ANOTHER of the Gadfly Irregulars has died. As usual we’d never met; as always, she was greatly appreciated.

Clarice Middleton – “one of our more learned correspondents,” the column once observed – preached to the converted when it came to the aberrant apostrophe, tried vainly to prevent our using the word “circumlocute” when “circumnavigate” was needed, was one of several who spotted a classic mishearing in the At Your Service column.

It was at New Brancepeth Methodist Church when the hymn Love Divine All Loves Excelling was announced. The tune, we reported, was Blindworm – and thought it a bit funny at the time.

So it was, for it was really the Welsh tune Blaenwern. They’ve never forgotten it at New Brancepeth Methodists, either.

CLARICE lived in Richmond, clearly the Celtic fringe since she was also chairman of the local branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.

Particularly she called the tune in 1996, however, when she tried to draw attention to Mary Janes Candy Store in Richmond – “the home of the indigent apostrophe”.

The elder bairn was at Richmond School at the time, known in the staff room as the Winged Mercury – an invention, no doubt, of the admirable Mr David Crane – and was about to go two falls, two submissions or a knockout with GCSE English.

Sent educationally to press his nose against the shop window, he reported that everything appeared in order.

Clarice was indignant about the indigent, insisted that the lad’s dad go along in person. “His assertion that everything was in its place may rank as the most lamentable error of judgement since the Titanic was declared waterproof,” the column subsequently observed.

Mary Jane’s, we added, was positively infested with errant apostrophes, from jap’s to jelly babie’s.

“Were misplaced apostrophes infectious,” we added, “the shop would spend six months being barrier nursed.”

Clarice, bless her, felt vindicated.

“Fancy sending a boy to do a man’s job,” she said.

Her funeral was held yesterday. In her memory, I shall try very hard never again to mix up “circumlocute” and “circumnavigate”. Not going around the houses may, paradoxically, take a little longer.

A HAPPY coincidence of which doubtless she would have approved – it helps fill a column, after all – the search for archive information on Clarice also turns up the first reference to the joke about the difference between an organist and a terrorist: Lynesack parish magazine, west Durham, 1996. Not even new technology, alas, reveals how many dozen times we’ve used it since then.

CLARICE had just three times diversified onto the Hear All Sides pages. Once, as folk do, she wanted to thank the staff at the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton; on another occasion she was grateful that a 20ft sculpture on the Batts at Richmond wouldn’t be built after all.

The third time, more surprisingly, she crossed swords with Denis Weatherley, my old headmaster at Bishop Auckland Grammar School.

Denis, a renowned singer and musician, had become a part-time music critic on the Echo. In February, 1992, he’d reviewed the Sorrel String Quartet, appearing at Richmond Georgian Theatre.

Denis enjoyed the concert, thought little of their get-up.

“The Sorrel String Quartet,” his review began, “is a quartet of young ladies heavily disguised as young men; not very smart young men, either.

“Why four personable and blooming young women should choose to forego the opportunity to give pleasure in the viewing as well as the playing is a mystery to a male chauvinist like me.”

The ladies were close-cropped and wore trousers. The gentle Clarice for once became Astounded of Richmond.

“Were we not there to enjoy the music?” she demanded.

Denis made no further public comment.

As usually happens with the ladies, it was a case of Sorrel being the hardest word.

IT is again coincidental that Clarice and Denis should have appeared in the same Gadfly column, December 11, 1996. She had clipped the Mercury’s wings – if, only figuratively, his ear – Denis had been encountered on Darlington High Row when we observed how well he looked.

There were three ages of man, he replied – youth, middle-age and “By Jove, you do look well”.

He died the following year, while singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” with his son’s choir. The Sorrel Quartet strings still.

AS the date of Mary Jane’s indigency suggests, those pesky little apostrophes have long served us well – even at several hundred to the column inch.

Nothing specifically has prompted such microscopic examination, however, as the possibilities suggested by the term “magistrates’ court”.

Harry Mead – a Daniel come to justice, as Shylock somewhat prematurely observed of Portia – defends magistrates’ court, the style above the threatened court building in Bishop Auckland.

Admittedly the magistrates don’t own the court, says Harry, but neither does a headmaster usually own his study and it would still be the headmaster’s study.

“As I see it, ‘magistrates’ court’ means the court of the magistrates.

Your correspondent who said that, without the apostrophe, ‘court’ becomes a verb is quite right. We would have to ask ourselves what it was that the magistrates courted.”

Harry issues a judicial warning – or at least a caveat – nonetheless.

“Name me anyone absolutely confident in using the possessive apostrophe and I’ll name you a bragging fool.”

A WHOLLY different approach from Tim Brown in Ferryhill, some of his formative years spent at the knee of Mrs Edna Gannon at Sedgefield Primary.

The late Mrs Gannon, it transpires, was particularly hot on singular and plural nouns. A single soldier, she properly insisted, would be tried by a court martial. Several hearings would be courts martial.

Similarly, says Tim, a sitting of JPs is a magistrate court and if several were held in the same building they’d be magistrate courts. The body is a magistracy.

Not proven? It is, unconditionally, to Tim. “Would any ten-year-old child dare contradict the verdict of Edna Gannon?”

STRENGTH in numbers, Martin Birtle in Billingham again reports a howler from The Weakest Link. Last week Ms Robinson sought the identity of the East Midlands city with roads named after Friar Tuck and Maid Marian.

The contestant pondered but briefly. Middlesbrough, he said.

CHRIS Willsden sends the supposed top ten in the International Pun Contest. All may be familiar to Gadfly readers – the two fish who swim into a concrete wall, the Eskimos who light a fire in their kayak, the problems of adopting identical twins Juan and Ahmal – but since it’s nearly Christmas, the one about the chess enthusiasts booking into a hotel for a tournament may bear repetition.

They’re all in the lobby bragging about recent triumphs but, after a while, the manager comes out and asks them to disperse.

The group demands to know his reason.

“Because,” he says, “I can’t stand chess nuts boasting by an open foyer.”

…and finally, it’s a long time since we recorded an unusual car registration plate but it proved pretty hard to miss 38 CUP, parked outside the office last week. The lady who emerged appeared – how may this be put? – to be rather more modestly proportioned. That lot off its chest, the column returns next week.