The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
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 A friend claims to have gone to a festival in Wigan organised by Jeremy Beadle. Surely not?
Nicola Humphrys, Leicester
A Before Jeremy Beadle became a huge star, pulling pranks on Game For A Laugh and Beadle’s About, he organised the three-day Bickershaw Festival.The event, held in May, 1972, in Bickershaw, a tiny mining village near Wigan, was advertised as a celebration of “contemporary arts, crafts, and music”.
Beadle had a varied CV after being expelled from secondary school, working as a tour guide and sky-diving instructor. He was also a toilet attendant in Berlin.
In 1970, he was hired to set up a new NorthWest edition of events listings publication Time Out, and through the connections he made with the North West Arts Association, was tasked with booking the Bickershaw Festival.
Despite claiming to have picked the driest time of the year for the area, the festival was hit with fog and heavy rain. Still, between 40,000 and 60,000 campers enjoyed a line-up of top bands, including a five-hour set from headliners The Grateful Dead, plus performances from The Kinks, Captain Beefheart and Donovan.
Although the weather was atrocious and security so poor that thousands attended for free, the festival proved influential. Chris Hewitt, who also helped organise the event, went on to create the free Deeply Vale Festival held near Bury between 1976 and 1979.
Attendees at Bickershaw included Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer, who went on to become frontman of punk band The Clash.
Q How long will banknotes and coins bearing the late Queen’s head remain legal tender?
Liz Williams, Durham
A There are 27 billion coins in circulation in the UK featuring the late queen’s portrait, and these will be replaced as they become damaged or worn, or if there is a rise in demand for coins from UK banks and Post Offices, who dictate what volume and variety are needed.
Similarly, current polymer banknotes featuring HM Queen Elizabeth II will continue to be legal tender, used alongside those featuring HM King Charles III, which will begin circulating from June 5, with any damaged older notes removed.
The approach is in line with guidance from the Royal Household, to minimise the environmental and financial impact on the change. It means you will begin to see the new notes very gradually. You will also be able to exchange a limited value of notes for Charles III notes, through the Bank of England, for a short time from June.
Q We talk about “April showers”, but what makes a shower different to rain?
Tom Johnson, Salford
A The key differences relate to the types of cloud, which result in their different duration and intensity.
Showers usually fall from puffy, individual cumulonimbus or cumulus clouds, which tend to be taller than they are wide, looking cauliflower-like at the top.The type of rain falling from these will be on and off and last for a few hours, so not everyone in the locality will get wet at the same time.
On the other hand, forecasters talk about “persistent rain” or “prolonged rainfall” and this falls from a weather front – a boundary between two bodies of air.
These are on a totally different scale to shower clouds, with giant grey sheets stretching over hundreds of miles, made up of various cloud types, including stratus, altostratus and nimbostratus. They bring persistent precipitation over wider areas, and everyone gets some, often for days.
April is usually a transition period between the cold winter and warmer spring and summer. The jet stream moves northwards, which can bring the first signs of warmth, but also makes things more unsettled due to low pressure systems, leading to rain, showers and gusts of wind.
Shower clouds can also develop due to daytime heating as the sea temperature around the UK is at its lowest, but the sun’s heat is increasing as it rises higher in the sky and daylight hours also increase. This leads to shower clouds developing over the warmer land.
The west of the country can expect more rain, as the prevailing warm, moist westerly winds mean more frontal rainfall from Atlantic weather systems. These usually move from west to east across the UK, so the amount of rain reduces.
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