ON THIS DAY
FEBRUARY 2, 2024
FROM THE ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 2, 1952
HUBERT DE GIVENCHY created a sensation in Paris last night. He was showing the first collection of his dress house to a glittering audience. This 22-year-old has for three years been designer for the Schiaparelli Boutique. Now one wonders how it will be for ‘Schiap’ without him.
FEBRUARY 2, 2011
PAT Rabbitte has apologised after dismissing Fianna Fáil’s new frontbenchers as ‘a couple of good-looking women’. The former Labour leader’s insult came on the day an emotional Brian Cowen dissolved the Dáil, kicking off a bruising election campaign. Dismissing Micheál Martin’s new team, Mr Rabbitte, right, said: ‘You might as well wander down Grafton Street and see if you can meet a couple of good-looking women and say: “Would you ever mind coming up for the photograph? It’s only for four weeks.”’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SHAKIRA, 47. The Colombian is the most successful female Latin star of all time, having sold more than 80million albums. In November of last year, she struck a settlement with Spanish prosecutors over charges that she failed to pay €14.5million in income tax, stumping up a €7million fine.
PAUL MESCAL, 28. The Maynooth-born actor shot to fame with his role in the miniseries Normal People in 2020, and was nominated for an Oscar for 2022’s Aftersun. He broke his nose and jaw playing Gaelic football in his teens and realised the sport was ‘not going to fly’ with his budding acting career.
BORN ON THIS DAY
BO HOPKINS (1938-2022). The US actor starred in The Wild Bunch and on TV played James Garner’s lawyer in The Rockford Files. He said that after he took his family to see him on the big screen, ‘everyone who said I was gonna end up in prison said they always knew Billy was gonna make something of himself’.
LES DAWSON (1931-1993). The comic, right, shot to fame on Opportunity Knocks, saying it took ‘16 years to become an overnight success’. He was best known for mother-in-law jokes, such as: ‘Please forgive me if I appear down in the mouth, but I’ve just had some bad news. Tomorrow is the mother-in-law’s funeral… and she’s cancelled it.’
ON FEBRUARY 2…
IN 1969, Yoko Ono is granted a divorce from Anthony Cox. She married Beatle John Lennon the following month.
IN 1990, South African president F. W. de Klerk announces the unbanning of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela.
IN 2014, US actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies of a drug overdose, aged 46.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION Waff (coined 1808)
A) Just the slightest touch of illness.
B) Single ear of corn.
C) Speak in a prissy manner usually with pursed lips.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
To have a hunch: to have a sense about something; it comes from a US expression of the 1900s from a gambling superstition that rubbing the hump of a hunchback would bring good luck. In the medieval world, hunchbacks were thought to have been given the ability by the Devil to see into the future.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
What’s the point in growing old if you can’t hound and persecute the young?
Kenneth Clarke, UK Conservative politician
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the fisherman say to the magician?
Pick a cod, any cod...
Guess The Definition answer: A.