Origins of the drunk singalong
QUESTION Who is credited with inventing the first karaoke machine?
THE first true karaoke machine is usually credited to Japan’s Daisuke Inoue.
In the 1960s Inoue worked as a hiki-katari, a musician who specialised in nightclub singalongs, whose job was to enhance the limited singing abilities of his inebriated customers. This was where the word karaoke came from: it was a compound of the Japanese kara (empty) and okesutora (orchestra).
To satisfy the demand for his services, in 1971 Inoue invented the 8 Juke, a coin-operated eightcassette deck connected to a microphone and, crucially, featuring a primitive reverb to help mask singers’ deficiencies.
Earlier efforts, such as Shigeichi Negishi’s Sparko Box, were singalong devices without sound improvement, so it was Inoue’s invention that laid the foundation for the karaoke industry.
Andy Webber, Chelmsford, Essex.
QUESTION Did Boyle Roche inspire the word malapropism?
MALAPROPISM is a term used to describe the mixing-up of two similar-sounding words.
It comes from Mrs Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals. Her name was based on the French word malapropos, meaning ‘inappropriate’.
It’s possible that Sheridan was inspired by the verbal contradictions of Boyle Roche (1736-1807), an Irish MP who was famous for his verbal ‘bulls’. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was fascinated by bulls, which he described as ‘a mental juxtaposition of incongruous ideas with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection’.
Roche’s unintentionally comic contributions to debate in the Irish House of Commons became the stuff of legend. On one occasion he proclaimed to his audience: ‘The cup of Ireland’s misery has been overflowing for centuries and is not yet half full.’
On Anglo-Irish relations Roche told his bemused audience that ‘Ireland and England are like two sisters; I would have them embrace like one brother’.
In a moment of deep reflection, he proclaimed: ‘All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.’
Then, there was his famous rhetorical question: ‘How can I be in two places at once, unless I was a bird?’ This gave rise to the expression ‘Boyle Roche’s bird’, a creature that could achieve bilocation. Other famous bulls include: ‘Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity? For what has posterity done for us?’ and the classic: ‘I answer in the affirmative with an emphatic “No!”’
Sheridan’s Mrs Malaprop tended to mix up single words; for instance, she used ‘allegory’ instead of ‘alligator’: ‘She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.’
QUESTION Are any clauses in the Magna Carta still part of UK law?
DURING the reign of King John, many tax measures of an innovative or extreme nature were implemented in England which were resented by those who were impelled to pay.
The Magna Carta was a historic document agreed upon in 1215 in England. It was an early limitation on the power of the monarchy and helped establish principles of the rule of law. It is often considered the origin of individual rights and civil liberties in Britain but the reality is rather more complex.
The Magna Carta was a compromise reached between two powerful parties – the King and other leading men of England.
Two key clauses (39 and 40) of 63 remain in force. These are: ‘No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.’ And also: ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.’
The Magna Carta was not the origin of habeas corpus (a law that states that a person cannot be kept in prison unless they have first been brought before a court of law). This was first outlined in the Assize of Clarendon 1166.
QUESTION What was the last UK town to be completely built to an architectural plan?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, I’m sure Poundbury in Dorchester is the best example to answer this question. The buildings only began to be built in October 1993, and it is not yet finished.
Adrian Hilliard, Killarney, Co. Kerry.