Film star with a lot of pluck
QUESTION Is it true that Hollywood actor Steve Martin is one of the world’s fastest banjo players?
Steve Martin’S banjo playing is no joke. Growing up in California’s Orange County, he fell in love with bluegrass music, and his hero was banjo legend earl Scruggs: ‘after i heard the Missouri band the Dillards live, my ear was transfixed by the sound of the banjo,’ he said.
With the help of his school friend John Mceuen, later a member of a famous Bluegrass outfit the nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Martin taught himself how to play. ‘i would get records by earl Scruggs and pick out the songs, note by note. i learned how to play that way,’ he said.
He mastered Scruggs’s three-finger picking style and the clawhammer technique where only the thumb and middle or index finger are used to hit a string with the back of the fingernail.
Before finding fame in Hollywood films, Martin played banjo as part of his stage comedy act.
in 2009, he impressed the bluegrass community by releasing the self-penned album, the Crow: new Songs For the Five- String Banjo, featuring 16 tracks. in 2001, he appeared on the David Letterman tv show with his hero earl Scruggs, among several other famous banjo players.
they tore into the Scruggs classic Foggy Mountain Breakdown, with Martin playing an impressive 550 notes per minute. However, when todd taylor was awarded the Guinness World record for banjo playing in 2007, he is reported to have played an incredible 840 notes per minute.
Andrew Jacobs, Goring, Oxon.
QUESTION With the advances in satellite technology and GPS, why does the BBC still transmit shipping forecasts on long wave?
THE shipping forecast was conceived by Met Office founder vice admiral robert Fitzroy, after the royal Charter Storm hit the irish Sea on October 25, 1859, and more than 800 people were killed and 133 ships lost. it was fully instituted in 1867, moving to BBC radio in 1925.
it is transmitted four times a day via a combination of FM and long wave frequencies. FM can only be heard about 12 miles offshore, but long wave has been picked up as far as 3,000 miles away. the forecast has largely been supplanted by alternative technology. Weather apps are ever more accurate and so are favoured by inshore leisure sailors.
navtex (navigational telex) receivers that store the forecast and other navigation information are part of the global maritime distress and safety system required on all commercial ships. Many small yachts also have them.
However, the shipping forecast is seen as a vital back-up. there would be a public outcry if it were to be dropped.
Lyndsey Daisley, Beccles, Suffolk.
QUESTION In March 1988, a football fanzine called There’s Only One F In Fulham was launched. It’s still going strong 145 editions later, with one of the original editors in charge. Are any older football fanzines still being published?
THERE are a number of contenders for the oldest football fanzine.
arsenal Football Supporters’ Club came into being at the start of the 1949-50 season and produced a newsletter called Gunflash in 1949. it was originally a few a4 pages produced on a stencil duplicator and stapled together.
Having just produced its 585th issue, some consider it Britain’s longest-running football fanzine, but as the official magazine of the arsenal Supporters’ Club, it is not generally regarded as a truly independent fanzine. Foul, which ran from 1972 to 1976, is considered to be the first genuine fanzine, penned by a group of Cambridge University students and mimicking the irreverent style of Private eye. the eighties were the heyday of the fanzine. early efforts such as York City’s terrace talk and Bolton’s Wanderers’ Worldwide did not last long. However, the Bradford City fanzine, the City Gent, launched in October 1984, is still going and is the oldest football fanzine proper.
in 1986, two national fanzines emerged — the Birmingham-based Off the Ball and the London-based When Saturday Comes. Supporters at virtually every club nationwide decided it was time to find their own voice.
QPr’s a Kick Up the rs (1987 and still going strong) began the trend for imaginatively titled publications.
Other examples include or included a Load Of Bull, the Wolves’s fanzine (Steve Bull was a famous striker there); Cod almighty at Grimsby town (a reference to the fishing industry); the Oatcake, the Stoke City fanzine (oatcakes are a local delicacy); and Super Dario Land at Crewe (their manager’s name). My favourite is Coventry’s City’s Gary Mabbutt’s Knee. Coventry’s winning goal in the 1987 Fa Cup Final went in off Spurs player Mabbutt’s knee — an own goal.
Richard Wilson, Warwick.