A laurel for Mr Hardy!
QUESTION Which actor has played the most real-life roles on film and TV? Which real-life person has been portrayed by the most actors?
THe accolade must go to Robert Hardy, who has played Winston churchill in eight film and TV productions.
His churchill connection began with Young Winston in 1972 when he played churchill’s headmaster. He first played the great man himself in the TV mini-series The Wilderness Years (1981).
He later played churchill in the TV films The Woman He loved (1988) and Bomber Harris (1989), in the mini-series War And Remembrance (1988-89), in the Agatha christie’s Marple episode The Sittaford Mystery (2006) and in the TV film churchill: 100 Days That Saved Britain (2015).
Hardy has also played U.S. President F.D. Roosevelt twice (Bertie And elizabeth 2002 and De Gaulle 2006), King oswy of northumbria (churchill’s People, 1975), Prince Albert (edward The King, 1975), Benito Mussolini (caesar And claretta, 1975) and Sir Malcolm campbell (BBc2 Playhouse/Speed King, 1974).
Added to that are Sir Anthony Parsons, HM Ambassador to the Un during the Falklands War (The Falklands Play, 2002), Sir James caird, shipping magnate and sponsor to Sir ernest Shackleton’s expeditions to the Antarctic (Shackleton, 2002), Julius caesar (The cleopatras 1983), Pontius Pilate twice (The Wednesday Play/Son of Man 1969 and The People’s Passion 1999).
He was the voice of Abraham in Testament: The Bible In Animation, King Henry V (An Age of Kings, 1960), Herbert Henry Asquith (Shoulder To Shoulder 1974, a mini-series about the Suffragettes), Willie Whitelaw (Margaret, 2009), Joachim von Ribbentrop (The Gathering Storm 1974), Robert Dudley, earl of leicester (elizabeth R, 1971) and Malcom Morris Qc, who Timothy evans’s barrister in the John christie murder case in the film 10 Rillington Place (1971).
Finally, in one of Hardy’s most acclaimed roles, he played Siegfried Farnon a pseudonym for James Herriot/Alf Wights’s real-life mentor Donald Sinclair in All creatures Great And Small.
Danny D’Arcy, Reading, Berks. THe real-life figure who has made the most appearances on film is Jesus of nazareth — he has made at least 649 appearances in a myriad different guises.
His earliest was in the Horitz Passion Play (1897) a short film recording the annual passion play in the czech Republic. His appearances range from 1977’s Jesus of nazareth, starring Robert Powell, to controversial ones such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The christ, starring Jim caviezel and Martin Scorsese’s last Temptation of christ, starring Willem Dafoe to the downright strange such as The Zombie christ (2012).
Second to Jesus is napoleon Bonaparte who has featured in 485 productions, beginning with napoleon And The english Sailor (1908) when he was played by Herbert Darnley. He is followed closely by Adolf Hitler with 480, Abraham lincoln with 397, George Washington on 241 and Winston churchill with 195 depictions.
The Devil and Father christmas have been played more than 800 times on TV respectively, though not everyone agrees that they’re real.
Adam French, Dudley, West Mids.
QUESTION Is it true that slavery was technically legal in Britain until 2010?
BY THe 18th century, the British had become the most successful slavers in the Atlantic world, more than 10,000 slave voyages having been made to Africa since 1562 — and the political conversion to anti-slavery was slow.
But changes in economic interests and growing abolition campaigns made demands for freedom of the enslaved almost universal.
It was eventually achieved with two acts: the 1807 Slave Trade Act, in which buying, selling and transporting of people was made illegal, though slaves already owned remained slaves; and the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, when any slaves in Britain were declared free. It was passed after parliament had been reformed and two-thirds of those who supported slavery were swept from power,
This was followed in 1838 by a ban on false ‘apprenticeship’ schemes, giving true freedom to all ex-slaves. As time went on, investigations began to show ‘modern slavery’ was a serious problem in 21stcentury Britain.
Investigators found different forms of exploitation for profit, often involving organised crime gangs. Sometimes control is physical, such as a threat if someone tried to escape, or a victim might be scared they’ll be reported to the police by the gang who control them.
Modern slavery was a complex problem with no one definition that fully covered the offence, and in 2004 Parliament created a specific offence of trafficking someone into the UK for forced labour.
Saeeda Khan, from north london, was believed to be the first person convicted under the new law when found guilty of trafficking a Tanzanian woman into the country to work as her domestic slave.
But if a criminal forced a victim inside the UK or from the eU into servitude, they could not be prosecuted for trafficking. Finally, Parliament created anti-slavery powers in 2009 in an Act that recognised forced labour as a crime on its own.
In 2010 the Anti-Slavery Day Act was passed. A short Act, it introduced a national day to raise awareness of the need to eradicate all forms or slavery, human trafficking and exploitation.
Slavery had been illegal for many years prior to this; the point of recent acts being to simplify things, correct technical matters, and draw attention to what remains a hidden problem.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION Why is a police informer a ‘grass’?
FURTHeR to the earlier answer, another possible explanation might stem from Greek mythology.
When King Midas said Pan’s simple rustic music was better than that of the god Apollo, Apollo responded that Midas must have the ears of an ass if he thought that and gave them to him.
So no one would know he had them, Midas hid these under a turban, but his barber had to be in on the secret. The barber couldn’t stand not telling anyone, so dug a pit in the sand and whispered it.
Reeds or grass grew out of the hole and when the wind blew they seemed to whisper ‘Midas has ass’s ears’, and soon everyone knew the secret. This must have been the original ‘whispering grass’.
In 1975, Windsor Davies and Don estelle had a no 1 hit with their cover of a Forties song of the that name. Sometimes in crime drama an informant is called by the full title ‘whispering grass’.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants
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