Stan’s head for showbiz
QUESTION Did football legend Stanley Matthews and his brother Ronnie tour music hall theatres, demonstrating his skill at controlling a football? YES indeed, Matthews and his brother Ronnie did perform together on stage. In January 1949, Stan’s club, Blackpool, were knocked out of the FA Cup by Stoke City – his former and future club.
After that, Stan, by then 34, struggled with injuries and missed the club’s end-of-season tour of Norway and Sweden.
Instead, he stayed at home in Blackpool, trying to get fully fit by demonstrating ‘head tennis’ with his brother Ronnie around local vaudeville halls.
The duo did two short routines four or five nights a week, and the audiences loved it.
This engagement was all down to two comedians, Wee Georgie Wood and Charlie Chester, who were close friends of Stan’s.
The three men got talking, one thing led to another and eventually the Matthews brothers were paired up on stage, performing throughout the summer of 1949 by showing off their heading skills. Tony Matthews, football historian, statistician and author, Almeria,
Spain. ...RATHER than touring the country, Stan and his brother Ronnie supported Wee Georgie Wood and Charlie Chester.
Stanley wasn’t particularly enamoured of the act but it paid the bills.
He once said: ‘The act, such as it was, involved a tennis net being set up on stage, with Ronnie and I playing football/tennis.
‘The gimmick was that when Ronnie returned the ball to me, I would display a few party tricks with the ball to music before sending it back over the net.
‘It was a support act, nothing more, a little eccentric but in the days when only the well-off had television sets, I suppose it provided novelty on an entertainment bill,’ said Stan. ‘Ronnie and I went on stage twice nightly for about ten minutes.’
Graham Dean, Preston, Lancs. QUESTION What important books were lost to mankind following the fire at the ancient Library of Alexandria? ALEXANDRIA was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. His successor as Pharaoh, Ptolemy I Soter, founded the Royal Library of Alexandria in about 283BC.
There are many myths about the Library, including the notion that it housed a million books, that some great literary treasures were lost there and that it was destroyed by Christian zealots and replaced by a church.
We largely have the 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon to thank for this last view: ‘The valuable Library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near 20 years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious prejudice.
‘The compositions of ancient genius, so many of which have irretrievably perished, might surely have been excepted from the wreck of idolatry, for the amusement and instruction of succeeding ages.’ (The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire).
Even the number of ‘books’ that were lost is uncertain.
The information was held in scrolls rather than books, and several of these would have been required to make a book.
The number of scrolls varies from author to author; for instance, Seneca the Younger, writing in AD 50, refers to just 40,000 scrolls, although Aristeas, writing in 100 BC, mentions 400,000.
The Library’s decline seems to have been gradual, though punctuated with destructive events in which precious scrolls may have been lost.
In 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII Physcon purged some of its scholars.
Julius Caesar may have burned part of the Library during the civil war of 48 BC.
Plutarch, writing in about AD 100, describes the Siege of Alexandria in which Caesar was forced to burn his own ships ‘which, after burning the docks, thence spread on and destroyed the great Library’.
Yet the Library seems to have continued in existence until its contents were largely lost during the taking of the city in AD 270 by the Emperor Aurelian, who was suppressing a revolt.
By this time the Library was in decline, though, and the seat of learning in Alexandria had been moved to another temple called the Serapeum.
This was destroyed in AD 391 on the order of Emperor Theodosius I, for practising paganism.
The truth is we don’t know what scrolls were lost in these events.
Missing works that may have been lost include the writings of Aristarchus of Samos (circa 310230 BC), the works of Hero of Alexandria (written circa AD 1070), the works of Sappho (written circa 612-570BC) and Berossus’s Babylonaica (written circa 281 BC). Catherine Doyle, Oxford. QUESTION If a male lion takes over a pride, he kills all the cubs. In what other ways is nature cruel? FURTHER to the earlier answer, which described examples of infanticide in nature among chimpanzees and meerkats, an apparent act of cruelty that is frequently observed is the way a domestic cat will spend long periods playing with its prey before finally killing its catch.
This is generally explained as a way for cats to protect themselves from serious injury.
Cats kill their prey by breaking the spinal cord with a strong bite to the neck.
But cats have a short muzzle, so to reach the neck of an animal – even one that has already been caught – is to risk injury to the eyes or face.
Therefore cats tend to wear out their intended prey before making a killing bite to minimise their own risk of injury.
For this purpose kittens develop their co-ordination and timing skills through playtime with their litter-mates.
Such strategies as ‘ambushing’ and pouncing on their victims, and capturing their prey, as well as speed adjustment, are learned as the kittens play together in their very early days.
Domesticated cats may never have learned how to execute a kill properly if they were removed from their mother at a very young age, however. Kelly Mallinson, Bridgnorth, Shropshire.
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