How Strictly stays on song
QUESTION Who are the excellent singers on Strictly Come Dancing?
The Strictly singers are Tommy Blaize, hayley Sanderson, Andrea Grant, Chris Madin and Lance ellington. Tommy is the band leader and performs most of the soul, swing and big band numbers.
he began his singing career aged nine with The Blaize Brothers alongside siblings Tony and Darrin, playing in clubs across the North-West in the Seventies.
Tommy has toured and recorded with a great number of artists, including Brian eno, Paul Young, heather Small, Brand New heavies, Craig David, Sting, Phil Collins, the Beach Boys, elkie Brooks, Gary Barlow, Natalie Cole, eternal, Take That and Bruce Willis.
Strictly fan Robbie Williams picked Tommy to feature on his Swings Both Ways world tour in 2014. In 2010, Tommy released a solo album Don’t Ya Love Life.
Jazz singer hayley Sanderson has been a member of the Strictly band since series five. She is a versatile singer, who can sing ella Fitzgerald and then switch to Karen Carpenter or Chrissie hynde.
Andrea Grant is a singer-songwriter who studied at the BRIT School. She’s toured with Tony hadley, Robbie Williams, Lisa Stansfield and McFly, and has worked as a backing singer for Girls Aloud, Charlotte Church, Beth Rowley, Shirley Bassey and The Streets. She sings the big female ballads and most R&B tracks.
Chris Madin won a scholarship to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. he has released his first album, Jigsaw, recorded many of the idents for Radio 2, and has performed backing vocals for Leona Lewis and Alesha Dixon. he mainly sings rock ’n’ roll on Strictly.
Lance ellington is the only son of the band leader Ray ellington and Blue Peter presenter Anita West. he specialises in swing, ballads and rock ’n’ roll on Strictly.
he won the 1977 final of the TV talent show New Faces in the duo Koffee N Kreme with Beth hannah. he followed this with a tour with Johnny Mathis and a performance in the Royal Variety Show. he has released four solo albums: Pleasure And Pain (1990), Lessons In Love (2005), There Comes A Time (2007) and Aspects Of ellington (2012).
Lance has worked with many artists, including Sting, George Michael, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Jackson, Steps, Westlife and Robbie Williams.
In 2004, he appeared as his late father in the film The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers and, in 1993, sang a duet with Cathy Dennis on the soundtrack of Robin hood: Men In Tights. Beth Adams, Royal Leamington Spa, Warks.
QUESTION What is the meaning of the word ‘daylights’ as in the phrase ‘the living daylights’?
The first known use of the word ‘daylight’ was in the 14th century, referring to light from the sun or daybreak.
By pluralising to daylights, we mean consciousness or wits. The idiom ‘living daylights’ is generally used to express intensity in a negative manner, most commonly in the form ‘to scare the living daylights out of someone’ or ‘to beat the living daylights out of someone’.
The earliest recorded reference comes from the 1751 novel Amelia by henry Fielding, in which a character states: ‘If the lady says another such words to me . . . I will darken her daylights.’
Somewhere in the mid-1800s, daylights was a colloquial expression for the eyes. To darken a person’s daylights would be to give them a black eye, and to say someone’s ‘daylights are out’ would mean they were blind. By extension, daylights figuratively came to refer to all vital senses. So to knock the living daylights out would be to knock the senses out — and the word living was inserted as an intensifier.
Additions and substitutions for both words have popped up over the centuries: ‘I’ll beat the bleeding/blinking/ever-loving daylights out of you!’
As daylights receded as slang for eyes, it was replaced by other terms, particularly for shock effect. For example: ‘I’ll beat the hell/heck/misery out of you!’
Living daylights has also taken on an affectionate tone in the phrase ‘hug the living daylights’ out of someone.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION How did Gerard Tuite make legal history?
GERARD ‘ Gerry’ Tuite ( born in Mountnugent, Co. Cavan, in 1955) was a member of the Provisional IRA.
In the late Seventies, he moved to London, and under the name David Coyne and posing as a businessman, he assembled explosives and other weapons. These and other items, including car keys and voice recordings, linked him to various Mainland bombings and proposed attacks on Tory politicians.
Tuite was arrested in 1980 and was on remand in Brixton when he and two (non-terrorist) prisoners — Christopher Thompson and James Moody (who remained free for 13 years before being shot dead in London in 1993) — broke through a wall in the prison wing and then scaled the outside wall to freedom.
Described by Scotland Yard as their most wanted man and a master of disguise, Tuite went into hiding and eventually returned to Ireland.
Arrested by Irish police in 1981, he was charged with the possession of explosives. Tuite’s defence claimed Irish courts had no jurisdiction because the crimes were committed in Britain, but this was rejected by the court, and he became the first man sentenced in the Republic for offences committed in the UK.
he was sentenced by the Special Criminal Court to ten years in prison for possessing explosives in London.
I. A. Simonds, Portsmouth, Hants.
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