January 15, 2021 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 15, 1973
SHAKESPEARE’S Globe Theatre will be rebuilt as a modern playhouse with the shape and facade of its 1599 predecessor in Southwark, London. [It opened in 1997].
JANUARY 15, 1993
FAXES and photocopies of the Camillagate transcript [an intimate phone conversation between Charles and Camilla] were yesterday finding their way into offices, shops and factories across Britain thanks to the new technology.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
PRINCESS Michael of Kent, 76. The wife of the Queen’s cousin was born Marie Christine Anna Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz in what is now the Czech Republic. ‘ Princess Pushy’ was reportedly labelled ‘ too grand for us’ by the Queen. In 2013, Princess Michael admitted: ‘We never go to dinner unless it’s to someone else’s house. We never go to restaurants. That’s too expensive.’ PETE WATERMAN, 74. The music producer from Coventry turned Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Rick Astley into stars. The ex-miner and gravedigger once slept rough at Euston station and only learned to read and write in his 30s. Asked later to train civil servants in the Cabinet Office, he asked how many had A-levels and had been to Oxbridge. ‘They all put their hands up. I asked, “How many of you are millionaires?” Mine was the only hand to go up.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
FRANK BOUGH ( 19332020). The jumper-wearing, Bafta-winning broadcaster presented BBC’s Grandstand and was described as ‘the most wholesome man in broadcasting’, yet Bough was the subject of two damning newspaper exposes: in 1988 for taking cocaine with prostitutes, and after visiting a bondage parlour in 1992. He said: ‘A lot of men are stupid. I am among the most stupid.’ LLOYD BRIDGES (1913-1998). The U.S. actor appeared in more than 150 films from High Noon to Airplane! Bridges said he thought he could play Hamlet better than Richard Burton but was typecast after playing an underwater investigator in 156 episodes of Sea Hunt: ‘The public seemed to think of me as being underwater.’
ON JANUARY 15 . . .
IN 1797, a top hat was worn in public for the first time. Haberdasher John Hetherington was arrested in London for breach of the peace after ‘several women fainted at the unusual sight’. IN 2001, in 2001, free online encyclopedia Wikipedia was launched.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Fallals (coined c1703) A) Dust accumulated under furniture. B) Wax drips from a candle. C) Bits of finery. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED I’m off before I turn into a pumpkin: I’m off to bed/home — from the Cinderella fairy tale, where a pumpkin was turned into a golden coach, but reverted to its original form at midnight.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met.
Fran Lebowitz, U.S. writer
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did Snow White say when her photos did not arrive? Someday my prints will come! Guess The Definition answer: C.