ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
DECEMBER 2, 1946 All songs and jokes which might offend Ministers of the present government are to face a sterner scrutiny by the lord Chamberlain. In the past few months, several BBC comedians have been warned that they must ‘lay off guying the government’.
DECEMBER 2, 1976 ANGRy viewers demanded the sacking of interviewer Bill Grundy last night after fourletter words were used on his Today TV programme. They accused Grundy of encouraging rock group The Sex Pistols to use ‘some of the dirtiest language ever heard on television’. The show included a spiky-haired youth saying: ‘you dirty b ****** ’; ‘you dirty f***’; and ‘What a f ****** rotter.’ In response, Grundy exclaimed: ‘What a clever boy!’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
luCy lIu, 51, right. The u.S. actress starred in TV’s Ally McBeal and on film in Charlie’s Angels and Kill Bill. She exhibits paintings, photographs and abstract artworks and admits to rifling through other people’s bins. ‘I have been known to dumpster-dive. If I see something warped or distorted, like a piece of metal, I’ll grab it and create something from it.’ BRENdAN COylE, 56. The actor from Northamptonshire played valet Mr Bates in downton Abbey. Its creator Julian Fellowes wrote the part for Coyle, whom he has called ‘cuddly and dangerous’. Coyle is so popular that a fan once spent £12,900 at a charity auction to go on a date with him.
BORN ON THIS DAY
SIR JOHN BARBIROllI (1899-1970). The 5ft 4in conductor was born Giovanni Battista Barbirolli above a london bakery. He became the musical director of the New york Philharmonic at just 37, but made his name heading Manchester’s Halle Orchestra, which he helped save during the war. He once said: ‘Modern music is three farts and a raspberry, orchestrated.’
GEORGES SEuRAT (1859-1891). The French painter is best known as the father of Pointillism — painting with dots. His most famous work, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island Of la Grande Jatte, inspired a Stephen Sondheim musical. But his first major work, Bathers At Asnieres (above), which hangs in the National Gallery, was not universally wellreceived, with one critic saying: ‘This is a picture conceived in a coarse, vulgar, and commonplace mind... It is bad from every point of view, including his own.’
ON DECEMBER 2…
IN 1697, the first part of Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral to be finished — the quire — was opened. IN 1985, poet Philip larkin died, aged 63.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Floss (c 2017)
A) To pamper. B) A dance in which people twist their hips in one direction while swinging their arms in the opposite with closed fists. C) To eradicate. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Cheek by jowl:
Meaning side by side or in close proximity: the reference is to the cheek and jowl of someone’s face, which are very close to one another. It is used typically of cramped living conditions.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
ThERE is no such thing as a bad Picasso. Some are less good than others.
Pablo Picasso, painter (1881-1973)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHICH word in the dictionary is spelled incorrectly? Incorrectly.
Guess The Definition answer: B.