ON THIS DAY
October 3, 1955 JAMES DEAN, the 24-year-old Hollywood actor, killed in a car crash on Friday, was warned at least ten times against fast driving. Only a few hours before he crashed in his light aluminium Porsche sports car, driving from Hollywood to Salinas, he had been told: ‘Take it easy.’ October 3, 1967 POP singer Cliff Richard has dropped plans to give up showbusiness for religion, after studying for more than two years to be a religious knowledge teacher. Cliff, 27 next week, said: ‘The most foolish thing I ever did was to mention the idea in the first place. I’m a Christian and I’ll stay in showbusiness as long as people want me.’ Cliff represents Britain in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CLIVE OWEN, 55. The Coventry-born star of Closer, Gosford Park and Inside Man was brought up on a council estate, left school with one O-level and was on the dole for two years before getting a place at Rada. At the drama school, his hair was ‘about five different colours’ — he was inspired to dye his locks by David Bowie. LENA HEADEY, 46. The actress who played Cersei lannister in Game of Thrones was born in Bermuda, but moved to Huddersfield, West yorkshire, when she was five. She has at least 13 tattoos, including a Ganesha elephant godhead.
BORN ON THIS DAY
EDDIE COCHRAN (1938-1960). The American singer, who had hits with Summertime Blues and C’mon Everybody, achieved a British number one for Three Steps To Heaven after he died, aged 21, in a car crash in Wiltshire during a British tour. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame 27 years later and described as ‘everlasting’. JAMES HERRIOT (19161995). The Sunderlandborn vet, whose real name was James Alfred Wight, wrote All Creatures Great And Small about his life in the yorkshire Dales. His books were turned into a TV series running for 90 episodes between 1978 and 1990. The ‘Herriot effect’ was coined due to a rise in popularity of his profession.
ON OCTOBER 3…
IN 1896, Queen Victoria became the first British monarch to be captured on moving film while at Balmoral during a visit by Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra.
IN 1992, Irish singer Sinead O’Connor finished a performance on US TV show Saturday Night live by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II as a protest against sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: sept (c1510) a) an infection b) a seventh c) a division of a Scottish or Irish family Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED
all wool and a yard wide: high-quality or to be friendly and honourable; it dates back to the American Civil War; if a uniform was ‘all wool’ it was good quality and ‘a yard wide’ was the length for a single piece of wool used to a uniform. Shabbier uniforms were sometimes made from more than one piece