The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
I WAS saddened to hear of Sir Bruce Forsyth’s death. My memories of him go back almost 70 years and that brings up my question: I’m sure I watched Beat The Clock on Sunday Night At The London Palladium in 1949/50.
Most articles on his life have Bruce starting with the show in 1958. If this is so, what on earth was I watching?
Derek Coyle, Peachland, British Columbia, Canada BEAT The Clock was a long-lasting favourite on Sunday Night At The London Palladium between 1955 and 1967. It was first hosted by Tommy Trinder and Bruce Forsyth took over for two long stints from 1958-60 and 1961-62.
He returned to host the game in its own show in 2000.
Beat The Clock itself had begun life as a programme on CBS in the United States hosted by Bud Collyer from 1950-58. That’s probably the early version you recall.
PLEASE can you tell us what the rectangle shape, sewn into the back of rugby players shirts is? You see it on all the players but no one explains what it’s there for.
Vanessa Barrow, by email AMAZINGLY it’s basically a GPS tracking system that measures speed, location and various forces acting on the player.
Originally, such things were used for research but they now play a significant role in training and minimising the chance of injuries.
MY wife is knitting dolphins as toys. They are 10in (25cm) from nose to tail. If she knits at the same
scale, how long should she make a blue whale?
Barry Jordan, Colchester A BOTTLENOSE dolphin, which is the most commonly seen species, is about 8ft long; blue whales are almost 100ft long, so to be the same scale, your wife’s blue whale should be just over 10ft long.
Good luck and make sure you have plenty of blue wool.
THERE is a version of Elvis Presley’s hit Are You Lonesome Tonight in which he is heard laughing a lot as he sings it.
It always makes me smile when I hear this on the radio but I have never heard why he is laughing so much. Can you explain?
Ruth Salmon, Hastings, East Sussex HIS laughing version came from a concert in Las Vegas in 1969 in which he replaced the words “Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?” with “Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair”.
When he sang those words, apparently a man in the audience removed his toupee and started waving it around in time with the music, which was what set off the laughter you can hear on the recording. WHICH months of the year have the most and least number of birthday anniversaries in the UK? Glen Thomas, by email TWO years ago, the Office for National Statistics released figures for the numbers of babies born in each month of the year.
September was the most common, followed by October, and February the least common. February’s figure was strongly influenced by the lower number of days in the month.
If we look at number of births per day then January had the lowest figure.
The single most common birthday in England and Wales, the figures revealed, is September 26, suggesting that the most common conception day is around Christmas.
IN archaic law, why was it illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day?
C Pope, Isle of Wight iDECT Edge Plus with Call Block, £59.99. 0871 9762754/argos.co.uk A neat and stylish cordless phone with integrated call-blocker function, which gives 10 hours of talk time and has a 100-number phone book. by IT is an oft-repeated myth that eating Christmas pies was explicitly banned by Oliver Cromwell but it is not clear that was ever the case.
Even before the English Civil War there had been a longrunning battle by the Puritans to outlaw Christmas celebrations of all kinds other than sober and respectful observance of it in Christian worship.
In 1647 Parliament passed an ordinance which declared the celebration of Christmas to be a punishable offence but there seems to have been no specific mention of mince pies in the law.
Jolly Christmas celebrations, with presents and mince pies, came back after Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660.
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