ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
April 6, 1967
BRITISH airline stewards and stewardesses flying between Bahrain and Kuwait are selling their blood to buy whisky. Two pints of blood given over two days can fetch up to £10 in Bahrain, which buys ten bottles of whisky to smuggle into the Persian Gulf Oil State of Kuwait, where all alcohol is forbidden.
April 6, 1994
HE May be 90 next week but, as Kenneth Branagh can testify, Sir John Gielgud is still master of the put-down. ‘you can’t call him “great”,’ he said of Branagh. ‘In a way he’s a better organiser and director than actor.’
Once asked about Ingrid Bergman, Sir John replied: ‘Poor Ingrid — speaks in five languages and can’t act in any of them.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
RORY BREMNER, 59. The comedian from Edinburgh is best known for his impersonations and sketch show Bremner, Bird And Fortune. Asked who would play him in a film of his life, he said: ‘Tony Blair. I’ve played him often enough, and he’s a better actor than I am.’ Bremner admits using voices on his children, saying: ‘The only way you can control them is if you pretend to be Sven-Goran Eriksson.’ Tanya Byron, 53. The TV psychologist, who made her name as presenter of BBC3’s Little Angels, says her career stems from her grandmother’s murder by a lodger. ‘I first became fascinated by the frontal lobes of the human brain when I saw my grandmother’s sprayed across the skirting board of her dark and cluttered house. I was 15.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
ANDRE PREVIN (1929-2019). The Berlin-born pianist, conductor and composer fled the Nazis with his family to LA and had won four Oscars by the age of 35, and married five times. But he’s best known in Britain as ‘ Mr Andrew Preview’ from the Morecambe And Wise sketch (above). He agreed to appear on the condition they could mock him all they liked, but they were not allowed to poke fun at the music. IAN Paisley (1926-2014). Northern Ireland’s former first minister made his name as the hardline face of unionism in The Troubles. But he later became so friendly with his former foe, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, they were dubbed the ‘Chuckle Brothers’.
ON APRIL 6...
IN 1970, BBC Radio 4 launched two new programmes, PM and The World Tonight, which are both still running to this day.
IN 1998, American country singer- songwriter Tammy Wynette, best known for the song Stand By your Man, died aged 55.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: awl (AD900) A) A shoemaker’s pricking tool. B) An underground stream of water. C) To dig up weeds with a hoe. Answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED
Up the ante: To increase the risks to gain a bigger reward; originating in the 1800s, it comes from playing poker where an ‘ante’, money in the pot, is typically required before a player can take part.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
in the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love. Lord (Alfred) Tennyson, poet (1809-1892) JOKE OF THE DAY Why did Shakespeare always write using a pen? He could never decide which pencil to use — 2B or not 2B. Guess The Definition answer: A