Letters from America, last week's column noted that there's a Scrabbletown in Maryland and wondered if any other places were named after sports or games.

Though Mr Ian Forsyth's attempt to reprise the old joke about ludo and Llandudno must sadly be disqualified, there's a Hardscrabble in Delaware, an Ace of Diamonds in Florida, a Fair Play in California and, perhaps inevitably, a Jackpot awaiting in Nevada. None may strictly be named after a game but - as former Bishop Auckland lad Bill Taylor, long in Canada, points out - a city in New Mexico is named after a game show.

Playful? In the city of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, they're perfectly serious.

Truth or Consequences had been introduced to NBC Radio by Ralph Edwards in 1940, based (it's said) on a parlour game of his youth. Much of it, right down to Beulah the Buzzer, seemed an early cross between Double Your Money and Take Your Pick.

It became the most popular audience participation show on American radio, transferring to television in 1950 and running, on an off, for another 38 years.

The host would pose a question, usually damn fool. Failure to answer correctly would result in a penalty from dressing in baby clothes to washing an elephant.

"Aren't we devils?" Edwards, an American Hughie Green, would enquire of his enraptured audience.

Memory suggests a similar schoolyard game in these parts, in which someone - the girls, usually - would produce an elaborately made paper "bouquet", fiddle with it and invite "Truth or dare".

In 1949, at any rate, producers hit on the stunt of inviting an American community to change its name to Truth or Consequences, in order to promote the show. Hot Springs - "depressed and depressing," says Bill - put it to the vote, erupted and has remained T or C ever since.

"It never looked back," says Bill, and pictures still remain of Gunsmoke stars "Doc" and "Kitty" appearing in 1953 at the Truth or Consequences fiesta. There is a Ralph Edwards Park, a Ralph Edwards museum and a Ralph Edwards room in the Geronimo museum.

Edwards never looked back, either. In the late 1940s he'd also devised a television programme which, by a sequence still familiar, sought to portray a televisual biography of usually well known celebrities. It won two Emmy awards and a Golden Globe.

Though there's nowhere in the world called This Is Your Life, it can only - as Beulah the buzzer might have supposed - be a matter of time.

IN her homeland, says Lynn Briggs - chief researcher for this week's column - there's a Bald Head (Maine), Belcher (New York), Boring in both Oregon and Maryland, Dismal (Tennessee), Hell (Michigan), Hot Coffee (Mississippi), Intercourse (Pennsylvania), Hell (Missouri)and also a Rough and Ready. It's in California, but could probably describe Shildon lads everywhere.

THEN there's Faro, a town in the Yukon named after a game of chance in which (says the dictionary) bets are placed on the appearance of cards in a certain order.

Had there been a place called Small World - there's a World's End near Thirsk - the odds might have been yet shorter. The only previous occasion on which the Yukon has been mentioned hereabouts was four years ago this week, part of a splendidly serendipitous sequence about Eskimo Nell and a ballad called The Cremation of Sam McGee:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold...

THOUGH it is no longer the point, long serving former Shildon councillor Walter Nunn claimed at the time that he not only knew Eskimo Nell by heart but could recite it in the time that it took to travel from a meeting at Sedgefield Borough Council at Green Lane to another at Durham County Hall.

Sam McGee, a similar epic, was written by the late Robert Service and famously illustrated by Ted Harrison, a Co Durham expat about whose extraordinary life a film has been made.

Ted was born in Wingate, attended Wellfield Grammar School, West Hartlepool Art College and Durham University, affectionately recalled playing on the pit heaps and watching Hopalong Cassidy at the Palace picture house.

Already widely travelled, he spotted in 1967 a Time Educational Supplement advertisement for teaching vacancies in the Yukon.

"Weaklings need not apply," it said. Ted applied, got the job, not only stayed but established the Wingate Arts Company as a gesture to his browtings up.

In those frozen parts we may have left him but for a beer in the Brit last week with Phil Atkinson, a former Witton Park lad who's now president of the British Columbia branch of the Campaign for Real Ale and a speech writer to the provincial prime minister.

"Ted Harrison?" he said. "Alive and well and among my best friends." More next week, with luck, of the man who moiled for gold.

ANOTHER Paper (as they say) reports a warning from Cleveland's "top detective" that football thugs will "pay the ultimate penalty" for trouble on the Middlesbrough terraces this season. Splendid. Mayor Mallon's going to hang the beggars at last.

VIA John Morgans in Darlington and as insubstantial as always, the column three weeks ago recalled the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers, a charitable bunch described in the 1920s as "a social and law abiding body of absorbitive Britons."

The glass now barely more than half full, an anonymous reader sends a recent Surrey Comet story along similar lines.

It is not the Order's heady exploits which catch the eye, however, but a reference to what took place on one of its children's outings to Windsor.

The Comet of the day reported that, as the bairns passed the castle, they were told that the king lived there.

"Is that so, mister?" replied an urchin. "I expect the king has a jolly good mike while he is living down here doing nothing."

Reputation at stake, we turned at once to the Oxford Dictionary. "Mike", it confirms, is a verb meaning to shirk, skive or generally spend long periods of inactivity.

Do Little Amos it is.

FINALLY and no less appropriately, last week's column also quoted from The Book of Heroic Failures - prompting Brian Shaw in Shildon to dig out a paperback called Great Sporting Failures by Geoff Tibballs.

Therein are the half marathon runners from Newton Aycliffe who raced up to 20 miles after getting lost in the fog, the cricketers of Seaham Harbour's under 18 team who in May 1993 were all out for one - it was a leg bye - and Hartlepool Athletic's rugby team, beaten 146-0 at Billingham in 1987.

"We never looked like winning," said a team spokesman.

Familiar to Backtrack column readers, the most heroic failures of all, however, were the footballers of Barton Athletic - Darlington and District League second division - who in 1992-93 lost all 26 league games, scoring five and conceding 256.

There was just one goal after Christmas - "We did a lap of honour," said team secretary Keith Wayper at the time - but Barton didn't go empty handed, for all that. Real sportsmen, they won a fair play award for not having a single booking or red card all season.

Truth or the other thing, the column returns next week.

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Published: ??/??/2004