MISSING LINKS

IN A regular feature, we show how seemingly unrelated figures in the news just might be connected to each other after all…

DAME JUDI DENCH

… condemned The Crown as ‘inaccurate and hurtful’. But she hasn’t always shown such judgment, once getting ‘JD loves HW’ tattooed on her backside in honour of Shakespeare In Love producer Harvey Weinstein, long before his sex offences were exposed. Luckily, it was temporary.

She waited until she was 81 to have her first tattoo – ‘carpe diem’ on her wrist. Also getting inked late in life was…

DAVID DIMBLEBY

… who had a ‘modest’ scorpion drawn on to his shoulder at

75. The broadcaster, now 83, recently revealed that he has started smoking and has no social life. In his day, he was quite the dancer, having jived with Princess Diana, who dubbed him ‘Dimbletoes’, and tangoed with Margot Fonteyn. Partnering the prima ballerina puts him in step with…

RUDOLPH NUREYEV

… whose fame came after an inauspicious start in life, being born on a Trans-Siberian train. Also born on a train was Maria von Trapp, matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers and immortalised in The Sound Of Music, and played by…

JULIE ANDREWS

The actress made her West End debut 74 years ago and is still working, narrating Bridgerton as Lady Whistledown and voicing Gru’s mother in Minions: The Rise Of Gru, in a cast that also includes…

JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME

Before finding fame, the martial-arts star sold flowers and worked as a bouncer at a bar owned by fellow action hero Chuck Norris. Other doormen include Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and…

POPE FRANCIS

… who worked at a Buenos Aires bar while at college – not studying theology but chemistry, sharing an academic background with Margaret Thatcher, Cindy Crawford and…

XI JINPING

… who will today secure an unprecedented third five-year stint as Chinese leader. He scrapped presidential term limits in 2018, and will be rubber-stamped as Communist Party chairman in Beijing.