FIRST the Goode news, followed by a short (and entirely relevant) quiz on bingo lingo and by many other top of the shop responses to last week's Gadfly.

It is to be one of those joyous columns written by its readers, and with only a little help from Lewis Carroll. We serve merely as interpreter, a latter day amanuensis, a catalyst among the pidgin.

Citing English lessons at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, last week's column recalled that the much valued teacher was nicknamed Chester because - like Wyatt Earp's deputy - he walked with a pronounced limp.

Trigger fingers itching, a whole posse of readers have pointed out that Chester Goode wasn't Wyatt Earp's sidekick but Marshall Matt Dillon's in a Dodge City-based television series Gunsmoke, which ran from 1955-75.

Other characters included the kindly Doc Adams, Kitty Russell the saloon owner, Sam the bartender and Louie Pheeters, unambiguously described as the town drunk.

Chester, recalls Mike Heaviside in Cockfield, was played by Dennis Weaver. "He had this really thick southern accent and kept saying Meester Dillon, Meester Dillon..."

One of the websites remembers him as a well-meaning type - perhaps one of life's greatest insults - who made a mean pot of coffee. "There's been a killin', Mr Dillon" wafts aromatically, too.

A DOWNWARD path altogether too tortuous to retrace, we had also linked the fair city of Portsmouth with the word "pink" - once meaning prostitute - and elicited an unexpected response from Chris Pearson in Darlington.

In his low flying days at Northallerton RAFA club, says Chris, the bingo caller's slang for all the fours was "Pompey Hose". They took it to be a thinly veiled reference to whores - and perhaps a dig at the senior service.

Like Latin, they reckon, bingo lingo is now pretty much a dead language. Once it was all in the game, however, and readers are invited to match the doggerel, easiest first, to the actual numbers.

Top line: Tony's den; legs; two little ducks; Heinz varieties; clicketty-click.

Middle line: Man alive, doctor's orders, cup of tea, half a crown, was she worth it?

Full house: Dancing queen, dirty Gertie, PC, Brighton line, heaven's gate.

Answers at the foot of the column.

NO-ONE knows how Portsmouth and its football club came to be known as Pompey, though former Royal Navy man Bryan Sykes believes there to have been French links with the local fire brigade, thus les pompiers.

Yet more inexplicably, neighbouring Devonport was known to the matelots as Guzz.

John Briggs in Darlington supposes that it might be from the French battleship Le Pompee, captured in 1793 and eventually used as the guard ship to Portsmouth harbour.

Up Pompey, further explanations welcomed.

THEN we were discussing the phrase "jumping the broomstick", particularly in relation to the illicit weddings conducted in the middle of Barnard Castle bridge by the son of a 17th century rector of Romaldkirk.

Willis Collinson in Durham, himself a former bridge engineer, quotes from The Bridges of County Durham, written by H D Pritchett and published in 1931 by the Darlington and Stockton Times.

"There are some paint marks on the east parapet (of Barney bridge) recalling two murders, by drowning, committed from the bridge in 1846.

"On the centre of the bridge a Cuthbert Hilton, who had been trained by his father as a 'bible clerk', and who was curate of Denton, became notorious for celebrating illicit marriage."

As the couple jumped the broomstick, Pritchett recalled, young Hilton would recite: "My blessing on your pates, and your groats in my purse. You are never the better, and I am none the worse."

Whether they lived happily ever after is, sadly, unrecorded.

DENIS Towlard in Thornaby returns whence it came an Echo classified for "Dung bell hand weights, £5". A bargain no doubt, but Denis still smells something odd about it.

IFS and buts, "may" or might"? As last week's column noted, the newly published Who's Whose (Bloomsbury, £9.99) concludes that "very generally", may should be used when talking about a present or future possibility and might when talking about the past.

Readers, very generally, agree. "When people describing a near disaster say that they may have been killed, I want to ask if they don't know whether they were," writes Ian Forsyth from Durham.

Martin Snape, also in Durham, raises possible exceptions concerning Julius Caesar and his armies - old jokes may be inserted here - to which we shall return. Jean Foster in Hunwick also welcomes the guideline - "like the offside rule, the subject of may and might is very difficult to explain succinctly".

Jean recalls the headline: "Smoke alarm might have saved pensioner's life", implying that the poor old thing hadn't had an alarm and had perished.

"In fact, the lady did have a smoke alarm, which alerted her to the fire in time, and she was alive and well.

"If anyone tells you grammar isn't a matter of life and death, they're wrong."

AS the last column did, Jean Foster also touches upon the grammatical term chiasmus, as in "Never let a fool kiss you, never let a kiss fool you."

There were also two women looking at a luscious cream cake, she recalls: one dying to try it, the other trying to diet.

Pete Winstanley in Durham, whose teasings about starting sentences with a conjunction we shall regard with disdain, quotes Carroll:

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.

"I do," Alice hastily replied. "At least I mean what I say - that's the same thing, you know."

"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'."

VAINLY attempting to sound more with-it, we mentioned the "new" Internet game "Google whacking" and have regretted it for several reasons - it's not particularly new, we got the rules wrong and someone presents a stage show about it.

Several readers whack that one back. Jennie Holland in Northallerton put the term "Osmotherley nightlife" into the search engine, initially found no hits but now has one.

It's "really dodgy", she says, which doesn't sound like Ossie at all.

....and finally, the 15 bingo numbers so avidly sought were 10, 11, 22, 57, 66, 5, 9, 23, 26, 76, 17, 30, 49, 59, 78.

Goode in parts, as probably they said of Gunsmoke as of the curate's egg, the column returns next Wednesday.

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Published: 17/11/2004