A tribute to an old friend, a salute to a young ’un and a French connection too.

WERE it not for Tom Purvis, the world – or at least this precious part of it – might never have know that the longest word that may be compiled by using only the top line of the typewriter keyboard is rupturewort, nor that the Oxford defines it as “a plant formerly thought to be efficacious in treating ruptures and hernia”.

Were it not for Tom Purvis, we might never have known the name of Zorro’s horse, or that William Hill’s had a January sale or that “rhythms” is the longest word in the English language that doesn’t contain a vowel.

Tom had rhythms and who could ask for anything more? He died, quite suddenly, last weekend. He was 73, his funeral at Sunderland crematorium tomorrow at 10.30am.

Tom was a Sunderland lad, never married, began work as a dock labourer, became a draughtsman and a diviner, a man with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and the generosity with which to share it.

Born in Millfield, he loved his city but had no illusions about its football team. Why else would his email address be “relegationmay”, something he vowed to change should Sunderland remain in the top flight for five successive seasons. This would be four.

Tom was the sharpest, the most dedicated and the most happily idiosyncratic of correspondents.

His input spanned all the columns – relegat ionmay meant certain column inches – and an occasional foray into Hear All Sides, subjects ranging from Al Jolson to Moses in the Bulrushes.

His debut seems to have been after he spotted a January 1998 date on a May 1998 sports page. “Now that’s what I call a Backtrack column,” he wrote. Off he went. The second was about rhythms, the third a contribution to a correspondence about unusual pet names that had included Two Lugs and Cooking Fat. Both were cats; nuff said.

Tom’s neighbours were called Hardy, like so many more in Sunderland.

They had a mynah bird called Nelson, taught it to say “Kiss Me, Hardy”.

He was a sort of Wearside weevil – a bookworm, at least – burrowing endlessly to find out what he wanted.

Frequently in Sunderland library, he once headed to the Tyne to source the origin of the phrase about being as happy as the folk of Shields.

The Dictionary of National Biography was a favourite. When the Eating Owt column tested rook pie, he sent a Pickwick Papers account of a rook shoot.

There was no reward, nor expectation of it, save for the dictionary he once won for coming up with the most words of three or more letters that could be made from The Northern Echo –Tom managed 300 – and the couple of pints when, finally, we met last August.

Tom had developed a website detailing all of Sunderland’s 54 blue plaque sites, and their story. One plaque, in Bull Lane, was next to the wonderfully quirky Clarendon pub, where we spent a very happy hour.

Much of the conversation was of pride in his birthplace. “People are always moaning about Sunderland. If they’re not moaning about the city centre, they’re moaning about lack of facilities at the coast.

“They forget that at Seaburn the tide comes right up to the road.

What’s the council supposed to do, put a funfair in the sea?

“I don’t want to be seen as some sort of anorak, ticking all these places off. It just seems a shame that people know so little about them.”

He remained wholly humble, though a former Grand Master of the Loyal Order of Cerebos – a saline sort of jolly boys’ club based at the Saltgrass pub, by the river.

“We went abroad, Stockton, all over the place,” said Tom.

Such celebrity notwithstanding, he doubted they’d put a blue plaque outside his old house. If they did, he supposed, it would say “Fire hydrant, three metres”

He will be remembered with the utmost affection, nonetheless, an Autolocus – those classical collectors of unconsidered trifles – of the highest order. Thanks for everything, Tom.