ON Wednesday afternoon, we rapidly discovered ourselves swept up in a political storm in a teacup. It was all about the word 'rapid'.

Every TV station and newspaper in the country wanted the background on Ashok Kumar's supposed indiscretion. He wanted "a smooth and rapid succession" from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown - and everyone wanted to know who'd put him up to it and had he timed it to appear when the Prime Minister was out of the country.

Those people who dose off during such tempests in teapots would probably have awoken for the sports bulletin. There they will have learned about Middlesbrough's attempts to overcome Basle in the quarter-final of the UEFA Cup and play Rapid Bucharest in the semi.

Rapidly, the word 'rapid' was taking over...

Ashok chose all 1,471 words in his article with care - even if it was just the one, 'rapid', that had everyone, even BBC2's Newsnight, demanding an interview. But given the football connection, even he cannot have been aware how appropriate a word 'rapid' is in a left-leaning article.

The word comes from a Latin root, rapere and rapidus, which means "to seize and carry off", "to snatch and hurry away". Ashok, the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, does want Mr Brown to seize Mr Blair's crown and carry it off - in a controlled way, of course.

The hurrying away aspect of the word is why there are rapids in a river - the shallow water breaks over rocks as it hurries away. In south Dakota, there is Rapid City which sits in Rapid Valley through which flows Rapid Creek. You can probably guess the nature of this river.

"Hurriedly carrying away" makes the word ideal for a railway: America and Switzerland operate "rapid transit systems"; French express trains are "Rapide", their Italian counterparts are "Rapido". The word is now becoming industrial...

In 1893, Berliner FC Rapide Niderschnhausen was formed - Rapide Berlin - by schoolboys who appear to have wanted their team name to sum up the style of their play: short, sharp passes. Rapid.

This team was based in the solidly working class Berlin district of Wedding - the team was nicknamed "Red Wedding" because of its left-wing political allegiance.

In 1898, The First Workers Football Club of Vienna was formed and it wanted a snappier name than Wiener Arbeiter Fussballklub. They liked the football style and, being industrial workers, the politics of Rapide Berlin and so called themselves Rapid Vienna. Rapid's hyperactive fans invented "rapidviertelstunde" - rapid, rhythmic clapping that the crowd at Alpine ski tournaments have copied.

In 1923 the railwaymen in the Grivita workshops in Bucharest formed a football club, called Rapid Bucharest, less because of the short, sharp passes, and more because of the politics. The Grivita workshops were a Communist hotbed - in 1933, their strike ended in a bloody riot and one of their leaders, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, was sentenced to 12 years hard labour.

In 1948, the Romanian monarchy was replaced by a Communist state. All of the country's bourgeois football clubs were replaced by new ones: Steaua Bucharest was the army club; Dinamo Bucharest was the police club. Only Rapid, the railway workers' club with a Communist past, survived the football purge, and Gheorghiu-Dej, the Grivita rioter, became the head of Communist Romania in 1952-55. So rapid is a word with real left-wing credentials.

The only disappointment is that the Middlesbrough MP famed for his use of the word 'rapid' is now unlikely to see Rapid play in Middlesbrough - Steve McClaren's players lost 2-0 to Basle on Thursday in the Cup and look to be making a rapid exit.

Published: 01/04/2006