ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE NOVEMBER 30, 1968
JAMES BOND, the agent with the licence to kill, is about to admit defeat and add his name to another licence — for marriage. In On Her majesty’s Secret Service, George Lazenby’s 007 weds Tracy, played by Diana Rigg, the leather-clad Emma Peel of The Avengers. But it’s not happy ever after . . .
NOVEMBER 30, 1972
THE House of Commons sat crowded and silent for ten minutes yesterday as the terrible tragedy of Britain’s thalidomide children was spread before it. mPs heard a moving speech from mr Jack Ashley, Labour mP for Stoke-on-Trent South, who spoke of a grave national scandal and of children who had lost the magic of their childhood.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Gary LINEKER, 60. The former England captain-turned-match Of The Day host was the BBC’s highest-paid star, earning £1.75 million a year — though he took a pay cut last year. He was born exactly a month after Diego maradona, who died last week. Lineker says the second goal the Argentina star scored in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England — considered one of the greatest strikes of all time — was the closest he ever came to applauding an opponent on the pitch. ‘Diego was head and shoulders the best player of my generation,’ he says.
SIR RIDLEY SCOTT, 83. The South Shields-born director of Alien and Gladiator started out in commercials and made the 1973 Hovis advert with a boy on a bike which was voted the UK’s all-time favourite ad. In movie making, he says he avoids sex scenes because they’re ‘embarrassing’, adding: ‘I think I’m probably a bit prudish.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JUNE POINTER (1953-2006). The U.S. singer was the youngest of the Pointer Sisters, who had hits with I’m So Excited and Automatic. The sisters were whipped by their father for dancing or listening to music, which he labelled ‘the devil’s work’. But in his absence the girls would ‘get in the back room and beat pie pans with spoons, making that rhythm and jamming together’.
VIRGINIA mAyO ( 19202005). The U.S. star of The Best years Of Our Lives was proclaimed ‘the girl most likely to be whistled at in 1947’. She said Ronald Reagan, her co-star for The Girl From Jones Beach, ‘chased me for a date for months’, adding: ‘I wish I’d said yes. I would have loved to have been his First Lady.’
ON NOVEMBER 30…
IN 1968, the Trade Descriptions Act came into force. IN 2013, Paul Walker, star of the Fast & Furious films, died in a car crash, aged 40.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Obscurantism (c1830s) A) A veiled insult. B) The study of clouds. C) Deliberately preventing facts from becoming known. Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED To cast the first stone — meaning to be the first to cast aspersions on someone’s character; from the Gospel of John when in Biblical times heretics were punished by being pelted with rocks and stones.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.
David Hockney, English artist
JOKE OF THE DAY
TWO horses were standing in a field. ‘I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,’ said the first. ‘moo!’ said the second.
Guess The Definition Answer: C.