King of the celebrity pets
QUESTION What are the weirdest animals kept as pets?
NEIL was a full-grown male lion owned by actress Tippi Hedren – star of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller The Birds – and her then husband Noel Marshall, producer of 1973 horror The Exorcist.
There are extraordinary photographs published in Life magazine in 1971 of Tippi’s then 19-year-old daughter Melanie Griffith, the future Hollywood actress, cavorting around the family swimming pool with the pet lion.
Neil came to live with the family in bizarre circumstances. He was adopted from Anton LaVey, High Priest of the Church of Satan. LaVey, who called the lion Togar, was unable to keep him in his small San Francisco apartment.
Hedren subsequently founded the Shambala Preserve, an animal sanctuary for the protection of mistreated or neglected exotic animals.
Natalie Reynard, North Yorkshire. THE poet Lord Byron owned a fox, wolf, monkeys, parrot, cats, an eagle, crow, falcon, peacocks, guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, badger, geese, heron, a goat and several horses.
His most famous pet was a bear. During his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, Byron was resentful of the fact that the rules forbade him to keep his dogs on the premises. There was no mention of bears in the regulations, so he bought a tame creature called Bruin. They would walk around the town together and Byron would revel in the astonished glances they received. Upon graduating, he took the bear with him to his ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, where it could roam the grounds with his wolf.
Jenny Blake, Cambridge. SURREALIST painter Salvador Dalí had a thing for anteaters. He was photographed taking his giant anteater for a walk through the streets of Paris in 1969.
In 1970, he appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in America with a small anteater on a leash. He stunned the audience when he casually tossed the animal onto the lap of his co-guest, the silentmovie actress Lillian Gish.
Socialite Paris Hilton owned a pet kinkajou called Baby Luv. A kinkajou is a South American rainforest animal related to the racoon. Hilton famously had to have a tetanus shot when Baby Luv bit her in 2006. Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler has a pet racoon who rides on his shoulder when he goes fishing.
Ice Ice Baby rapper Robert Van Winkle, aka Vanilla Ice, owned a wallaroo, Bucky, and pet goat, Pancho. The pair hit the headlines in 2004 when they escaped from Ice’s Florida home in Port St Lucie. Bucky was apprehended after scratching a woman’s car.
George Clooney was the proud owner of a 200lb pot-bellied pig called Max and was devastated when the pet died in 2006. Jane Forrester, Aberystwyth, Wales.
QUESTION What are the most unusual names given to sports clubs in Ireland?
NEARLY all sports clubs in Ireland, regardless of their activities, derive their names from their geographical locations. But most of the clubs with really unusual names are in the GAA tradition.
One of the most striking names is that of Cortoon Shamrocks, not to be confused with Cartoon Shamrocks. It’s situated very close to Tuam, Co. Galway, and it’s noted for having the most senior footballers in the one parish in Co. Galway.
Then there’s the GAA club on the borders of counties Sligo and Mayo with a really appetising name, taken from its local community, Curry. In Co. Carlow, there’s a GAA club called the Fighting Cocks. In north Co. Dublin, there’s a GAA club called Man O’War, named after the district in which it’s situated. Not alone is there a GAA club of that name, but the local pub, which has a tree growing in the middle of it, is also called the Man O’War.
In Co. Limerick, the Glenroe hurling club, which goes all the way back to the 1890s, has exactly the same name as a long-running soap opera that was once a mainstay of the RTÉ TV schedules.
Not far from Dungarvan in west Co. Waterford, another GAA club, that dates back to 1896, and whose members play Gaelic football as well as hurling and camogie, is called Brickey Rangers.
In the North, a Gaelic athletic club has a delightful name derived from Irish folklore, the Tir na nÓg club in Randalstown, Co. Antrim, whose members play camogie, as well as underage hurling and football. Another place in the North, Portadown, also has a GAA club of the same name.
When it comes to soccer, unusual names are few and far between, apart from the Longford Slashers, in Longford town, formed in 1954 from the merger of two rival clubs. In Bray, Co. Wicklow, there used to be two football clubs. From the 1920s to the 1940s, the Bray Unknowns club co-existed alongside Bray Wanderers, but the two teams merged in 1973 and the Unknowns headed off into oblivion.
Undoubtedly, the most striking club name in Irish football is the Transylvania Futsal one in Blanchardstown, part of the Emerald Futsal league founded in 2008.
Some of the names of football clubs internationally are even more original, such as the Club Blooming in Bolivia, whose name would be enough to encourage any aspiring club.
Ireland has lots of yachting and sailing clubs, which either have staid and steady historical names or derive their names from their locality. It’s the same with the 320 athletic clubs in this part of Ireland, which have such unimaginative names as the Lucan Harriers.
But one that stands out is the Menapians Athletic Club in Drinagh, Co. Wexford.
Menapia was the name of a prehistoric town in or near present-day Co. Wexford, said by some to have been the forerunner of present-day Wexford town, while others say it was on the site of present day Wicklow town. The 40 boxing clubs around the country usually have prosaic names, with exceptions like the Trojan amateur boxing club in Listowel, Co. Kerry. Among the 18 mixed martial arts clubs, one standout name is that of the Point Blank gym in Ballybane, Co. Galway.
When it comes to naming clubs, there’s a lot to be said for picking a really unusual name, as this can often make a club name much easier to remember.
Tom Kilbride, Waterford.
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