ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE AUGUST 24, 1961
DAVID DIMBLEBY, son of the BBC’s royal correspondent, has asked shoe firm chief George Mount for the hand of his daughter, Georganne — but was told to try again later. ‘We’re not stern Victorian parents and we couldn’t like David more,’ said Mr Mount’s wife, Elizabeth, ‘but we felt they ought to wait a bit.’ [The marriage never took place.]
AUGUST 24, 1966
A DAILY bath parade will be held at the Royal Ordnance Factory Glascoed, in Pontypool, to select the ten dirtiest men, who will be allowed to finish work before colleagues to get clean. It comes after bosses cut the end-of-shift bathing time from 45 to 30 minutes. Fourteen workers in the smokebomb section — the filthiest, they say — held a one-day strike over the shorter washing time. A factory official said: ‘A supervisor will decide which are the dirtiest.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ELIZABETH DEBICKI, 28, right. The Australian actress, who shared steamy sex scenes with Tom Hiddleston in spy thriller The Night Manager, says she ever-so-slightly broke her ballet dancer parents’ hearts when, age 17, she got into law school, then chose to study drama instead. At 6ft 3in, she is roughly the same height as Hiddleston — whom she describes as ‘basically perfect’. RuPERT GRINT, 30. The star had only acted in a school play before landing the role of Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films. Worth £28 million, he bought ‘ridiculous things’ like an ice-cream van before investing in property. Grint, a distant relative of Robbie Williams, says TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh left him the most starstruck — ‘it’s weird, because it’s not even like I am a big gardener’.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WILLIAM WILBERFORCE (1759-1833). The Hull-born MP led the movement to end slavery but died weeks before the Act to abolish the trade became law. Known as ‘the nightingale of the House of Commons’ for his wonderful voice, he had a whirlwind romance with Barbara Anne Spooner, proposing after eight days and marrying in six weeks. They went on to have six children in ten years. GRAHAM Sutherland (1903-1980). The English painter was famed for portraits, but they were not always liked. Sir Winston Churchill said the one commissioned for his 80th birthday (right) made him look half-witted. He refused to have it put on display and his wife, Clemmie, arranged for it to be incinerated.
ON AUGUST 24…
IN 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty, which forms the basis of Nato, came into effect. IN 1975, Queen began three weeks of recording for hit song Bohemian Rhapsody.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Kellick (1500s) A) Diagonally across from something else. B) An anchor. C) Misshapen. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Chalk and cheese: Complete opposites. Its first appearance in print was in 1393: ‘Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
A PERPETUAL holiday is a good working definition of hell. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
JOKE OF THE DAY
I SAW a chap spill all his Scrabble letters on
the floor, yesterday. So I asked him: ‘What’s the word on the street?’ Guess The Definition answer: B.