The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them…
Is it true Phil Collins got the name for Genesis after reading a passage in The Bible?
C Pope, Isle ofWight
The band formed at Charterhouse public school in Godalming, Surrey in 1967, with Peter Gabriel,Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford bringing together their two bands, which were called Garden Wall and Anon.
The name Genesis came from disgraced music mogul Jonathan King. He had been a boarder at Charterhouse, and while reading English at Cambridge, had a Top 10 hit, Everyone’s Gone To The Moon. He went on to become a manager at Decca Records. On a visit to his old school, he had a cassette tape given to him by the boys, who were then aged around 17, and went on to produce them.
King claimed he named them Genesis because it was the start of his production career.Their debut studio album, From Genesis To Revelation, was released in 1969. It had no band name on the cover, which King later admitted was a terrible idea as it was mistakenly put into religious sections in record shops.The album flopped and the group severed links with King, who was later jailed for child sex offences in 2001.
Gabriel was the original drummer, and Phil
Collins, the only band member who didn’t go to private school, joined in 1970.
Jonathan King also named the band 10cc, after, he claimed, having a dream where he was standing in front of London’s Hammersmith Odeon
where the sign read “10cc The Best Band in theWorld”.
I’ve always been amazed at the beauty of large spider webs as they glisten in the autumn sunshine but I’ve never known how they span the incredible distance between anchor points. Do they swing? David Johnson, Stanford-le-Hope, Essex.
Spiders often build new webs every day and it is quite the construction job. Spider silk is a natural fibre made of protein that is produced by organs called spinnerets and pulled out by gravity or a hind leg.
They can make more than one type of silk, with some designed for strength, and others for flexibility or their sticky, bug-catching ability.
But the silk is always lightweight, which is how they can make large webs. The spider initially dangles a length of silk that can be carried on a gentle breeze, which then
attaches to a branch to create a strong bridge line across the top.
It runs a second strand straight along this bridge, and then heads back to the middle, so its weight bows it down, creating a triangle. It then adds a new thread and attaches it to a low anchor point, so it has created a Y shape, with the original bridge along the top.
Then it is a case of joining up the edges, adding radial threads from the centre to surrounding vegetation and finishing with that all-important sticky silk spiral, spun from the inside out.
Only half the spider families in Britain use webs to catch prey, for instance crab spiders leap on their prey and pierce them.
Most spiders you see on webs are females, with males on the go, looking for a mate. Sightings peak in autumn, and females can coat their webs with pheromones to entice a mate, and males will pluck the web suggestively.
I’ve watched A Kind Of Loving many times and often wonder what happened to June Ritchie? Lynn Caulton, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire
The 1962 kitchen sink drama A Kind Of Loving made a star of June Ritchie, who starred
alongside Alan Bates and Thora Hird. It was a swift rise for June, as it was the first film she appeared in after leaving Rada.
She became a familiar face in British cinema in the 60s, starring in Live Now, Pay Later (1962) and with Ian Hendry in This Is My Street (1964).
In 1963 she was in comedy The Mouse On The Moon and she played Sylvia Syms’ love interest in The World Ten Times Over, recognised as the first British film to centre on a lesbian relationship.
June married city financier Marcus Turnbull in 1962 and their daughter Adelia was born in 1965.They divorced and she was linked to Prince Charles after they were spotted at a polo match when she was starring as Scarlett O’Hara in the West End. Her second husband, ballet dancer David Drew, died in 2015.
She cut back on screen roles to focus on family life but she did appear in The Syndicate in 1968 and alongside The Kinks frontman Ray Davies in 1974 TV drama Starmaker.The band performed a live accompaniment which became the basis for their 1975 LP Soap Opera, which featured June singing.
June, now 80, appeared on TV and stage until retiring in 1988.