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...
Q There was a music festival on the Isle of Arran in 1971, featuring Thin Lizzy, Slade and Nazareth. Where on the island was it?
Mike Varey, Westhill, Aberdeenshire
A The three-day music festival was quite a coup for the island, off Scotland’s west coast, and an eye-opener for its 3,500 inhabitants.
The bands played its “September Weekend”, the last weekend of the month, and Arran was packed with hundreds of rock fans, many coming over from Glasgow, a 50-mile car journey and ferry ride away.
Concerts took place in village halls in Brodick, Lamlash and Whiting Bay.Tickets cost from 40p to £1, and could be bought from a tea shop on the island.
One islander remembers being told £1,500 had been taken at the door one night. Unsurprisingly, the halls were hot, humid and wild – they would cater for 200-300 people in these more health-and-safety conscious days.
Sunday was the big one, from 9pm-2am, at Lamlash, with Slade, Nazareth and Thin Lizzy all performing.Tom Ferrie was the compere, who later went on to present for BBC Radio Scotland.
Scottish band Nazareth came straight from recording their self-titled debut album in London. Boys Are Back In Town hitmakers Thin Lizzy played on all three nights.
Locals recall a story involving the guitarist from Dundee band Sleaz dropping his trousers onstage after a few too many drinks and Slade’s bass player filling in for him one night.
Scottish folk group The Corries were also featured on the weekend’s line-up.
Q After matching two whole numbers on the lottery last Saturday, my wife shouted “jackpot”. Who’s Jack?
Derek Harris, Whitehaven, Cumbria
A This was first heard in the 19th century, coming from a type of poker game, Jacks Or Better, where bets couldn’t be opened until one player held a pair of jacks, or cards that would beat a pair of tens.
If it wasn’t for a change of card design, we’d be yelling out “knavepot”. Early decks in England featured three face cards – king, knight and knave. It was the French who brought in the queen, replacing the knight.
For a couple of centuries, knave remained the popular name for this card among the upper classes, while commoners called him “jack”, the generic term for a young, lower-class man.
In Charles Dickens’s 1861 novel Great Expectations, orphan Pip plays cards with snooty Estella, who is horrified by his coarse hands and says with disdain, “He calls the knaves jacks, this boy!” But when card makers started to include ranks in the top corner there was too much confusion with “K” for king and “Kn” for knight, when trying to identify them after fanning out cards. So “J” and jacks won out.
Q Could you please explain how plastic was discovered and how it can bend into all sorts of shapes?
Rosemary Gliddon, Bournemouth
A Without plastic, the world would be a very different place and we have Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland to thank for the first fully synthetic plastic, meaning it didn’t contain any molecules found in nature. Named Bakelite, it combined two chemicals, formaldehyde and phenol, under heat and pressure.
Baekeland beat his rival, Scottish engineer James Swinburne, to the patent by one day in 1907.
Easily mass-produced, durable and heat-resistant, it led to the creation of many popular 20th century items, including the Purma camera, the GPO telephone and the Ekco AD36 radio. There are now many different types of plastic, and they can be shaped because they are made from polymers, which are long molecules made up of repeating chains of smaller, flexing molecules, called monomers. Imagine a chain of paperclips or a train with lots of carriages. The shorter the chain, the easier it is to shape.
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