Your Queries

A pal has set me a trick question and I don’t have a clue as to the answer. Which boxer lost to both Joe Louis and John Wayne? – M.

Joe Louis knocked out Jack Roper in the first round of a World Heavyweight Title defence in 1939.

By 1952, Roper had retired from the ring to become an actor.

In the movie, The Quiet Man, Roper is the boxer who John Wayne actually kills with his fists.

Roper had more than 100 professional bouts. I’m sure that many people will know his real name is Harry Webb, but I’d like to know how Cliff Richard chose his name. – A.

Harry was born in Lucknow, India, in 1940.

By the late ’50s Harry was looking for a more rebellious, toughersounding name.

Cliff was adopted as it sounded like “cliff face”, which suggested “Rock”.

And he took the surname Richard as he was a fan of Little Richard. In your answer to a query about Thunderbirds last week, you ended your answer with “F. A. B.”. I know that it was said at the end of radio communications, like “Over and out”, but what do the initials stand for? – G.

Fab, short for fabulous, was a buzzword in the Swinging Sixties when the show was made. However, Gerry Anderson, the show’s creator simply made the acronym up, so it stands for nothing. My husband and his mates were watching the Monaco grand Prix and wondered if there has ever been a dead heat in a Formula 1 race? – E.

Amazingly, there has been, but only once.

The 1967 Syracuse Grand Prix, held in Sicily, was run over 56 laps, and finished in a dead heat between British driver Mike Parkes and team-mate Ludovico Scarfiotti, both driving Ferrari 312s.