MISSING LINKS

HOW seemingly unrelated figures in the news are joined by a series of unexpected connections.

JEREMY PAXMAN

… has announced he’s stepping down as host of University Challenge. He began his journalism career as editor of Cambridge student newspaper Varsity, where he wrote an article on ‘sex and the single student’. The list of past editors also includes his successor Amol Rajan, TV presenter David Frost and film director…

MICHAEL WINNER

… who showed early talent as a provocateur by dedicating an edition to arch-rival Oxford University. He later turned down an OBE, complaining about the ‘rubbish who are getting these awards’, and saying it was ‘what you get if you clean the toilets well at King’s Cross station’. But he jested that he’d have taken a peerage, because, in the

Lords ‘you can wear fancy dress and have a giggle’. Others who have turned down an OBE include…

GEORGE HARRISON

Not for political reasons, like fellow Beatle John Lennon who returned his MBE in protest over Britain’s involvement in war. Instead, it was because he was insulted that Paul McCartney had previously been given a knighthood and he hadn’t.

But Harrison said the worst experience of his life was when a judge ruled that his 1970 No1, My Sweet Lord, had plagiarised The Chiffons’ He’s So Fine. Another ‘singer’ sued for copyright infringement is…

PEPPA PIG

In 2020, the writers of Louise Redknapp’s song Naked took action over the track Peppa’s Party Time – and now have a songwriting credit. The cartoon pig is surprisingly controversial: an episode that carried the message ‘spiders can’t hurt you’ was banned in Australia, where they most definitely can. Being banned Down Under puts Peppa Pig in the same company as video nasties I Spit On Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust and tennis ace…

NOVAK DJOKOVIC

… who was deported on the eve of the Australian Open in January after trying to enter the country while unvaccinated against Covid – the same reason he’s expected to miss the US Open when it starts a week tomorrow.