THE Tornadoes, that well known spelling mistake, blew briefly through last week's column.

They were the 1962 group which had a number one hit with Telstar and two or three satellite successes thereafter.

The only problem, as Alan Woods in Middlesbrough points out, is that they weren't The Tornadoes ("like potatoes or tomatoes") at all. They were the Tornados.

George Bellamy, one of the original five, was a Sunderland lad who's now a heating engineer in the West Country and still plays in a band called Rough Terrain.

We'd also suggested that another of the originals was helping look after the lighthouse on the end of Whitby pier. This appears to be guitarist Ray Randall, who joined the group in 1963 after Telstar's orbit had become a little more elliptical.

London lad but long on the North Yorkshire coast, Ray wrote and recorded a 1997 album called Polly Swallow - named after an 1890 subject of Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, Whitby's feted photographer. Her mother kept donkeys on the beach. Though he still makes musical sorties into the North-East, a couple of emails have failed to shed light on Ray's day job. The end of the pier show may yet have some way to run.

THAT Bloody Woman, as still she prefers to be known, wonders if Tornados' lead guitarist Heinz Burtt was the same Heinz who recorded a musical tribute to sixties' singer Eddie Cochran, killed in a car accident. Not only is it so, but the first policeman on the scene was Dave Dee, later indivisibly linked with Dozey, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

We recall several years ago asking a home official at a football match between Chippenham Town and Bedlington Terriers about the town's claims to fame."It's where Eddie Cochran drove into a lamp post," he said. "Nothing else?" "Nothing else whatsoever."

IF that's the Tornados, what of tournados Rossini, that dish of steak, foie gras and truffles named after the Italian composer who not only wrote the Lone Ranger theme but inspired the only known joke about municipal refuse tips.

You know the one: Tonto sees the Lone Ranger and Silver galloping into the distance with a dustbin over his shoulder. "Hey Kemo Sabe," shouts Tonto, "where are you going with that bin?" The Lone Ranger glances back: "To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump dump..."

GIOACHINO Rossini, who knew the theme as the William Tell Overture, proves to have been quite a lad - notoriously lazy and a ladies' man when putting himself about.

"What do you expect of one born in a leap year?" he would emphatically protest. Son of the town crier and public slaughterhouse inspector, he was born in 1792, had written 30 operas by his 30th birthday - "Give me a laundry list and I will set it to music," he once observed - but composed precious little thereafter. Instead, Rossini concentrated on what might be called eating, drinking and making merry, though he did write an annual piece of music for his dog. Chiefly, however, he was a trencherman who could eat 20 steaks a day, stole the communion wine as a child and claimed that he'd only twice been grief stricken. Once was upon his mother's death, the second time when a truffle stuffed chicken fell from his boat into the lake.

Tournados (as readers doubtless appreciate) is from the French for "turn" and "back". They used to do a very good tournados Rossini at the King's Head in Darlington, in the days when it was about 17/6d.

Though there are several explanations, the most plausible is that the chef objected to stuffing the steak at Rossini's table. "Turn your back, then," said the composer.

His few later works were known collectively as the Sins of Old Age. Since all this began with a 57th birthday reverie, it seems entirely appropriate.

ALESSON to us all, Chris Eddowes draws attention to a talk given to Hartlepool school pupils by Philippa Gregory - described in the Echo report as author of "The Other Berlin Girl". The book was actually about the Boleyn Girl Mary, it's said, enjoyed Henry VIII's affections (shall we say) before her sister Anne ever got near. "Or perhaps," adds Chris, "the king got to Germany on his travels."

IT is Alan Woods's day, however, and he happily shares the Washington Post's latest semantic sorcery. Post readers were asked to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter and supply a new definition. The results were ingenious.

Intaxication: euphoria at getting a tax refund which lasts until you realise that it was your money in the first place.

Reintarnation: coming back to life as a hill-billy. Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period. Hipatitis: terminal coolness. There are many more. Someone failing to understand, a person both stupid and an ass, might be an ignoranus.

Alan adds but three and will have to get omnipuss - "a cat that goes everywhere by public transport" - past the appeals committee.

Regenderation - "redeveloping an area by changing everyone's sex" - and verrb, a word that describes a wrong deed, may closely follow the rules. Our own readers are, of course, invited to follow the Washington line. The one that here springs to mind is Gladfly - "a columnist whose team has just reached the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup for the first time since 1961." Shildon v Eastwood Town or Stocksbridge Park Steels, Saturday, October 25. They'll be there in their thousands.

THE evergreen Mr Woods, perhaps inevitably bringing matters to a conclusion, also points out a Durham County Council ad for a "long term teacher". Is it, he adds, someone who'll be able to work for more than three months at a time?

So ends perhaps the first 1,000 word column to be based almost entirely on a spelling mistake. It's an ill wind which blows no one any good, as probably they used to say in the Tornados.

Published: 15/10/2003