THE Olympics are coming, and we’re invited to the party. With 1,000 days, give or take, to go until 2012, Team Dorset officials are celebrating the fact that the sailing events will be held here by calling on contributors to come up with 1,000 facts about the county for their website.

Sadly, though, at least one of the “facts” so far submitted turned out to be fiction – namely, that Sir Laurence Olivier lived at Bovington and died there in a motorcycle accident.

Sounds impressive, but it was, of course, T E Lawrence, also known as Lawrence of Arabia, that suffered fatal injuries in the 1935 accident – while young Larry Olivier was, at that time, a rising Shakespearean actor (who lived until 1989, and the ripe old age of 82.) A Team Dorset spokesman said: “It looks like we’ll have to be a bit more careful in future.” But he added: “Although Sir Laurence was a Sussex man, we like to think he would forgive us for crediting his residence in Dorset, another equally beautiful English county.”

So that’s all right then, Olivier would have understood. I wonder what the reaction will be to these “facts” I’d like to put forward for the 1,000 Things You Didn’t Know About Dorset (Possibly Because They’re Not Actually True) …

* Dorset is also known as Hardy Country, in honour of the comic Oliver Hardy, one half of Laurel and Hardy, who would regularly go on fossil hunting holidays to Charmouth. However, the Hardy Monument, near Abbotsbury, was erected for Robert Hardy, star of All Creatures Great and Small.

* Dorchester is named after the upmarket hotel in London, while Weymouth takes its name from Tina Weymouth, bass player with 1970s new wave band Talking Heads.

* Bournemouth wasn’t actually in Dorset until local government boundary changes came into force in 1974. Before that it was part of the American state of New Hampshire.

* Corfe Castle, built as a fortress against Jethro the Impaler, a notorious Cornish cattle rustler, lies in ruins because of shoddy workmanship by medieval cowboy builders. n Members of the Bankes family, who owned much of the county, including Corfe Castle, appeared in the film Mary Poppins – the children, Jane and Michael, were particularly fond of the nanny, played by the much-missed Swedish sex bomb, Julie Ege, in a rare singing (and fully-clothed) role.

* A long-forgotten member of another well-known Dorset family invented the fabrication or sculptural process that joins mat-erials, usually metals, by causing coalescence … hence Welding.

* Famous residents include football manager Harry Redknapp, author Minette Walters, actor Edward Fox and pop star Lady Ga Ga, who owns a caravan just outside Osmington.

* Legend has it that if you dance naked on the Cerne Abbas Giant on a day with a “y” in it you will either end up pregnant, or, more likely, especially if you’re a person of the male persuasion, with a heavy cold.

* Dorset has no motorway – this is because cars weren’t introduced to the county until 1983, although residents have now embraced motorised transport with a passion rarely seen anywhere else in the world.