XXXXXX, 2021 January 27, 2022 ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE JANUARY 27, 1956
LIVE crime reporting will feature on television for the first time when ITV starts in the North in May. The Webb Of Crime series on Granada TV is to be fronted by reporter Duncan Webb, who will speak to witnesses and criminals in the studio.
JANUARY 27, 1990
DRINkS were on the house when the Prime
Minister [Margaret Thatcher] visited the Coronation Street set yesterday. But she took a bitter lemon rather than her favourite whisky, telling Rover’s Return landlady Bet Gilroy (Julie Goodyear): ‘I’m on duty.’ Nostalgia struck when Mrs T saw the name above the corner shop, Alfred Roberts — the same as her father, also a grocer. ‘That brings back memories,’ she said.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
MARk OWEN, 50. The Take That singer from Lancashire received 60 per cent of the band’s fan mail in the 1990s. The 2002 winner of Celebrity Big Brother was known as the ‘squeaky-clean’ one but went to rehab in 2010 to deal with his drinking. Owen was introduced to meditating by Lulu, who sang with the band on their hit song Relight My Fire in 1993.
MIMI ROGERS, 66. The U.S. actress who
starred in Lost In Space and Austin Powers was Tom Cruise’s first wife. In a 1993 Playboy interview she told why they broke up: ‘Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk . . . And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument. My instrument needed tuning.’
BORN ON THIS DAY
JEROME kERN (1885-1945). The composer and double Oscar winner from New York wrote more than 700 songs, including Ol’ Man River, A Fine Romance and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. He was hailed as ‘the father of the American musical’, and on his death President Truman said that his ‘melodies will live in our voices and warm our hearts for many years’.
DONNA REED (19211986). The U.S. actress won an Oscar for From Here To Eternity and starred in the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life with James Stewart (pictured) — who refused to work with her again when the film bombed on release. Her daughter Mary Anne said: ‘He blamed her because she wasn’t as well-known.’ Reed’s last major role was as Miss Ellie Ewing in TV’s Dallas. She said a lack of good roles for women later kept her off-screen: ‘I just wouldn’t do the junk I was offered.’
ON JANUARY 27…
IN 1973, the U.S. pulled out of the Vietnam War with a treaty signed in Paris. IN 1984, Madonna’s first Uk appearance, at Manchester’s Hacienda club, was broadcast live on Channel 4’s The Tube.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION: Lambent (c1640s) A) Radiant; brilliant. B) Hard to handle. C) Sullen, yet shy. Answer below. PHRASE EXPLAINED Bully for you! meaning ‘well done’; it derives from the 19th-century American notion of ‘bully’ meaning ‘first-rate’.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. Norman Douglas, Scottish novelist (1868-1952)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the student drop out of Communism class? Because of lousy Marx. Guess The Definition answer: A.
Compiled by ETAN SMALLMAN and ADAM JACOT DE BOINOD