ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 16, 1950
FORTY members of a Plymouth boys’ club are to present a petition to their city council asking it to lift a ban on 10,000 council-house tenants keeping racing pigeons. This was introduced due to damage done by the birds pecking at mortar.
JANUARY 16, 1993
MADONNA’S new movie was savaged by the American critics yesterday. They sank their teeth into the raunchy thriller only days after a specially invited preview audience hooted with laughter in all the wrong places. ‘Madonna is guilty as hell in Body Of Evidence,’ said USA Today. ‘Her crime is that she just can’t act, not one stitch.’
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
DEBBIE ALLEN, 73. The Golden Globe- winning
U.S. actress and choreographer played dance teacher Lydia Grant in the film and TV series Fame, delivering the immortal line: ‘you want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying . . . in sweat.’ She said she grew up in Texas ‘wanting really to be a ballerina, but being told that I couldn’t do those things — that black people didn’t do ballet’.
JAMES MAY, 60. The Bristol-born presenter fronts The Grand Tour with fellow ex-Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond. He said he bought his local ‘rural boozer’ near Salisbury for purely selfish reasons: ‘It is the only pub within walking distance of our hobbity weekend cottage. If it closed, as was threatened, country living would cease to have any meaning.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
PAULA TILBROOK (19302019). The actress from Lancashire played busybody Betty Eagleton on Emmerdale for 21 years — once hosting visiting prime minister John Major on her character’s sofa.
When she retired, she ‘did ask our producer not to have me murdered because I was fed up with murders’.
SUSAN SONTAG (1933-2004). The U.S. novelist who wrote an essay, notes On ‘Camp’, which considers meanings and connotations of the word ‘camp’, was hailed as ‘the most intelligent woman in America’ by director Sir Jonathan Miller. She would take up to nine months to write one essay, compiling thousands of pages of notes.
ON JANUARY 16 . . .
IN 1950, the BBC first broadcast Listen With Mother. Before the children’s story, the presenter would ask: ‘Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin’.
IN 1981, English actor Bernard Lee — ‘M’ in 11 Bond films — died, aged 73.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Victorine (1840s) A) A champion. B) A fur scarf with long tabs at the ends. C) Silvery grey, nearly white. answer below.
PHRASE EXPLAINED Go legit:
Meaning to behave honestly after a period of illegal activity. ‘Legit’ was a 19th-century abbreviation for one acting in ‘legitimate theatre’ featuring serious drama rather than musicals or farce.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
ANYONE who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup. Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer (1770-1827)
JOKE OF THE DAY
My WIFE left me because of my pasta obsession… I’m feeling cannelloni. Guess The Definition answer: B. Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD