The Saturday briefing
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q Over the decades I’ve watched many, many episodes of Perry Mason but I can’t remember him ever losing a case. Even when a substitute defence lawyer stands in for Perry they win! SidWales, Coveney, Ely, Cambs
A The original TV series starred Raymond Burr and ran for nine seasons between 1957 and 1966, over 271 episodes. It was Hollywood’s first weekly hourlong series.
But he did not have a perfect score chart – three cases went against him,The Case OfThe TerrifiedTypist in season one,The Case Of The Witless Witness in season six, and The Case Of The DeadlyVerdict in season seven.
A loss was also mentioned in the The Case Of The Desperate Daughter in season one, with him preparing an appeal for a client destined for the gas chamber. But things always turn in his favour.
When quizzed by a fan on why his character never lost, Burr replied: “But, madam, you see only the cases I try on Saturday.”
Matthew Rhys is starring as the defence lawyer in a new Sky series coming soon.
It is set in 1932 LA, and focuses on Mason’s early career, based on characters from Erle Stanley Gardner’s books.
Q In 1930 or 1931, when my parents ran The Desborough Arms pub in Harrow Road in London, I seem to remember being shown an airship going over. Did this happen? Mrs Phyllis Pape, Horley
A I am sure it did as airships would have appeared in the London skies around then.The German Graf Zeppelin (pictured inset) carried passengers on long flights, like a luxury cruise ship in the clouds. It crossed London in 1930 and 1931. It floated over St Paul’s andWembley during an FA Cup match, causing crowds to boo after bringing back memories of First World War air raids.
Britain had also built two airships in the 1920s, the R100 and R101, which were intended to travel to the colonies as part of the Imperial Airship Scheme. It was hoped they could reach Australia in 10 days, India in six and Canada in three.
These two giants were housed in Cardington, north of London. The R100 made a successful trip to Canada in 1930 in 78 hours and returned home in 57 hours. The R101 was the world’s largest aircraft at the time, nicknamed the Titanic of the Skies and Britain’s million pound monster.
It did a trial flight over London in 1929 before heading off for India in 1931 but it crashed north of Paris, after strong winds tore its cover and a small fire caused the hydrogen gasbags to explode. Tragically, 48 people were killed – 12 more than the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.
Q Why are ginger nut biscuits called ginger nuts? Ginger is a root not a nut. John Frost, Kempston, near Bedford
A They were originally called gingerbread nut biscuits and have been popular since the 1840s, when they were smaller and walnut shaped.And just like nuts, they were, and still are, hard.
So hard in fact that The Times reported in 1892 that they almost took out a prime minister.
William Gladstone had been riding in a carriage when a woman threw something “with great violence” towards him, which struck him in his left eye and “inflicted a slight wound and caused bleeding of the nose”.
It reported: “Mr Gladstone immediately put his hand over his eye and fell back into his carriage… The substance thrown turned out to be a hard gingerbread nut.”
The ginger nut did not make it into the nation’s top five biscuits in a YouGov poll, which saw the chocolate digestive at number one. But it regularly tops studies for best dunker.
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