ON THIS DAY
FROM THE MAIL ARCHIVE
AUGUST 2, 1972 JAMES Bond is going blond for latest 007 film Live And Let Die. Roger Moore, 42, (pictured in the film with Gloria Hendry) who follows dark-haired Sean Connery and George Lazenby as 007, said yesterday he will not dye his fair hair. AUGUST 2, 1976 WORLD champion driver Niki Lauda was fighting for his life last night after his Ferrari crashed in flames on the race track the Austrian described as ‘too dangerous to drive on’. It happened at the Nurburgring during the second lap of the West German Grand Prix. [A badly burned Lauda, who died in May, was back behind the wheel within six weeks.]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ISABEL ALLENDE, 77. The Chilean novelist has sold more than 74 million books worldwide. The House Of The Spirits and Of Love And Shadows were made into films. Asked who should play her in a movie, Allende said: ‘I would like Penelope Cruz, but I should probably get Sylvester Stallone.’ Her father was a cousin of former Chilean president Salvador Allende.
DONNA AIR, 40. The TV presenter from Tyneside found fame as a ten-year-old actress on the BBC’s Byker Grove. By 2016 she was said to have ‘morphed into a wholesome, fresh-faced Sloane’. Air is friends with Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and has had an on-off relationship with James Middleton, brother of the Duchess of Cambridge. She has a daughter, Freya, with multi-millionaire Damian Aspinall.
BORN ON THIS DAY
WES CRAVEN (1939-2015). The American filmmaker, the son of Baptists who banned him from reading comics, started out making porn films. He went on to direct mainstream movies, including A Nightmare On Elm Street (pictured is Freddy Krueger from the film) and the Scream movie franchise. Craven, dubbed the Master of Horror, said of his genre: ‘Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.’
SHIMON PERES (1923-2016). The Israeli founding father, two-time prime minister and three-time foreign minister, born Szymon Perski in Poland, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for his efforts to forge peace in the Middle East. At his funeral, ex-U.S. president Bill Clinton said: ‘He started life as Israel’s brightest student, became its best teacher and ended up its biggest dreamer.’ His cousin was movie star Lauren Bacall.
ON AUGUST 2…
IN 1922, Alexander Graham Bell, the Scottish inventor of the telephone, died aged 75. IN 1962, U.S. singer Robert Allen Zimmerman legally changed his name to Bob Dylan.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Gamp (coined by novelist Charles Dickens, 1846) A) Feeble. B) Tiny. C) An umbrella. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Pound of flesh: Payment that is due and which may be collected ruthlessly. It comes from Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, in which moneylender Shylock sets a surety of a pound of flesh that borrower Antonio must pay if he fails to honour a loan.