ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE NOVEMBER 23, 1987
NINA SIMONE yesterday asked British fans to stop buying her hit single My Baby Just Cares For Me. She doesn’t want it to reach No 1 in the charts, after a royalties row with London’s Charly Records. The singer explained: ‘They want my talent for peanuts, so I told them where to go.’
NOVEMBER 23, 1995
IT HAS inspired cartoonists for 25 years. Now the secret of Michael heseltine’s golden mane is out
— he just washes it and goes. A caller on Radio 4’s
Today show yesterday asked: ‘Do you blow-dry . . . and use mousse, or is that a natural bounce . . ?’An amused Mr heseltine replied: ‘I do nothing to my hair, except occasionally wash it.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
VINCENT CASSEL, 56. The French actor, a trained ballet dancer, appeared in films including Black Swan and Jason Bourne — and was Nicole’s boyfriend in a Renault Clio advert on TV. Cassel said he’s only a hunk in the movies: ‘When you appear on the screen often enough, you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.’ DIANA QUICK, 76. The London- born actress played Lady Julia Flyte in the 1980s TV’s Brideshead Revisited (right). her sex scene with Jeremy Irons made her laugh as she said it began with him wearing ‘great big harris tweed trousers’, and ended with him ‘bashing the headboard and bellowing’. Quick was the first female president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
BORN ON THIS DAY
BETTY EVERETT (1939-2001). The U.S. soul singer had hits with Let It Be Me and The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In his Kiss) in 1964. Cher’s cover of the latter went to UK No 1 25 years later. A music journalist said no one declaims the opening couplet ‘ Does he love me? I wanna know / How can I tell if he loves me so?’ with ‘a more poignant urgency’ than Everett. JOHN COLE (1927-2013). The Belfast-born broadcaster with square glasses was the BBC’s political editor from 1981 to 1992. Praised for his impartiality, he once asked Margaret Thatcher if she was like a headmistress and she replied: ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ he later wrote: ‘her enamelled certitude often did not make her easy to interview.’
ON NOVEMBER 23 . . .
IN 1991, the first episode of Noel’s house Party — starring Noel Edmonds and, later, Mr Blobby — was broadcast on BBC1.
IN 2016, Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, died, aged 86.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION: Bovarism (1902)
A) Struggling to find a word. B) Affected use of archaic language. C) Exaggerated estimation of oneself. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Après moi, le déluge: Meaning ‘After me, the flood’: attributed to King Louis XV, prophetically, as 15 years after his death the French Revolution broke out. It is a nihilistic expression of indifference to whatever happens after one is gone.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Every country has the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre, French writer (1753-1821)
JOKE OF THE DAY
HOW was the robot frog held together? Rivets.
Guess The Definition answer: C.