November 16, 2021 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE NOVeMBeR 16, 1940
COVeNTry, hit by as heavy a night of bombing as even London, has shown itself tonight as a city of good Samaritans. The well-to-do and the poor alike have thrown open their houses to the homeless, hundreds of people whose homes were wrecked. In working-class districts particularly, appeared notices in the windows of house after house: ‘room for two’, ‘room for three’, ‘Will take four children’.
NOVeMBeR 16, 1984
JOHNNy MOrrIS has been secretly axed by the BBC after presenting children’s show Animal Magic for 22 years. A stunned Morris says a BBC chief told him: ‘We don’t like your programme and it has been running too long.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
GrIff rHyS JONeS, 68. The Welsh comedian starred with the late Mel Smith in Not The Nine O’Clock News and Alas Smith & Jones. When they sold their production company Talkback in 2000, rhys Jones made more than £20million. He says ruefully of his TV appearances: ‘I come across as a sort of bland, middle-class, flabbyfaced, currant-eyed, wavy-haired presenter. I like to think of myself as rugged.’
MAGGIe GyLLeNHAAL, 44. The U.S. star of The Dark Knight, and Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang, has been described as having a ‘Betty Boop face and bookish intelligence’. She said she was once told she ‘wasn’t hot enough’ for ‘this really bad movie with vampires’, and a producer said that at 37 she was ‘too old’ to be a 55-yearold man’s love interest in another film.
BORN ON THIS DAY
BArBArA PAyTON (19271967). The American actress, who starred with Gary Cooper in the western Dallas and James Cagney in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, was once named ‘the most beautiful girl in pictures’ by the Hollywood Press Association. four-timesmarried Payton became a heroin-addicted sex worker before her death aged 39. She wrote in her autobiography: ‘I was torn between what was good for me and what I wanted. They never seem to be the same thing.’
CHArLeS ‘DAWS’ BUTLer (1916-1988). The U.S. actor provided the voices for yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw. He also voiced Barney rubble in The flintstones and Snap of Snap, Crackle and Pop in Kellogg’s rice Krispies adverts. With two small-statured friends, 5ft 2in Butler formed an impersonation group called The Short Waves.
ON NOVEMBER 16…
IN 1915, Coca-Cola patented the design for its curved glass bottles. IN 1986, the BBC first broadcast Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, starring Michael Gambon.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Madder (c 1000) A) A senior, an elder. B) A red pigment or dye. C) To smother. (Answer below)
PHRASE EXPLAINED Put one’s cards on the table: meaning to make one’s intentions clear. It comes from card games and alludes to showing of the hand (of cards) that one holds.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
pOWeR is the great aphrodisiac Henry Kissinger, U.S. politician
JOKE OF THE DAY
A BOSSy man walks into a bar... and orders everyone a round. GUeSS the definition answer: B
Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD