The mighty mousers . . .

QUESTIONThe Guinness Book Of Records once proclaimed Towser, a cat resident at Glenturret Distillery, as the world’s greatest mouser. How did they determine this? Several years ago, we spent New Year in Scotland and visited the Glenturret Distillery near Crieff, Perthshire, and took a tour to sample the product . . . purely for medicinal purposes!

Outside, we saw the statue to their famous ‘mouser’, and the inscription which reads: TOWSER 21 April 1963 — 20 March 1987 Towser the famous cat who lived in the Still House, Glenturret Distillery, for almost 24 years. She caught 28,899 mice in her lifetime. World mousing champion Guinness Book Of Records.

as to the accuracy of those numbers, it is stated the Guinness Book Of records adjudicators went to Crieff to observe the cat’s prowess for some days, and the total was extrapolated by a statistical technique from their observations.

even if the number might not be accurate, it’s pretty impressive and works out at an average of three mice a day.

Towser was so famous that, at one time, you could buy Fairlie’s light Highland liqueur, with a label design featuring her paw prints. Towser was immortalised as a Wade pottery figure in a limited edition of 1,500 and as a circular lapel pin badge. Alan and Dorothy Ashton,

St Austell. Cornwall.

QUESTIONTom Cruise broke his ankle, but have any actors been seriously injured or killed on a film set?

THe associated Press determined that, since 1990, at least 43 people have died on film sets in the U.S. and more than 150 have been left with life-altering injuries.

Internationally, at least 37 people have died in filming accidents since 2000.

Perhaps the most horrific of all movie accidents was the one that befell vic Morrow and two child actors on the set of John landis’s Twilight Zone adaptation Killer kitties: Towser’s statue and two new mousers, Glen and Turret in 1982. The 53-year-old Morrow was filming a scene where he was shielding two vietnamese children, played by Myca Dinh le and renee Shin-Yi Chen, from american soldiers, after travelling back in time to the vietnam War.

In a night scene, filmed at Indian Dunes in Santa Clarita, California, a UH-1B helicopter chased Morrow and his co-actors. explosive effects detonated close to the helicopter engulfed the tail rotor, causing it to spin out of control.

as it plummeted towards the actors, the rotor blades decapitated Morrow and one child, and the landing skid crushed the other. It later emerged the two child actors had been hired illegally.

During the filming of alex Proyas’s 1994 Gothic film The Crow, Michael Massee’s character, Funboy, fired an improperly prepared .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 629 revolver at Brandon lee as the actor walked into the room.

The bullet struck lee in the abdomen and he was rushed to hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was later pronounced dead.

During the filming of the 1989 movie The return Of The Musketeers, roy Kinnear fell from a horse in Toledo, Spain, sustaining a broken pelvis. Ironically, the comedy actor had a lifelong fear of horses.

He was taken to hospital in Madrid, and died from a heart attack the following day. The director, richard lester, never made another feature film.

In a much older incident, in 1924, during the filming of The Warrens Of virginia, the silent film star Martha Mansfield was resting inside a car in between takes when a passer-by lit a cigarette and accidentally flicked the match into the automobile. The match landed on her costume, which was a giant (and flammable) Civil War-era dress that went up in flames. Mansfield died in hospital from severe burns the next day. Tom Cruise’s Top Gun (1986) was dedicated to the memory of art Scholl. a famous aerobatic pilot, the 53-year-old had been hired to do inflight camera work for the film and to fly the difficult ‘flat spin’ scene.

Scholl reported a malfunction in the Pitts S-2 camera plane before crashing into the ocean, off California. Neither Scholl nor the plane were recovered.

During the filming of Catch-22 (1970), John Jordan, a second unit director, was sucked out of an open door on a plane into the Gulf Of Mexico. He wasn’t wearing a harness.

Three years earlier, Jordan had one of his legs amputated after a rotor blade from a helicopter cut him while filming the Bond movie You Only live Twice.

Ed Hewson, Church Stretton, Shropshire.

QUESTIONHow far would the white cliffs of Dover have to erode not to be white?

THe white cliffs of Dover form the easternmost terminus of the chalk escarpment known as the North Downs.

The Downs run westwards from the White Cliffs between Deal and Folkestone, across Kent, into South london.

The narrow spine of the Hog’s Back between Farnham and Guildford in Surrey forms the western extremity of the North Downs. The cliffs would thus have to erode around 100 miles before the chalk ends.

The North Downs are mirrored, across the Weald, by the South Downs. This runs from Beachy Head near eastbourne in the east to the Itchen valley near Winchester. These two ridges form the remnants of a once mighty dome of chalk: the Wealden anticline.

erosion has carried away the central chalk, exposing the clays and sandstones of the Weald and leaving the steep escarpments of the two Downs facing each other, 25 miles apart.

Anne Evans, Biddenden, Kent.

IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT; fax them to 01952 780111 or email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.