ON THIS DAY
May 19, 2020
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
MAY 19, 1944
FOr a penny a day, about two million British country folk who, strange as it may seem to this modern age, have had to manage without tap water up to now, will have a supply laid on when the Government’s rural water scheme is completed.
MAY 19, 1970
ACTRESS Joanna Lumley (right) and television Laugh-In’s Jeremy Lloyd [who went on to co-create Are You Being Served] announced their engagement yesterday after a two-week romance. Joanna recently revealed she was the unmarried mother of a two-year-old boy. [The couple divorced after a few months and Lumley later said: ‘He was witty, tall and charming — we should have just had a raging affair.’]
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ELEANOR TOMLINSON, 28. The actress from London played Captain ross’s wife Demelza in Poldark. She wore her brother’s clothes, no make-up and ‘a gormless expression’ at the audition that won her the part. After three series of the show, she said she should be paid the same as its star Aidan Turner: ‘We’re equal leads of the show, so I’d be pretty upset if the gap hadn’t closed.’
PETE TOWNSHEND, 75. The Who songwriter and guitarist used to drive a hearse and once said he wrote My Generation after the car was impounded, apparently ‘upon the request of the Queen Mother, as she had to pass it every day’. Townshend said: ‘I saw her as a boring old lady who had nothing better to do than go around taking away teenagers’ cars. But I got a rather decent song out of it, so, cheers, Ma’am.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
VICTORIA WOOD (19532016). The Bafta-winning comedian (right) found fame on talent show New Faces, but then spent four years on the dole, living on tinned mince. The creator of Dinnerladies married Geoffrey Durham, a magician aka The Great Soprendo, but she said: ‘Being a wife never appealed to me and I was so embarrassed when I got married that I didn’t tell anyone for two years.’
NANCY ASTOR (1879-1964). The U.S.-born politician was the first woman MP to take her seat in the Commons, in 1919, after winning Plymouth Sutton, her husband’s constituency, when he inherited a peerage. It was Astor’s Private Members’ Bill — the first presented by a woman to become an Act of Parliament — that raised the age of drinking alcohol in a pub from 14 to 18.
ON MAY 19...
IN 1940, Winston Churchill made his first radio broadcast as prime minister.
IN 2004, PM Tony Blair was struck with a condom filled with purple powder in the House of Commons. Fathers 4 Justice said it was behind the protest.