IGNORING the front page of Monday's Daily Telegraph - "Howard rages at UKIP gadflies" - we turn first to a more pressing electoral matter. In which county is Darlington?

Durham? The fatuously new fangled Tees Valley? Surely boundary change isn't so totally off the map and up the creek as to suppose we're now in North Yorkshire?

All would be mistaken. By virtue of the Local Government, England and Wales Act of 1995, Darlington since 1997 has been in the "new" County of Darlington.

The latest local government re-organisation, on which all will be invited to vote, could take things even further. We are in danger of losing County Durham altogether.

One of two proposals is that three "unitary" authorities will be formed within the existing County Durham border. They would combine Derwentside and Chester-le-Street, Durham and Easington and - in the south - Sedgefield, Wear Valley and Teesdale.

Under present legislation, each new area would also become a "county". If that option were to be adopted, County Durham would cease to exist except for "ceremonial and related purposes".

"You might say that that would be a very sad day, but under restrictions which prevent me from campaigning, I couldn't possibly comment," says Ken Manton, the present leader of Durham County Council.

The alternative is a "unitary" authority embracing what's left of County Durham, historically but no longer the area between Tyne and Tees, and abolishing the other seven councils. Gadflies and others will know it makes sense.

TRIPPING fantastically onto lighter matters, we turn to the "gandy dancers" featured in last week's column.

A gandy dancer, we had concluded, was a maintenance worker on the American railroad. Whatever the etymology, several readers recalled the Gandy Dancers' Ball - recorded in 1951 by Frankie Laine:

A gandy dancer is a railroad man and his work is never done

With his pick and his shovel and his willing hand, he makes the railroad run.

There's Mackinaw Mac and Toledo Jack and the boys from Idaho

And the Frisco Kid and Saginaw Sid and good old cotton-eyed Joe.

So the beat went on. They danced on the ceiling and they danced on the wall, at the gandy dancers' ball.

"Gandy" is believed to have been the Chicago company which made the railway hardware. "Gandy dancing" was the synchronised art of a gang of men hammering in the rivets, accompanied by song.

"It must have been pure harmony of motion," says one of the websites. It must also have been fearfully hard work.

"A fairly small spike and a bloody big hammer," suggests David Walsh from Redcar. "If you didn't do it in unison you either lost your hand or lost your head."

Thanks also to Don Wilson in Durham, Brian Hunter in Sedgefield, Harry Watson in Darlington - "Ah, those days of innocence" he muses - and to Bob Harbron in Norton-on-Tees. Gandy dancing ceased in the 1960s. Out of time, they were replaced by machinery.

FRANKIE Laine, happily, dances on. Now 91, he underwent triple and quadruple heart bypasses in the 1980s but continues to enjoy life with his second wife Marcia, whom he married in 1999.

Only two weekends ago, in fact, the twelfth international Frankie Laine convention was held at a hotel near Newcastle Airport.

"Every time we book it, the manager quietly asks if Frankie's still with us," says Vivien McGow, one of the organisers. "I tell him that it's us that's flagging, not him.

"We're all arriving on crutches, asking for a downstairs room. Frankie just goes on for ever." Laine had four British number ones in the years immediately after the "hit parade" began in 1952, including 18 weeks at the top with "I Believe" in 1953 plus Hey Joe, Answer Me and A Woman in Love.

He also sang the theme tune for the early ITV series Rawhide and recorded Champion the Wonder Horse, though another version was used for the credits.

He has sold 260 million records worldwide, won Lifetime Legend awards and remains - if not exactly one of the lads - then one of the mums and dads.

His British fan club officially visits him every five years but members are welcome at any time at his home. For the convention he sent DVDs of his 91st birthday celebrations and of a tour of his home.

"He's a wonderful, clean living man who's always welcoming," says Vivien whose home in Killingworth, near Newcastle, is something of a Laine gallery.

Most members have his telephone number in America and are invited to ring for a chat. How many pop stars, asks Vivien unanswerably, would behave like that today?

AFTER last week's reference to Sand Dancers - the citizens of South Shields - former Darlington lad Brian Madden e-mails from the US that when he worked in Whitby, the folk down the coast in Scarborough were known as algerinos. "No one knew why," says Brian. Gadfly readers can doubtless offer enlightenment.

SPEAKING of sand dancers, both Don Wilson and the reader who prefers to be known as That Bloody Woman recall that The Sexual Life of the Camel (Gadfly, May 26) was explained to the tune of the Eton Boating Song.

The last verse, says the Bloody Woman, begins innocuously: Going home by the Tube one evening/I thought I would have to stand... but is thereafter so politically incorrect (and so coitally unconnected with camels) that it may not be repeated.

Sadly, she has resisted the invitation to elucidate.

Don Wilson is similarly certain that we'll remember another song - "about the same time" - which began:

Life presents a dismal picture

We are headed for the tomb....

He, too, demurely declines to continue. "The tone degenerates, but extra zest was added because it was sung to the tune of Deutschland uber Alles."

Anyone want to clarify the mystery of the tomb?

LAST week's column also discussed the local interpretation of the word "wick" - as in "the wick and the dead" or "wick with "blackclocks".

Mr MG Westgarth-Taylor in Carlton-in-Cleveland, near Stokesley, suggests that the North-East meaning is "many" or "loads of"- but isn't that the same as "alive with"?

The bowling green fingered Ron Hails in Hartlepool also insists that it's a term in his beloved game - as in "a bloody lucky wick" - when a hopelessly misdirected shot clips a wide bowl and a glancing bowl and is inadvertently diverted to last shot glory.

Readers, as Mr Westgarth-Taylor suggests, may be wick with ideas of their own.

...and finally, tea time. After perusing the attractions at the forthcoming St Mary Magdalene flower festival in Trimdon Village (July 16-18) last week's column noted that they included "tea bag folding" - a leaf out of a hitherto unimagined book.

Several websites confirm that it's simply a Dutch form of origami - paper design - chiefly for making greetings cards. Tea bags are now rarely used.

Paul Wilkinson, a former Times journalist now freelancing in North Yorkshire, learned from experience.

"Like you I picked up on an event involving tea bag folding and saw a potentially wacky feature, but was told by Fleet Street features desks that everyone did it and it was old news."

Old news is good news, of course, for whiskery columns like this one. If not necessarily by Michael Howard's way, Gadfly returns next week.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

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Published: ??/??/2004