ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
APRIL 22, 1969
THE Government will almost certainly drop plans to introduce a legally backed national minimum wage of about £15 a week, which would give pay rises to more than five million workers. A report by top civil servants from seven Whitehall departments says today that such a minimum would be likely to be a less efficient means of relieving poverty than selective social benefits.
APRIL 22, 1971
CIGARETTE makers will soon be compelled to print on every packet: ‘Warning by HM Government — smoking can damage your health.’ The Government caved in yesterday to pressure to stiffen new laws aimed at curbing smoking. They abandoned plans to allow tobacco companies to take voluntary action over health warnings.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
JANCIS RObINSON, 70. The Cumbrian-born wine critic (right) — voted the world’s most influential in several polls — now advises the Queen on which vintages to serve her guests. Her name comes from the novel Precious bane by Mary Webb. Her birth certificate says ‘Jancice’ but ‘when I was eight my mother re-read the book and realised she’d got the spelling wrong’. CAROL DRINKWATER, 72. The actressturned-novelist from London played Helen Herriot in the bbC’s All Creatures Great And Small and a nurse in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. In 2017, she revealed that she had been sexually assaulted by director Elia Kazan while auditioning for a role in his film The Last Tycoon. She drew upon that experience to help her write her book The Lost Girl.
BORN ON THIS DAY
GARy RHODES (1960-2019). The spiky-haired chef (right) earned his first Michelin star at just 26, and made his TV debut in 1988 on one of Keith Floyd’s shows. He had a collection of 2,500 cookbooks, and once asked of Nigella Lawson: ‘What is it about her — the smile or the sexiness? Is it the cooking? I’m not so sure.’ LORD (yEHUDI) MENUHIN (1916-99). The U.S.-born musician, who adopted british nationality in 1985, was a child prodigy, and, at 16, recorded Elgar’s violin concerto, conducted by the composer. A keen environmentalist, he was one of the first people in the UK to own an electric car.
ON APRIL 22 . . .
IN 1977, the first episode of Top Gear, hosted by Angela Rippon, was broadcast. IN 2019, the first Stephen Lawrence Day marked the day the teenager was murdered in South London in 1993.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Anadiplosis (coined c1580)
A) The affected use of archaic language. b) A rhetorical device of damning with faint praise. C) The trick of repeating the last word in a clause at, or near, the start of the next line.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED:
To go through the roof: Meaning to rise steeply, it was coined in the first half of the 1900s and alludes to something actually going through the roof of a house as it would have risen very high, fast and unexpectedly.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry.
Louis de Bernières, English novelist
JOKE OF THE DAY
ONE-armed butlers — they can take it but they can’t dish it out.
Guess The Definition answer: C.