A stinker of a nickname
QUESTION
The comedian Arthur Askey worked with the actor Richard ‘Stinker’ Murdoch. How did he acquire the nickname ‘Stinker’? RICHARD Bernard Murdoch was born in 1907 and died in 1990, having become a household name as a radio comedian and a film and TV actor.
He went to Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the university’s Footlights troupe.
His big radio break came with the BBC comedy Band Waggon, which ran from 1938 to 1940. It was the first series to be designed specifically for radio, making good use of sound effects and establishing the practice of broadcasting a comedy and music programme at the same time each week.
Murdoch and Arthur Askey provided the comedy and their spots soon dominated the show. Many of their sketches had working- class Arthur and his posh flatmate Richard sharing a top-floor apartment in Broadcasting House along with Lewis the goat and pigeons named Basil, Lucy, Ronald and Sarah.
It was one of the first shows to develop catchphrases such as Askey’s ‘Big-hearted Arthur, that’s me!’ and Murdoch’s: ‘You silly little man!’
It was Askey who gave Murdoch the nickname ‘Stinker’ – a comic reference to his public school upbringing, where nicknames such as ‘Stinker’, ‘ Pudge’ and ‘ Bunny’ were commonplace – and it stayed with him for the rest of his life. Askey left the show in 1939 as his film and stage career took off, while Murdoch joined the RAF.
After the war, Murdoch was in BBC Radio’s Much Binding In The Marsh (1944-54) with Kenneth Horne, The Men From The Ministry (1962-77) and appeared in the first series of Blackadder.
His final TV role was broadcast a few months after his death in an episode of Rumpole Of The Bailey in which he played Uncle Tom, a briefless senior barrister.
Ken Knight, Towcester, Northants.
QUESTION
Which teams featured in the first Formula 1 race? Are any still racing? THE first attempt at a motor racing series lasted for only two seasons in 1950 and 1951, foundering over the issue of finance.
It involved a greater number of privately entered teams compared with today’s factory entries. For the first season, in 1950, there were six works teams: Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati from Italy, Talbot Lago and the Simca-backed Gordini team from France and the British BRM team.
Regulations for the first couple of years were basic. The cars could have a 1.5 litre supercharged or 4.5 litre un-supercharged engine, with no weight or fuel restrictions.
For the first race of the Formula 1 season, held at Silverstone, Ferrari and Simca Gordini were absent and the BRM wasn’t ready to race, so there were only three factory-backed teams with seven cars in total: four Alfa Romeos, two Talbot Lagos and one Maserati.
In a bid to boost entry, private teams and owners/ drivers were allowed. These included Scuderia Ambrosiana from Milan, which had two Maseratis driven by British driv- ers David Hampshire and David Murray, and Scuderia Enrico Plate from Switzerland, which also had Maseratis, driven by Taiwanese Prince, Bira, and Swiss Baron, Emmanuel de Graffenried.
The rest were individual owner/ drivers: the Frenchmen Louis Rosier, Philippe Etancelin and Belgian jazz musician Johnny Claes in Talbot Lagos; Joe Kelly of Ireland and Geoffrey Crossley of Britain in a British Altas; Joe Fry of Britain in a Maserati; and British drivers Bob Gerard, Cuth Harrison, Peter Walker and Leslie Johnson in 12-year- old British ERAs.
All this meant 21 cars on the starting grid and, as expected, Alfa Romeo took the first three places with Giuseppe Farina of Italy first, his countryman Luigi Fagioli second and Britain’s Reg Parnell third. The Alfas lapped the field at least twice.
By the end of the 1951 season, however, this first attempt at Formula 1 had failed. Despite having won the 1950 and 1951 Championships, Alfa Romeo were struggling financially and announced their-withdrawal.
The Talbot Lago team’s finances were slowly collapsing in 1950 and the team pulled out of F1 before the 1951 season started, Anthony Lago, the owner, focusing on making road cars of the same name.
With this and the Simca Gordini partnership ending, Maserati focusing on Formula 2 racing and the BRMs making sporadic appearances, only Ferrari had competitive cars. So, for the 1952 and 1953 seasons, the FIA adopted Formula 2 rules, making the championship cheaper, with smaller engines, before reworking Formula 1 to return in 1954.
Alfa Romeo returned to F1 in 1979, but didn’t repeat its earlier success, gaining only four podium places before pulling out in 1985. Gordini struggled on its reduced budget before bowing out just before the 1957 season. Maserati had great success from 1954 to 1957, winning the 1957 title, but the company’s F1 team was withdrawn at the end of 1957.
BRM, under a new owner, won the title with Graham Hill in 1962, but wins were sporadic after that (12 in 14 years), their last at Monaco in 1972. After failing to qualify for eight races in a row in 1977, BRM withdrew in mid-season.
With their inferior budgets, none of the private teams lasted long, most going out of business, leaving just one of the original teams whose cars didn’t even make it to that first race in 1950: Scuderia Ferrari.
Paul Reynolds, Ruislip, Middlesex.
QUESTION
What happens to letters and parcels that are lost in the post? ABOUT 50,000 of the letters and parcels sent by post every week in Ireland can’t be delivered, because they are incorrectly addressed.
An Post set up its returned letters office at Dock Road in Limerick in 2009, while another, smaller, returned letters office was set up in Roscommon to deal with registered and express mail. If an item can’t be delivered and there’s no return address, staff in the returned letters section will open it.
They’re the only postal workers authorised to open letters and parcels; if anyone else did the same, it’s a sackable offence. The postal workers are past masters at deciphering addresses and it’s very rare that an address remains unread. Clues abound, such as those with franked postage.
But every week, about 9,000 letters come in from foreign addresses, a further 11,000 from the UK and 30,000 from here in Ireland. Well over two million items are posted every week in Ireland, and the vast bulk are delivered correctly. However, if the address to which a letter or parcel is to be sent can’t be read and if there’s no return address, the returns office staff get to work.
If a letter or parcel contains personal details, these are then shredded. Some items are kept for three months before being given to charity or destroyed. Items earmarked for charity are given to the Irish Charity Association, which distributes them to the most appropriate body. Money is kept indefinitely, while cheques are returned to the issuing bank.
Should an item be considered historically important, then An Post will keep it in the hope of eventually finding the right owner. But about two-thirds of lost parcels are eventually returned to sender.
The parcel post service has been increasing dramatically in recent years, thanks at least partly to more people shopping online. At the same time, however, letter post has been declining. Last year, An Post had a 3.3 per cent decline in mail revenue.
Recently, the widespread introduction of electronic gates, as well as the number of people who’ ve emigrated, have made the problem of lost letters and parcels worse.
These days, An Post urges people to put return addresses on letters and parcels, as has been the custom in the US for many years. If any item is lost, this makes it much easier to return it to the sender. In one recent move, An Post said that if letters aren’t sufficiently stamped, they will be destroyed.
John Mullin, Cork.