Voice behind those hits . . .

QUESTION Who was the brilliant backing singer on The Tokens’ 1960 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight?

The uncredited backing singer was Anita Darian, who performed a similar role on many other recordings including Mickey & Sylvia’s Love Is Strange.

She was born Anita Margaret esgandarian in Detroit on April 26, 1927, to parents who were Armenian refugees.

Darian had a successful singing career as a jazz singer and in stage productions of operettas and musicals.

her Broadway roles included Lady Thiang in The King And I. Perhaps her oddest claim to fame was playing kazoo in a concerto conducted by Leonard Bernstein at Carnegie hall. She died on February 1, 2015, aged 87. Other female singers from the same era contributed memorable, but uncredited, session performances, notably Lissa Gray’s haunting wails on John Leyton’s Johnny Remember Me.

Public recognition became more common with the credit listings supplied with LPs, eg Merry Clayton on the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter and Clare Torry on Pink Floyd’s Great Gig In The Sky. Uncredited: Singer Anita Darian But this did not guarantee generous rewards. Until a much later out-of-court settlement, Torry’s payment for a track on Dark Side Of The Moon, which sold 45 million copies worldwide, was a flat studio fee of £30.

Bob Bell, Croydon, Surrey.

QUESTION What is known of the medieval monk Thomas Betson, an amateur magician and practical joker?

ThOMAS BeTSON was a deacon and librarian at Syon Abbey in Middlesex from 1481 until his death in 1516.

As well as religious texts, his notebooks contain notes on legal matters, an alphabet of runes, lists of herbs, medicinal recipes and star maps. he was also something of an amateur magician and prankster. he wrote instructions for a number of tricks. To make an egg seem to float in mid-air, he recommends you ‘take a fine hair from the head of a woman, for example, and attach it to a hollowed out egg.

‘You will be able to move the egg about as if by magic as no one will see the fine hair . . . Many people will think that it is being held up by nothing at all.’

One of his practical jokes involved putting a beetle in a hollowed out apple: ‘When the beetle rocks, the apple people will think the fruit is moving by itself.’

his more elaborate tricks used mirrors to create optical illusions.

Richard Pryce, Canterbury, Kent.

QUESTION Is there a Just William story where his gang, The Outlaws, demonstrate outside a Jewish shop?

The earlier answer described how the story William And The Nasties was expunged from the Just William canon.

It’s not the only time William has got into hot water. Pet charities have petitioned for stories to be altered because of perceived cruelty to animals.

In The Show, to raise money to buy bows and arrows, The Outlaws charge other children a penny to see a fox terrier dog painted blue.

The RSPCA said it was concerned at the book’s influence, but this intervention could not have provoked more publicity if it had been engineered by the publisher’s marketing department.

Olivia Shannon, Kington, Herefordshire.