October 27, 2021 ON THIS DAY
OCTOBER 27, 1965
PrINCESS Margaret capped all those jokes about The Beatles and their MBEs yesterday. And with the Queen presenting the awards to the Fab Four at Buckingham Palace, her timing was as good as the gag. reading the story as the afternoon editions rolled off the presses at a newspaper office she had just opened, the Princess quipped: ‘I think the Beatles believe MBE stands for Mr Brian Epstein.’ The band collected their MBEs in dark lounge suits. John Lennon even had a haircut.
OCTOBER 27, 1999
FrENCH farmers fuelled British fury over the beef ban yesterday by halting UK lorries with blazing barricades — and breaking into them to search for farm produce. Their two-hour blockade, which brought chaos to Calais, was in protest at the growing boycott of French goods in Britain.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
SIMON LE BON, 63. As Duran Duran frontman, the Hertfordshire-born singer has sold more than 100million records. He said he regrets appearing on Hello! magazine after the birth of his daughter Amber: ‘If you do that sort of thing, you’ve given up your privacy. You see people who you thought were quite cool and had credibility and you just look and you think, “What? God! It’s ugly, it’s materialistic and it’s about wealth.”’
VANESSA-MAE, 43. The Singapore-born British violinist started to learn the piano aged three, switched to violin at five, made her international debut at ten and released her first album at 11. She has sold more than ten million albums and is worth at least £40million. The musician, who skied for Thailand at the 2014 Winter Olympics, sacked her mother as her manager on the eve of her 21st birthday, triggering a long-term rift.
BORN ON THIS DAY
rOY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1997). The U.S. pop art pioneer was known for paintings that looked like mass-produced comic strips. Lichtenstein said his art was ‘anti-contemplative, anti-getting-awayfrom-the-tyranny-of-the-rectangle, antimovement and anti-light, anti-mystery, antipaint-quality, anti-Zen’. rUBY DEE (1922-2014). The Emmy and Grammy-winning U.S. actress and civil rights activist earned her first Oscar nomination in 2008 for her role as Denzel Washington’s mother in American Gangster. She appeared at the 1963 March on Washington (at which Martin Luther King made his I Have A Dream speech) and campaigned against apartheid in South Africa.
ON OCTOBER 27…
IN 939, King Athelstan, the first AngloSaxon ruler of the whole of England, died. IN 1986, the BBC’s first full daytime TV service aired, including Aussie soap Neighbours.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Tine (coined 900) A) Silent. B) A golden colour. C) A point or prong, as of a fork. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED Like gold dust — meaning very rare and first cited in 1703.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
PEOPlE seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure. Russell Baker, U.S. journalist (1925-2019)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHAT do you call a haunted chicken? A poultry-geist.
Guess The Definition answer: C.
Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD