Stars with top crops
QUESTION A Rachel is a hairstyle named after Jennifer Aniston’s character in Friends. What other haircuts are named after people?
THE original eponymous haircut has to be the Caesar, the classic short-cropped men’s hairstyle named after Julius Caesar.
The style was spread across Europe by the Roman legions and more recently was sported by George Clooney in the US medical drama ER.
Perhaps the most influential hairstyle of the last millennium was an 18th-century cut known as the Bedford Level. At the time, the use of hair powder in Britain was so ubiquitous that in 1795, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger instigated a tax on the product to help raise money for wars with France.
This upset Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford. In protest, the Duke had his hair cut short and scandalously wore it unpowdered and unstyled in court. He encouraged his friends to adopt a similar, natural hairstyle in protest.
The style became known as the Bedford Level, after a geographical feature of the Fens of the same name and also making reference to the Duke’s radical (Leveller) politics.
Sideburns were popularised by American Civil War general Ambrose Burnside, who had a fine set. The first eponymous women’s hairstyle was the Louise Brooks bob. She was a Hollywood actress from the Twenties whose distinctive hairstyle became the signature style of the flapper era.
Marilyn Monroe’s signature platinum blonde hairstyle became known as the Marilyn. In the Sixties, the iconic pixie cut of the model Lesley Lawson was called The Twiggy after her nickname.
A popular cut from the Seventies was the feathered shag, AKA the Farrah Fawcett, named after the star of the TV show Charlie’s Angels. On this side of the Atlantic, Joanna Lumley’s short Purdey cut, which she wore for her role of the same name in The New Avengers, was widely copied.
Following the release of the adult-themed comedy movie 10 in 1979, the Bo Derek style of hair plaited with beads caught on.
Popular cuts of the Nineties included the Rachel, the straightened shag sported by Jennifer Aniston in Friends, and the Pob, Victoria ‘Posh’ Beckham’s bob.
QUESTION Whatever happened to the Irish soccer player Gary Kelly? Is he still involved in the sport since his retirement as a player?
DROGHEDA-born Gary Kelly, spent all of his professional career with Leeds United, before retiring in 2007 at the age of 32. Since then, he has been involved in soccer coaching and in charity work in his native town in Co. Louth.
Kelly was born in Drogheda in 1974, to Johnny and Claire Kelly. He soon showed a lot of skill at soccer and joined Drogheda United in 1989. Then in August 1990, he joined north Dublin club Home Farm. He stayed there just over a year, before he made his big move cross-channel.
He joined Leeds United on September 24, 1991 and stayed with them until he retired on May 31, 2007. Playing at right back or right midfield, he made 420 league appearances for the club, as well as 31 FA Cup games and 66 other matches. Kelly also played for the Republic of Ireland 51 times. He was part of a golden era in Irish soccer, first under Jack Charlton and then under Mick McCarthy.
He said that after he retired, he didn’t miss playing, but did miss the banter in the dressing room. However, he decided on another role in soccer, as a coach. He was given special dispensation in 2013 to fast-track his coaching badges under FAI regulations.
He also got very involved in charitable works. In 1998, his sister Mandy died from breast cancer at the age of 35 and this inspired him to set up the Gary Kelly Cancer Support Centre in Drogheda. It opened in 2004 with the help of the money he donated from his testimonial match in Leeds. His donation totalled an impressive €750,000 and to this day, the centre provides a wide variety of complementary and holistic therapies as well as counselling.
Kelly was most recently in the news when he put his luxury house, located between Baltray and Termonfeckin in Co. Louth, on the market. The huge, five-bedroom, mock Georgian, detached house was built in 2007 and enabled Kelly, his wife Julieann and their three children to live close to Drogheda, after they had moved back from the UK. The property went on sale in May 2017, with an asking price of close to €1million.
Kelly has maintained his keen interest in soccer, which clearly runs in the family, since he’s the uncle of another former Leeds United and Irish international player, Ian Harte.
In 2014, after Brian McDermott was sacked as Leeds United manager, Kelly put himself forward, saying he would be the ideal person to take on the job. However, his hoped-for move didn’t happen. The previous year, 2013, he had publicly announced his aim was to move into soccer management. Dan Murphy, Wexford.
QUESTION What year were car roofboxes first on sale and who made them?
THE earliest luggage racks were grilles that allowed consumers to strap their baggage to the outside of their cars.
These were generally galvanised steel tubing, which is malleable and resistant to rust. They were cumbersome, difficult to load and had poor aerodynamics.
Thule was founded in 1942 in Hillerstorp, southern Sweden, when Erik Thulin put the name on a pike trap he’d designed.
During the Forties and Fifties, the firm produced belt buckles before concentrating on carrelated products.
The first genuine roofbox was produced by Thule, in 1977. The TB-11 was a moulded plastic box for carrying skis.
In 1980, Thule released a second roofbox, this time in the US to carry surfboards.
The first utilitarian roofbox was the Thule Combibox 250 in 1984 – the world’s first blow-moulded roofbox. Ian Watson, Nottingham.