ON THIS DAY
September 25, 2020
SEPTEMBER 25, 1939
PROFESSOR Sigmund freud, originator of psycho-analysis, has died at his son’s home in Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, age 83. Prof freud, who fled to London from Austria last year, was very fond of ‘beautiful, free, generous’ England, and desired to become a British citizen.
SEPTEMBER 25, 1976
CHANGES to the way the Top 50 pop chart is compiled are under way following a Daily Mail record-rigging probe. This showed that companies can buy, for not more than £2,000, new releases into the charts if they know which 300 stores are used by the British Market research Bureau to find the week’s best-selling discs.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DECLAN DONNELLY, 45. The Newcastleborn TV star, one half of Ant and Dec, first found fame with Anthony McPartlin on BBC children’s show Byker Grove. Donnelly always stands on viewers’ right, but a poll found 70 per cent didn’t know which is which. He said: ‘I was surprised 30 per cent knew.’ The duo have won the National Television Award for Best Presenter 19 years in a row.
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES, 51. The Oscarwinner from Swansea is exactly 25 years younger than husband Michael Douglas — they share a birthday. His chat-up line was apparently: ‘I’m going to be the father of your children.’ She made her name in The Darling Buds Of May but said playing cleancut Mariette misled people: ‘I drink, I swear, I like sex. I was so closely linked to the character that if I ever let my hair down, it was thought I had somehow committed a sin.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962). The u.S. author of The Sound And The fury won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his novel As I Lay Dying, he may lay claim to the world’s shortest chapter, which comprised one sentence: ‘My mother is a fish.’ He wrote the book on a wheelbarrow made into a makeshift table in six weeks — while working at a power plant.
LORD (LEON) BRITTAN (1939-2015). The London-born Tory MP was home secretary under Margaret Thatcher. record producer Mark ronson was a cousin. Many believe Brittan was ‘sacrificed’ to save the prime minister in the Westland affair over the sale of the British helicopter maker to the u.S. Thatcher wrote later: ‘Everybody complained about his manner on television, which was aloof and uncomfortable.’
ON SEPTEMBER 25...
IN 1979, the BBC’s Question Time was launched, with robin Day presenting. IN 2012, American singer Andy Williams died, aged 84.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Bawbee (c1540)
A) Christening gown. B) Priest’s mistress. C) Old Scottish coin.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear: Or you can’t turn something ugly into something fine; coined in a 1579 book by Stephen Gosson.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
You can keep a dog; but it is the cat who keeps people because cats find humans useful domestic animals.
George Mikes, Hungarian-born writer (1912-1987)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a pile of kittens?
A meowntain. Guess The Definition answer: C.