Record No 1 for charity
QUESTION How many charity records have reached No 1 in the UK charts?
BRITAIN loves a charity single: 61 have reached No 1 in the charts.
The charity single began in 1971 with George Harrison’s Bangla Desh, which raised money for Unicef to help refugees following the 1970 Bhola cyclone and Bangladesh Liberation War. The song reached No 10.
Bob Geldof and Midge Ure had the first No 1 charity single with Do They Know It’s Christmas? in 1984.
I consider it to be a patronising ballad, but this hasn’t stopped it being No 1 on three occasions with different line-ups.
It is the second-biggest selling UK single since the charts began in 1952 after another charity record, Sir Elton John’s Something About The Way You Look Tonight/Candle In The Wind 1997, with proceeds going to the Diana Princess Of Wales Memorial Fund.
Sir Elton and George Michael performed my favourite charity single, a brilliant live version of Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, with profits being donated to Aids charities.
The worst charity singles have to be David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s shouty rendition of Dancing In The Street in 1985 for Live Aid and Hale And Pace’s 1991 effort The Stonk for Comic Relief.
A string of charity singles by The X Factor contestants led to accusations of exploiting such songs for publicity.
The last four UK Christmas No 1s have been novelty songs by LadBaby aka husband and wife Mark and Roxanne Hoyle: We Built This City (On Sausage Rolls); I Love Sausage Rolls; Don’t Stop Me Eatin’; and Sausage Rolls For Everyone, featuring Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton.
Katherine Finch, Luton, Beds.
QUESTION Who invented the QR code?
THE inventor of QR (Quick Response) codes was Masahiro Hara, a technician at the Denso factory in Kariya, Japan, which produces automatic identification products. It is partly owned by Toyota.
Its original purpose was to track auto parts. Before QR codes, Denso used barcodes, but these could encode only a limited number of characters. To track production and transportation history, a product would need up to ten barcodes, which was confusing and wasted time.
In 1992, Hara created a two-dimensional code made up of a mosaic of cells in which it was possible to imbed 200 times more information than in a standard barcode.
The codes can contain basic information such as links to websites or volumes of data consisting of more than 4,200 alphanumeric characters encoded into the patterns. Hara’s key problem was how to orientate the codes so they could be read quickly.
This was solved by a location detection pattern consisting of the small black squares at three corners of the QR code. This QR system was launched in 1994.
While Denso owns Patent No. 2938338 for QR codes, it does not enforce it.
The codes can be accessed by a smartphone’s camera app and are used for marketing and practical uses such as the NHS Covid Test and Trace system.
David Chapel, Ipswich, Suffolk.
QUESTION Are there sports stars who, like snooker’s Ronnie O’Sullivan, can use either hand?
RONNIE O’SULLIvAN is a remarkable talent who has achieved a left-handed 147 maximum on the practice table.
Judd Trump, the other finalist at this year’s World Snooker Championship, chooses to play snooker left-handed, but writes and plays golf with his right hand.
American Michael Sigel is considered to be the greatest pool player of all time. The winner of more than 100 tournaments, he can swap at will between shooting with his left or right hand. The U.S. Jensen brothers, Murphy and Luke, were surprise winners of the 1993 French Open doubles title. Dual Hand Luke serves at more than 130 mph right and left-handed and can hit ground strokes and volleys with either hand.
American six-time golf major winner Phil Mickelson plays left-handed, but is otherwise right-handed. It’s said he was trying to be a mirror image of his father, who taught him to play.
Fellow countryman Jordan Spieth swings a golf club right-handed, but pitches a baseball left-handed.
U.S. baseball has a Pat venditte rule for ambidextrous pitchers. This requires them to declare which hand they will use to pitch to a batter.
venditte was a major league baseball player who would pitch at more than 85 mph with his right arm against righthanded batters and with his left against left-handed batters.
L. B. Wallis, Portsmouth.
QUESTION What were some of the worst toys?
I DISAGREE with the answer that disparaged Bayko building sets.
This colourful construction toy absorbed me as a child and set me on a lifelong love of architecture. There were dozens of different pieces in red, grey, brown, white and green.
I happily built all the sets in the instruction books before quickly moving on to my own designs.
This was fun and made me feel proudly creative. I enjoyed being patient, carefully fixing in strengthening pieces between floors and thinking about symmetry and attractive design.
My grandfather named one of my buildings, capped by three pinnacle pieces, the Chateau Shalot.
The advent of Lego swept Bayko out of toy shops. If you find an unwanted set in the attic, take it to an antique shop and perhaps, in time, it will inspire another youngster to appreciate architecture.
David Bayley, Gloucester. I LOvED my Bayko set. It taught me a lot about building and undoubtedly resulted in me choosing a career in engineering. I still build things — but on a larger scale!
C. E. Sayers-Leavy, Broadstairs, Kent.
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