$100 a head? I’m not free!
QUESTION Did John Inman host afternoon teas with fans in San Francisco?
YES, 200 American fans of the character Mr Humphries in TV’s Are You Being Served? paid $100 a head to nibble cucumber sandwiches with the actor John Inman.
The sitcom written by David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd followed the misadventures of the staff of the ladies and gentlemen’s clothing section of Grace Brothers’ department store.
The show was broadcast on the BBC for ten series, with 69 episodes and five Christmas specials, between 1972 and 1985. At its peak it was watched by more than 22 million viewers and made household names of its stars, Mollie Sugden (Mrs Betty Slocombe), Wendy Richard (Miss Shirley Brahms), Frank Thornton (Captain Stephen Thornton) and the inimitable John Inman (Mr Wilberforce Clayborne Humphries), famous for his catchphrase: ‘I’m free!’
The show was broadcast in the U.S. from the mid-1980s by PBS. It became the most popular British export since Benny Hill.
‘There are only 69 episodes and we’ve been playing them over and over again,’ said John Wilson, programmer of KAET in Phoenix, Arizona. ‘Mr Humphries and Mrs Slocombe are better known here than John Major.’
Americans adored John Inman and PBS invited him to several meet and greet tours of the U.S.
The first was to the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Tennessee in 1991 where Inman chatted with his audience, posed for photos and signed autographs. He made trips across the U.S. from Arkansas to Colorado, Illinois to Pennsylvania, and Iowa to Virginia and Texas.
In 1998, the tour featured Lunch With John Inman in San Diego and High Tea With Mr Humphries at San Francisco’s Ritz Carlton Hotel.
A spokesman for the Ritz Carlton said: ‘He was quite the most entertaining star we ever had. Middle-class people in their 40s and 50s as well as the gay community love the show.’
As fan Allison Devenere said: ‘We can’t believe what you guys got away with back then. All those jokes about Mrs Slocombe and her pussy just kill me . . .’
Martin Croft, Danbury, Essex.
QUESTION Did Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev appear on a U.S. TV gameshow?
THE short answer is no. However, a famous episode of the popular game show To Tell The Truth did feature a Khrushchev impersonator.
The show featured four celebrity panellists who were presented with three contestants, one of whom had an unusual occupation or a unique experience, while the other two were imposters. The panellists posed a series of questions to guess who was who.
Notable guests included Victor Kugler, the man who hid Anne Frank, Motown founder Berry Gordy, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and hairdresser Jay Sebring, who inspired the film Shampoo.
The episode broadcast on February 18, 1963, featured the Polish spy Pawel Monat, who had defected to the U.S. in 1958. To protect his identity, each contestant had to wear bags over their heads with eyes cut out.
The panellists got it wrong. Three chose contestant number three, who turned out to be the satirist Henry Morgan.
The other contestant caused gasps when he removed his bag because he was the spitting image of the Russian premier. He was, in fact, lookalike Oscar Jordan, a painting contractor from New York. Monat did not remove his mask.
David Littlewood, London N9.
QUESTION Apart from ovens, what other uses does microwave technology have?
MICROWAVES are so named because their wavelength, the distance between two peaks of the signal travelling at the speed of light, is very short compared with those used for radio and TV broadcasts. The highest TV broadcast frequencies are 806 MHz, a wavelength of 37½ cm, while the microwave band ranges from 1GHz to 300GHz, with wavelengths between 30cm and 1mm (as frequency increases, wavelength decreases).
Microwaves were first used as part of airborne radar systems during World War II. Because less power is required for airto-air use compared to ground-to-air use, it meant components could be much smaller and lighter. Modern radar still uses microwave bands.
Microwaves offer the ability to modulate (encode) large amounts of data onto a single carrier wave and send it in straight lines. BT towers and masts form a chain across the country, using microwave technology to route phone calls and data between towns and cities. The towers and masts are on top of hills and are between 30 and 60 miles apart.
One of 14 concrete towers can be seen beside the M40 at Stokenchurch, Bucks, which forms part of the chain that links the BT Tower in London to the BT Tower in Birmingham. Some relay stations are incorporated into buildings.
These chains are vital to our phone networks and have replaced hundreds of thousands of miles of cables that used to be supported by telephone poles alongside roads and railways up and down the country. Today, phone lines are used mainly for local distribution or where the replacement of cables with microwave links would be uneconomical.
Microwave bands are also used to transmit signals between the ground and orbiting satellites, making them a vital part of global communications networks and satellite TV broadcasting.
Satellite dishes on houses receive microwave signals so low in power they are measured as microwatts.
The development of the microwave for cooking came as a direct result of the end of World War II. The heart of a radar system was the magnetron, an electronic valve that used a magnet to assist in the generation of very high frequency radio waves. The ability of microwaves to cook food was discovered by accident after radar technicians suffered burns and illnesses caused by microwave radiation.
Robert Sutherland, Edinburgh.
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