

OBSERVANT as ever, last week's column wondered what happened to Big Chief I-Spy. He looks down from the happy hunting ground.

The I-Spy books, bought enthusiastically in the blessed age of innocence, were launched in 1948 by Charles Watson Warrell, an elementary school headmaster with a desire to broaden his charges' minds. After eight publishers turned him down, he initially marketed the books himself.

They quickly caught on, sold 25m - shilling a time, usually - in the first 20 years and featured daily in the News Chronicle, later the Daily Mail, from a base known as the Wigwam-by-the-Water.

Kids who completed a book gained feathers for their cap, or headband, or whatever. Pow-wows were organised, codes cracked, badges awarded. By 1953, the I-Spy Tribe had half a million members.

When Warrell retired, others assumed the head dress. A chap called Hawkeye, a later lieutenant, still has a website devoted to his memories.

"I-Spy," he writes, "was an organisation innocently insulting of North American aboriginal peoples." His particular Big Chief was a camp and kindly antiques dealer with a shop in Camden Passage, a liking for pork chops and cigarettes and the habit of dropping dottle everywhere.

Warrell was 101 when the Daily Telegraph published his premature obituary, handsomely apologising with a crate of champagne. He finally died in 1995, aged 106, still known to the nursing home staff as Big Chief.

The books are still published by Michelin, five advertised on E-bay last week attracting a top offer of just £1.43. It is not so much they, as the children, who inhabit a brave new world.

GADFLY readers, of course, need no such incentive for vigilance - take Peter Sotheran from Redcar, who on a visit to York last week, spotted an ear piercing parlour called Claire's which offered "three for the price of two".

Peter's puzzled. "Is there an enclave of three-eared bats in York or is it a case of one for me and one for my friend, please? How do the logistics work out? Suppose three people go in and have six ears pierced - who gets the free ones?"

Or is it simply a three ring circus?

JON Smith is among several readers who noticed an AA sign outside the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle - "Major wedding dresse's exhibition" - which has now gained further notoriety on the Apostrophe Protection Society's website.

Clearly such gaffes are endemic in those parts. "Frustrated ex-teacher" sends a Teesdale Leisure Services Brochure - "Childrens Birthday Parties" - and points out ("what chance do we have?") the same mistake outside Darlington library. Mrs Sylvia Cooper, also in Barnard Castle, even spotted an aberrant carrier bag: "I've been to Stockton's market's."

IAN Forsyth in Durham, meanwhile, recalls that a few months ago the column addressed unfortunately placed dashes at the end of lines of type. How about this one, he asks, from Collectors Corner in last Tuesday's Echo?

CHECKING out at Morrison's on Morton Park, Darlington, Eric Smallwood had wondered in last week's column about the local relevance of the picture of steam engine 2848 at the exit.

John Lowes, Colin Jones and John Briggs all point out that the locomotive was one of class B17 built at North Road, Darlington in 1936 and named after football clubs.

A chap in Kent is doing limited edition prints of them, says Colin, though Darlington - originally number 2852 - has attracted just one order.

Engine 2848 is rather more greatly in demand. It was named after the mighty Arsenal.

...and finally, we have previously expressed surprise that the last bus down through Wensleydale's thinly populated villages runs, six days a week, shortly before midnight.

The Sunday service, we discover, is more improbable yet.

It comprises a service bus which, for reasons best known to itself, leaves Keighley in the West Riding at 9.15am, heads sabbatically through Skipton, up and over past Ribblehead Viaduct, turns right at Hawes and reaches Richmond, journey's end, shortly before 12.30. We caught it at 11.47am from West Witton and were grateful to do so. The Keighley and District bus was as immaculate as it was punctual, the 15 mile fare £2 and the driver allowed to call elderly ladies "Darling" without fear of being reported to head office, or to the Department of Political Correctitude.

At 12.25pm, it eased punctually into Richmond Market Place - a transport of delight, but only on Sundays in the summer.

The column returns in two weeks. As they used to say in the News Chronicle, odhu ntinggo until then.

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Published: ??/??/2003