ON THIS DAY
February 9, 2024
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
FEBRUARY 9, 1963
CLIFF RICHARD’S new film musical Summer Holiday, which sees the star travel through Europe on a bus with four friends, caused an international row when the Yugoslav Embassy in London protested to the foreign Office. An Embassy spokesman said: ‘The Yugoslav scenes are the worst thing I have ever seen on film.’
FEBRUARY 9, 2004
HE IS the most successful 007 of all, but Pierce Brosnan is being pensioned off as James Bond. Producers have decided that, at the age of 50, he is not attracting enough young fans and will be recruiting a successor. Names in the frame include Jude Law, Christian Bale, Orlando Bloom, Colin farrell and Hugh Jackman.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MIA FARROW, 79. The U. S. actress and campaigner starred in Rosemary’s Baby and Hannah And Her Sisters. She married frank Sinatra when she was 21 and he was 50. She later went on to marry composer- conductor André Previn and have a 12-year relationship with woody Allen, until he started dating her 21-year-old adopted daughter. JOE PESCI, 81. The U.S. actor starred in Raging Bull and Casino and won an Oscar for Goodfellas. while playing a villain in two Home Alone films, he kept his distance from child star Macaulay Culkin ‘ to maintain the integrity of the adversarial relationship’. Officially, he retired in 1999, but has appeared in four films since.
BORN ON THIS DAY
MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL (1865-1940). The stage actress from London, born Beatrice Tanner, created the role of Eliza doolittle in her friend George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The two exchanged flirtatious letters for 40 years. She travelled everywhere with her Pekingese, Pinky Panky Poo. She described her marriage as: ‘The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue.’
CLIVE SWIFT (1936-2019). The Liverpoolborn actor made his name as henpecked Richard Bucket in BBC sitcom Keeping Up Appearances. An original member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he was married to novelist Margaret drabble for 15 years and their children included Joe Swift, a presenter of the BBC’s Gardeners’ world.
ON FEBRUARY 9…
IN 1981, rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley — whose hits included Rock Around the Clock — died, aged 55. IN 1986, Halley’s Comet, ‘ history’s most famous comet’, last appeared. It will not return until 2061.
WORD WIZARDRY GUESS THE DEFINITION Drollic (c 1743)
A) Young and thoughtless.
B) Pertaining to a puppet show.
C) Of a girl: forward, romping.
Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Vestal virgin:
referring to a nun dedicated to the service of the Roman goddess vesta and whose duty was to keep the fire of the temple burning, both day and night; she was required to be of spotless chastity.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.
A. A. Gill, British writer (1954-2016)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT did the dog say when it sat on sandpaper? Rough, rough!
Guess The Definition answer: B.