Band name a true mystery
QUESTION Did pop band Spandau Ballet know what their name meant?
ARGUABLY, no one knows what Spandau Ballet means. The name is shrouded in modern pop mythology.
As one of the most successful 1980s New Romantic groups, they had hits with True, Gold and Through The Barricades.
Before they made the big time they went by a variety of monikers including Roots, The Cut, The Makers and Gentry.
The story goes that during a trip to Berlin, music writer and friend Robert Elms saw the phrase ‘Spandau Ballet’ written on a toilet wall and suggested it could be their new name.
They first used it at the Blitz Club Christmas party in December 1979.
A rumour arose that Spandau Ballet was gruesome wartime jargon: the Spandau machine gun was said to have inspired the slang Spandau Ballet to describe soldiers dying on barbed wire in World War I.
It was also claimed that the term referred to Nazi war criminals twitching as they were hanged at Spandau Prison in Berlin.
However, there is no evidence of this phrase being used before 1979.
Reliable sources, such as Paul Dickson’s War Slang: American Fighting Words And Phrases From The Civil War To The Gulf War and Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary Of Slang And Unconventional English do not feature the term.
Partridge, who had a particular interest in British military slang, has an entry for Spandau as ‘a term for the latrines at Ruhleben internment camp, 1914-18’.
The band is silent on its name’s origin, cleverly adding to the mystery.
A. F. Williams, Swansea.
QUESTION Padel is a popular Spanish racquet sport. Are there courts in other countries?
THERE are 150 padel courts at 66 venues in Britain, according to the Lawn Tennis Association. The game is growing rapidly and it’s hoped there will be more than 500 courts by the end of next year.
Padel is played mostly in a doubles format on an enclosed court about a third of the size of a tennis court.
The rules are broadly the same as tennis, though you serve underhand and the walls are used, much like squash.
The balls are similar to tennis balls, but with a little less pressure, and it is played with solid, stringless bats.
The sport was invented in Mexico by Enrique Corcuera in 1969 as an adaptation of platform tennis played on cruise ships.
It is popular in Latin America and Spain, which has more than 20,000 courts. Celebrity fans include Andy Murray, Peter Crouch, David Beckham and Bradley Walsh.
Joanne Finch, Watford, Herts.
QUESTION How did the English Lakeland fell Great Cockup get its name?
ULDALE is a secluded area behind Skiddaw in the northern Lake District, noted less for dramatic terrain than for its isolation.
It has six fells: Longlands Fell, Brae Fell, Great Sca Fell, Knott, Meal Fell and Great Cockup. This reaches 1,726ft and was given Great as part of its name to distinguish it from its smaller brother, the 1,296ft Little Cockup, to the West, which is part of the Northern Fells.
Inevitably, Great Cockup features on lists of rude British place names.
The fell’s name originates from the Old English cocc, meaning a woodcock, and hop, a secluded valley. It’s not related to the town of Cockermouth, which takes its name from the River Cocker, which is derived from the Celtic word kukra, meaning ‘the crooked one’.
Alfred Wainwright, who loved almost every inch of the fells, was uninspired by Great Cockup.
In his Pictorial Guide To The Lakeland Fells, he writes: ‘Viewed from a distance, Great Cockup appears as a modest, but extensive, eminence with no obvious summit and nothing calling for closer inspection.
‘First impressions are confirmed by a tour of exploration, the fell underfoot proving no more attractive than the fell at a distance.’
Of Brockle Crag, its most conspicuous feature, he adds: ‘This is disappointing on close inspection, being no more than an untidy fall of quartzite rocks.’ To my mind, however, the rolling sheep pastures of Uldale are a lovely place to avoid the busy tourist areas during holiday periods.
Ian Moore, Whitehaven, Cumbria.
QUESTION Was the U.S. Bell X-1, the first aircraft to break the sound barrier, invented in Britain?
FURTHER to the excellent exposé of the M52 scandal, as a former director of the Miles Group, I’d like to add this letter my boss F.G. Miles received in 1946 from the Air Ministry.
It read: ‘Dear Miles, please cease all work on this project to save time and money because Man will never fly faster than sound…’.
David Bernstein, High Wycombe, Bucks.
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