LET’S HEAR IT FOR LEICESTER
The Walkers factory in Leicester is the largest potato crisps production plant in the world, producing more than 11million bags per day using around 800 tons of potatoes. It is commemorating Leicester City’s win with a limited edition brand called Salt And Victory. Walkers has also started a “Countdown to Kit Off” digital strip tease on giant screens around the city centre following Match Of The Day host Gary Lineker’s promise this season to present the show in his underpants if Leicester City were to win the league. Leicester-born Lineker, whose father Barry ran a fruit and veg stall in the city, went on to play for Leicester from 1978-85 and has been a brand ambassador for Walkers for more than 20 years.
Sue Townsend, the late bestselling author of the Adrian Mole series, was from Leicester. So too is the eccentric conspiracy theorist David Icke, the former goalkeeper and TV sportscaster who once refused to deny he was the son of God.
Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys – the father of genetic fingerprinting – did his pioneering work on DNA at Leicester University. He had his “eureka moment” in 1984 when he compared X-rays of the DNA of his lab technician and members of the man’s family and spotted both similarities and differences. The system of DNA profiling he developed revolutionised forensic science.
Showbiz stars from Leicester include veteran crooner Engelbert Humperdinck, rockers Showaddywaddy, TV presenter Gok Wan, Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, actresses Betty Driver, Kate O’Mara, Una Stubbs and legendary horror star Boris Karloff.
When Sir Robert Mark – later a high-profile commissioner of the Metropolitan Police – became chief constable of Leicester in 1957 he cancelled an order for hundreds of parking meters and instead established a corps of uniformed enforcers who administered a fixedpenalty system. These were the country’s first traffic wardens and last year they became the first wardens in the country to be issued with mopeds.
Richard III, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, spent the night before at Leicester’s Blue Boar Inn. But his remains were not found until 2012 when his skeleton was discovered under a car park. His bones were reinterred at Leicester Cathedral last year.
Campaigners are calling for one of the city’s most famous sons to be buried in his birthplace. The skeleton of Joseph Merrick, aka Victorian freak-show attraction The Elephant Man, has been in the possession of Queen Mary University Of London’s medical school since his death in 1890.
Around 30 per cent of Leicester’s population is British Asian, the vast majority from an Indian Hindu background. The city holds the world’s biggest celebration of the Hindu Diwali Festival of Lights outside the Indian sub-continent. Up to 35,000 people attend the switch-on of the lights on Belgrave Road every year and even more attend the Diwali day celebrations throughout the city. Leicester’s River Soar is recognised by Hindus as a holy river like the Ganges. Not surprisingly Leicester is a past winner of the Curry Capital of Britain title.
Daniel Lambert’s status as Britain’s Fattest Man earned him notoriety in the 19th century. A jailer at Leicester’s Bridewell Prison, at his “peak” he had a 9ft 4in waist and weighed 53stone. Three years before he died he commissioned a carriage, custom-made to carry his vast weight, in order to travel to London so that he could exhibit himself as a natural curiosity. He charged people a shilling to view him at his London apartment. As Dr Toni Weller, senior lecturer in history at Leicester’s De Montfort University, once explained: “Being fat or obese wasn’t looked down on like it is today. Prior to industrialisation it was seen as a mark of wealth or decadence.” Lambert died at an inn in Stamford in 1809 at the age of 39 and a wall had to be knocked down to enable his body to be removed. His coffin was built on wheels and it took more than 20 men to lower it into his grave. To this day Lambert remains one of Leicester’s most famous historical personalities and Daniel Lambert Day is still celebrated by its Newarke Houses Museum.
As the Foxes make sporting history by winning the Premier League, DOMINIC MIDGLEY looks at the city’s other claims to fame
While David Attenborough and his brother, the late film director Richard “Dickie” Attenborough, were born in west London, they grew up in College House on the Leicester University campus, where their father was the principal.
The National Space Centre, one of the UK’s leading visitor attractions devoted to space science and astronomy, is based in Leicester.
The first package tour organised by Thomas Cook was a trip by train for temperance supporters from Leicester to Loughborough in 1841.
In 1967 Radio Leicester became the BBC’s first ever local radio station.