ON THIS DAY

FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

FeBrUArY 9, 1917 LICENSING justices in Blackburn, Lancs, yesterday complained that despite a Liquor Control Board order and appeals for restraint, drinking by women had not decreased. In one public house, 200 women had been found — and nearly 2,000 in 200 further licensed premises in one hour. The justices urged the Board further to restrict the hours of serving drinks to women. FeBrUArY 9, 1965 CIGARETTE advertising is to be banned on British TV, Health Minister Kenneth Robinson said yesterday. Commercials for pipe tobacco and cigars would not be affected. Mr Robinson, a 20-a-day smoker, warned that cigarette advertising in newspapers and hoardings was under review.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

ERIN O’CONNOR, 40. Jean Paul Gaultier said of the 6ft model from the West Midlands: ‘She isn’t only a model, she is like art. She is like theatre. She is extraordinary inspiration.’ But O’Connor herself said: ‘My job is to sell clothes to very rich women.’ Inspired by Bet Lynch, Erin (pictured) has ‘an irrational obsession with leopard print’ and has chairs, towels, wallpaper and coats in the pattern. HOLLy JOHNSON, 58. The Liverpool-born lead singer of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who had huge success in the 1980s with hits such as Relax and Two Tribes, was diagnosed with HIV in 1993. He said he feared it would be said a man ‘who had promoted a promiscuous homosexual lifestyle had got his comeuppance’. He survived thanks to NHS drug therapy and said: ‘I live like a nun. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. But I’m not whining about it.’

BORN ON THIS DAY

KATHRyN GRAySON (1922-2010). The American actress (pictured) made her name in several hit MGM musicals, including Kiss Me Kate and Show Boat. Grayson was persuaded to sign a contract with the studio at 15 after being heard singing at a party. She was a classically trained soprano who had hoped to pursue a career in opera, though one obituary unkindly described her as sounding ‘curiously like Minnie Mouse gargling’. LENNARD PEARCE (1915-1984), the English actor who starred as Grandad in Only Fools And Horses. Co-star Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played Rodney, said Pearce met Adolf Hitler before World War II as he toured Europe as an actor and always regretted not shooting him.

ON FEBRUARY 9…

IN 1964, The Beatles appeared on U.S. TV for the first time, on The Ed Sullivan Show. IN 2002, Princess Margaret died at 71.