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 A look back at the stories that proved the most popular of the year, from the serious to the quirky. A few were momentous, some were tragic and many were uplifting, but all were read by thousands.
JANUARY January was dominated by tragic tales and gales. BBC children's presenter Mark Speight was quizzed by police over the death of his fiancee, Natasha Collins. She was found dead in his flat after an apparent drug overdose, leaving him "absolutely distraught" by his loss. Attention turned to Britney Spears who was carried out of her home on a stretcher and taken into custody after police were called in a dispute involving her children. And then there was the death of Heath Ledger. The Australian actor was found dead in his Manhattan apartment, prompting a global outpouring of emotion among his many fans.
Just before leaving the show business theme, January was also the month when Jeremy Clarkson lost money after publishing his bank details in his newspaper column. January was also a big weather month, with stories about flooding, snow and storms. And the first signs of the coming recession started to become apparent. The year's bizarre story offerings started with the incredible tale of allegations thattwins adopted by separate families as babies had married without knowing they were brother and sister.
FEBRUARY In February a number of our most-read stories were about the US election campaign, setting the scene for what was undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the year. The ugly side of sport and politics took centre stage when Avram Grant received anti-Semitic death threats at Chelsea. Also in February, Manchester United clawed its way up Deloitte's Football Money League to second place behind Real Madrid. Prince Harry's stint in Afghanistan came to an abrupt end after news of his secret deployment leaked out. He spent 10 weeks serving in Helmand Province, before flying back to the UK amid concerns for his safety when a news blackout deal over his tour of duty was broken by foreign media.
Showbiz is never far from the headlines, and February is synonymous with Oscars. But you were more interested in who wore what than in who won what. Also in February, a story about the Bank of England's rate-setting committee cutting interest rates to what now seems like a positively stratospheric 5.25% from 5.5% attracted a lot of interest amid signs of the slowdown in the UK economy. No month is complete without its quirky favourite, and a tale of an Argentinean girl who gave birth to female triplets for the second time caught your eye. The girl had her first set of female triplets aged 15, having first given birth to a son when she was just 14.
MARCH March was money month with the budget, markets being rattled by worries about the banking system and Heather Mills' £24.3m divorce settlement with estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney.
A story that Mills gave evidence that was "inconsistent, inaccurate" and "less than candid" attracted more readers than one about her settlement. Also much read was the tale of a small Cessna plane that crashed on a house in Kent, killing the two pilots and three passengers. On a lighter note, the story about BBC Radio 4 news reader Charlotte Green suffering a fit giggles was very popular, and prompted a flurry of calls asking for the clip to be played again. Staying with newsreaders, and the sad story of Carole Barnes taking seriously ill with a stroke generated interest and concern among readers. She died in hospital a few days later.
APRIL Some of the most-read stories were around the arrest of Karen Matthews over the disappearance of her daughter Shannon, the arrest of Shannon's stepfather on porn charges and the announcement that Karen Matthews would face trial on kidnap charges. Also making news was the disturbing case of Josef Fritzl, the 73-year-old Austrian man who confessed to imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children. He also admitted burning the body of a baby that died at the house in Amstetten, Lower Austria.
Following on from January's stories about the death of actress Natasha Collins, her fiance Mark Speight was found dead after writing suicide notes. April was true to form with showbiz stories being among the most-read. Perennial favourite Kylie Minogue attracted a lot of eyeballs by discussing the misdiagnosis of her breast cancer. And the obligatory quirky story was supplied by Brazilian football star Ronaldo. He was alleged to have picked up three prostitutes, only to find they were in fact transvestites.
MAY The most-read stories this month had a serious feel, with British politics dominating the agenda. The poor showing by Labour in local elections prompted an admission from Gordon Brown that he was disappointed in the party's performance. David Cameron, on the other hand, hailed the end of the New Labour era. Boris Johnson made headlines around the world by by becoming the London Mayor. Also adding to Labour's woes was a protest by truck drivers over the level of tax imposed on fuel.
May also saw violence, with Rangers fans rioting in Manchester and Harry Potter actor Rob Knox killed in a street fight in London. Also well read in May was the jailing of Premier League footballer Joey Barton for assault and affray. Then there was a tale of space travel, about a Nasa spacecraft sending back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.
JUNE Another month, another political row in the headlines. Tory MP David Davis resigned as an MP, promising to fight to regain his seat on a platform of defending "British liberties". There was much less interest in him winning his seat back . The other dominant issue of the month - as far readers were concerned - was the quality of broadband services in Britain. A story that included a test to establish the speed of your broadband connection rated through the roof. As did the follow-up giving a breakdown of the results of all those speed tests.
The traditional, summer silly season struck early in June with a rash of unusual stories grabbing your attention. There was the story of a baby put up for auction in Germany, a man with 13 people in his Volvo car and the 50 management speak expressions you love to hate. It was a month of mixed fortunes for footballers. Wayne Rooney got married, but Gazza was sectioned for a second time. Professional footballer Luke McCormick was arrested after two boys were killed in a crash on the M6 in Staffordshire.
JULY July's most-read story appeared late in the month, when a huge fire destroyed the historic Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare.
A table we prepared on changes to car tax and how much they will cost you also proved exceptionally popular, along with its corresponding story that the changes will affect many millions. There was a run of tragic stories in July about violent crime. A newly married British doctor was killed and her husband critically injured after they were shot in their Caribbean honeymoon hotel cottage. And earlier in the month two French research students were found stabbed to death following a flat fire had been tied up and suffered what the police called horrific injuries. But there was a lucky escape for several hundred people on board a Qantas 747 which made an emergency landing in the Philippines after a large hole appeared in its fuselage. In offbeat news, back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin and his wife Anne were jailed for more than six years each for fraudulently claiming £250,000, and a teenager apparently found a bat asleep in her bra.
AUGUST Most read this month was news that convicted paedophile Gary Glitter was ordered to sign the sex offenders' register after arriving back in the UK. There was an undeniably sombre tone to the other stories that dominated the headlines: Many dead in Madrid plane crash,Big Brother star Goody has cancer and teenager shot dead in supermarket. Then there was the fire that gutted the family home of millionaire businessman Christopher Foster in Shropshire. Police searched the burnt-out wreck of their home and eventually found the bodies of the family.
The Olympics also loomed large, notably the spectacular opening ceremony and the revelation that the star of the show mimed her way through her performance. It was also the month that Barry George was found not guilty of murdering BBC television presenter Jill Dando outside her London home. He was first convicted in 2001 but an Old Bailey retrial was ordered after doubt was cast on the reliability of gunshot residue evidence.
SEPTEMBER Fears were high the world was going to end, with the start of the Big Bang experiment. The Large Hadron Collider might not have caused the earth to disappear into a black hole, but there were definitely plenty of black holes elsewhere as the global economy started to unravel.
Lehman Brothers bank filed for bankruptcy in the US, and in the UK HBOS entered into merger talks with Lloyds to prevent its collapse. Banks were bailed out, but still their shares fell. Stamp duty was axed on houses below £175,000 in an effort to resuscitate the faltering property market. And there was stock market volatility amid the uncertainty. Fuel prices were still high in September, which was blamed as a factor in the collapse of the airline XL, which left thousands of people stranded. The high fuel prices also contributed to the utter chaos at a north London service station which gave away £20k of petrol in a publicity stunt. Another major story was the case of a gunman who killed 10 people at a college in Finland before shooting himself.
OCTOBER The BBC hit the headlines this month, with the suspension of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand over a prank phone call. And then the BBC apologised to actor Andrew Sachs for the "unacceptable and offensive" content of the calls made during a pre-recorded radio show.
Unsurprisingly the financial collapse which dominated the news in September continued in October, with a number of stories among the most read of the month. Central banks cut interest rates, bank shares took a pounding, US stocks slid to a five year low and UK banks received a £37bn bailout. The US election started to make its way back up the list of most read stories. Also getting high-profile coverage was the jailing of death crash footballer Luke McCormick, concern over Kerry Katona's behaviour on television and a plane wreck found that was confirmed as that of adventurer Steve Fossett's.
NOVEMBER This month was all about votes - Barack Obama winning the US Presidential election and John Sergeant quitting Strictly Come Dancing despite strong public support.
The financial situation continued to attract attention, with the chancellor unveiling his public borrowing plans, UK interest rates being slashed to 3% and a blow-by-blow account of the Pre-Budget Report. Also avidly read was the tragic unfolding of events in the Mumbai attacks. As ever, a weather story was also very popular with icy conditions and snowfalls prompting many clicks. And the maxim that sex sells was borne-out by the popularity of a story about model Karolina Kurkova and her missing belly button. Needless to say, it was illustrated with pictures of said model strutting the catwalk in her undies. The year also drew to a close with a familiar theme - Jeremy Clarkson in trouble. Details of a joke he made about truck drivers murdering prostitutes did brisk business on the site.
DECEMBER With all the talk of recession and job losses, a story about a Glasgow family where no-one works struck a nerve. As did news that interest rates were being cut to a 57-year low. A bizarre and tragic story about a drink-driver who killed a father and son in a motorway crash while performing a sex act on himself attracted a lot of attention.
Odd stories about an actor cutting his throat on stage (he survived), and a young Chinese woman left partially deaf following a passionate kiss from her boyfriend proved very popular, and were e-mailed all over the world. The conclusion of the Shannon Matthews saga drew a large number of readers, with her mother Karen being found guilty of kidnap. And finally, a challenge we posed and which many of you rose to - could you pass the 11-plus exam? | ||||||||||||
31.12.08
The most-read stories of 2008
Ad Breakdown's pick of 2008
| AD BREAKDOWN The Magazine's review of advertising |
We've become familiar, as viewers of adverts, to the years of plenty - lavish, epic adverts with lovingly constructed conceits and beautiful soundtracks. So how will the coming years - not, one hopes, of famine but perhaps of tightened belts - be felt? What will we see between the programmes (on some channels), between the pages and on the hoardings between the buildings?
 Woolies 1970s style |
It's at least clear that it will be a future without some familiar advertisers. Woolworths, for instance, whose Leslie Crowther-fronted 1970s adverts have graced many a TV news report about the company's demise, will be a distant memory.
That's in spite of a now incongruous advert earlier this year in which Jackie Chan appeared with the Woolworths sheep (Woolie) and sheepdog (Worth). But that was in April, well before the banking crisis of the summer which led into the downturn and ultimately the closure of Woolies, back in a time when it must have seemed like a good idea to pay a celebrity appearance fee to a Hollywood star in order to launch a UK-only children's clothing range. It seems almost quaint now.
And no more will we be bombarded with Boxing Day adverts for MFI sale kitchens after it also went the way of Courts. Or ads from luxury airline Silverjet, which last year painstakingly reconstructed British Airways' iconic "face" advert. So much creative effort for nought.
New lives
With the banking world's woes, it's noticeable that the adverts for financial services which once were everywhere are now not so much. And what will happen to dozens of familiar advertising identities? The Bradford and Bingley bowler hats, for instance, or Howard Brown from the Halifax, or any number of other associated brands. With the expected creation of a new superbank with Lloyds TSB in the driving seat, will even the famous Black Horse survive, or be sent out to pasture to be replaced by a new icon?
 |  Maybe tight budgets will leave the door open for some low-cost but highly creative campaigns  Rob Mortimer |
So how will the recession affect advertising? Blogger Rob Mortimer, a planner at CheethamBellJWT, says there will undoubtedly be an effect. "Many companies will have tighter budgets which means advertising agencies have to fight harder to win their share of it," he says, adding that the end result for the audience may not be much different.
Production budgets will be cut back, and there might be a move towards more "hard-sell" adverts. But at the same time there will be "forward-thinking" brands who will use the opportunity to "stand out with more creative work that can give them a more powerful position once things improve".
"If we are lucky, maybe tight budgets will leave the door open for some low-cost but highly creative campaigns over the next year or two; as agencies strive to get the most impact for the brands' money."
 Closing sign |
Fellow blogger Peter Kenny agrees. "Marketing folks will spend smarter, and make fewer TV ads. There will be more activity online - expect to see more viral films on the internet, where people can gain lots of coverage for little spend. There will also be a back-to-basics focus on junk mail and door drops. Clients will demand agencies prove their spend on TV ads to be worth it. So we'll see more prominent phone numbers and website addresses being touted - because responses to these can be measured, allowing the agencies to justify their costs."
If this latter point is true, we might also see more examples of how Orange trailed its website - instead of putting its web address on its adverts it instead wrote "Search online for 'I am'" and bought "I am" as Google keywords. A cunning way to get noticed and of avoiding the URL blindness which results from web addresses being in so many places that nobody notices them.
Price cutting
The extent to which the recession will mean an end to conspicuous consumption and even branding will be worth watching in the coming year. Supermarkets, whose adverts always wax and wane between price and quality, are definitely in a price phase at the moment. Most High Street institutions will surely follow suit.
Yet this has not been the only theme of the year. Concerns about binge drinking and obesity have flared several times, and resultant toughened limits on food and drink advertising could be seen in practice. So alcohol adverts must not now appeal strongly to the under 18s - though of course every advertiser will want to make sure they do appeal strongly to the over 18s. That's a creative challenge.
Adverts must also not make even subtle links between sex and drinking. And they must now show alcohol being handled responsibly.
 Chopping bubbles for Kronenbourg |
The result? A series of pretty abstract drink adverts this year. Kronenbourg has a kitchenful of chefs chopping and grating and slicing bubbles to make them as small as possible, on the basis that more bubbles meant a smoother taste. This advert attracted complaints for allegedly encouraging violence, though the Advertising Standards Authority gave it the all-clear on that count.
Stella Artois, who for years have brought "reassuringly expensive" ad satisfaction and cheap lager in equal measures, went out in several new directions - the least impressive taking us back to times pre-Stella, in 1366, when people apparently believed the earth was flat. Odd how breweries make such a big deal of their foundation date. But Guinness cleverly used theirs to square the don't appeal to under-18s circle - by focusing on 1759 as being one minute before the end of the working day. Start pouring a pint then, and it should be ready for when you are, is the message, seamlessly referring to the previous "worth waiting for" campaign.
Drinks adverts will, however, be included soon in Google searches, along with gambling adverts. Worth watching if any advertisers do anything interesting or creative with this new opportunity.
And the changed environment for alcohol is also felt by food too. It's a sign of the times that a very memorable line used to promote Jaffa Cakes - that they had only one gram of fat per cake - is not now allowed to be used in advertising, because it implies that Jaffa Cakes are a low fat food. These things are not measured by the size of the cake, they are measured per 100g, and for a solid food to be low fat it must have no more than 3g of fat per 100g. Jaffa Cakes have 8g.
 Is that you home, love? |
But some things don't change - at least that's what Hovis's mammoth advertising epic tries to persuade you, in what many will feel was the most memorable advert of the year. In a 122-second-long ad, one second for each year of the company's history, a boy runs across town as the years advance in front of him. It is joyous and upbeat and beautifully crafted, even if it does feel like a cross between a Victorian Dr Who and Life on Mars.
A selection of adverts worth using your remote control to skip and some worth rewinding to watch again will be published next week.
Plants 'more important than ever'
Plants have never been as important to the environment, the director of Kew Gardens has said, ahead of the London conservation site's 250th anniversary.
They were vital to reduce the impact of climate change and "vast numbers of humans" needed them for medicine and food, Professor Stephen Hopper added.
Several major events will be held in 2009 to celebrate Kew's role as a world leader in plant science.
The first of these sees free public entry to the gardens on New Year's Day.
"We believe that at no other point in history have plants been so important to people," said Professor Hopper.
"They have importance as carbon sinks in a time of climate change.
"We have to care for what remains and address the serious business of repairing and restoring vegetation if we're going to have the buffers to climate variation that plant life offers."
 This year saw the opening of a walk through the trees at Kew Gardens |
More than seven million preserved specimens of plants from around the world can be found in Kew's Herbarium.
An extension to this will open in 2009 to coincide with the 250th anniversary, helping Kew to cope with the 30,000 new specimens it receives each year.
A display of UK flowers such as orchids will also be held in the coming 12 months.
And there will be the Garden Photographer of the Year competition, plus the reopening of the Marianne North gallery, with a display of paintings by the Victorian artist.
Sport stars lead New Year Honours
Olympians Chris Hoy and Rebecca Adlington and driver Lewis Hamilton have rounded off an exceptional year for UK sport with New Year Honours.
Cyclist Hoy is knighted after three Beijing golds and double gold-winning swimmer Adlington becomes an OBE. F1 champion Hamilton is made an MBE.
The new sirs also include fantasy author Terry Pratchett, while rock star Robert Plant becomes a CBE.
Sara Payne, a campaigner following the murder of her daughter, is made an MBE.
'It's mad'
In China this summer, Hoy became the first British athlete in more than 100 years to win three gold medals at one Games.
| FULL HONOURS LIST Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader |
His knighthood comes after being crowned BBC Sports Personality of the Year earlier this month.
Further honours for the British cycling team that dominated the sport in Beijing see double gold-winner Bradley Wiggins and coach David Brailsford become CBEs, and eight more gold-medallists made MBEs.
The honours continue for contributors to Britain's best Olympics performance since 1908, including sailor Ben Ainslie who is made a CBE after collecting three golds at successive Games.
Cyclist Chris Hoy on being knighted
Nineteen-year-old Adlington is honoured after becoming Britain's first woman swimmer to win Olympic gold since 1960.
"There are so many amazing names on the list, it's something I'll treasure for the rest of my life," she said.
Fourteen-year-old Paralympian swimmer Eleanor Simmonds said she felt like she was "living in a fairy-tale" on becoming the youngest person ever honoured, made an MBE after winning two golds in the pool in Beijing.
The first British woman to win the Olympic 400m, Christine Ohuruogu, becomes an MBE.
In Formula One, Lewis Hamilton secured the title only on the last corner of the last race, becoming the youngest ever champion at the age of 23.
Becoming an MBE was "the most amazing culmination to what has been quite a year for me", he said.
The New Year Honours turn out to be a double celebration for the Hoy family, with the cyclist's mother Carol Hoy made an MBE for her work as a specialist nurse at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh.
Reading Football Club chairman John Madejski, meanwhile, receives a knighthood for his charity work.
'Totally astonished'
Some 966 people are recognised in the New Year Honours.
| It'll be nice to meet the real Queen at last Actor Michael Sheen OBE  |
In the entertainment world, a knighthood for Terry Pratchett is recognition for a writing career that has seen him sell more than 55 million books worldwide, including his best-known Discworld series.
"There are times when phrases such as 'totally astonished' just don't do the job," said Sir Terry about the honour.
The 60-year-old has become a campaigner for more research into Alzheimer's disease after being diagnosed with the illness in 2007.
Robert Plant, who found fame in the 1970s with rock group Led Zeppelin, is recognised for services to music.
The singer of rock classics such as Whole Lotta Love and Stairway to Heaven becomes a CBE.
 Liz Smith only became a professional actress in her 50s |
Jazz musician Courtney Pine, also made a CBE, said he was "deeply moved to be honoured".
The 44-year-old, who has become something of a British jazz ambassador, called his work "a noble mission in uniting people through sound".
Actor Michael Sheen, best known for portraying Tony Blair in TV's The Deal and Oscar-winning film The Queen, is made an OBE.
"It'll be nice to meet the real Queen at last," said the 39-year-old, who said he was "thrilled and slightly mystified".
Meanwhile, the Royle Family actress Liz Smith becomes an MBE.
Jenny Abramsky, who headed the BBC's national radio stations for almost a decade until earlier this year, becomes a dame.
"I'm thrilled because I believe this honour recognises the importance of radio in this country," she said.
Big business
Another new dame is Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers, while Juliet Lyon, director of Prison Reform Trust is made a CBE for services to the Welfare of Prisoners.
 Terry Pratchett published his first novel, The Carpet People, in 1971 |
He said that none of the previous awards he had collected in his career compared to this honour, adding: "For me it's about the future entrepreneurs that it inspires."
Anya Hindmarch, designer of fashion accessories including the phenomenally successful "I'm not a plastic bag", and interior designer Kelly Hoppen become MBEs.
There is a knighthood for Paul Edwards, the principal of Garforth Community College, near Leeds, who also advises the government on education.
The 51-year-old said he was "shocked and very surprised", going on to praise his "remarkable school, a great place to work full of remarkable teachers and support staff".
 Designer Anya Hindmarch's shopping bag was a phenomenon in 2007 |
Professor Tim Brighouse, pioneer of the London school improvement programme which was the basis for the current national challenge programme, is also knighted.
Six heroes of the 7 July 2005 bomb attacks on London are among hundreds of members of the public recognised by honours.
Among them is Timothy Coulson, who raced across railway tracks to administer first aid to injured passengers.
Gill Hicks lost both her legs on the bombed Piccadilly line Tube to Russell Square. She co-founded the Walktalk event to bring communities together, and is made an MBE.
Football legend
Sara Payne, made an MBE, has been a tireless child protection campaigner since the murder of her eight-year-old daughter Sarah in 2000.
Lyn Costello and Dee Edwards become MBEs after setting up campaign group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression in the wake of the killing of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993.
Dennis Goodwin, chairman of the First World War Veterans' Association, is made an MBE.
 Sara Payne's campaigning has led to child protection law changes |
The wife of football legend Kenny Dalglish becomes an MBE, having set up The Marina Dalglish Appeal breast cancer charity after beating the disease.
An OBE for services to Broadcasting goes to Dr Anita Kumari Bhalla, editor, public space broadcasting at the BBC. And Paul Potts, the executive chairman of the Press Association, is made a CBE.
Among the other new MBEs are Hertfordshire couple Robert and Caroline Rejdak, for services to children and families, having fostered a total of 117 children of all ages over a period of 30 years.
And eighty-seven-year-old Dorothy Atton is made an MBE, having been a Royal British Legion volunteer since 1946.What's in a name? 10 cases where moniker maketh man
The New Scientist gave it the name nominative determinism - the idea that there is a link between people's names and their occupation.
In their book Yes!, Goldstein, Martin and Cialdini cite the classic piece of research that supports the idea that nominative determism really exists. A study of the rolls of the American Dental Association shows that more people called Dennis become dentists than you would expect if the choice of profession were purely random.
And now we have the exquisitely named Bernard Madoff, making off with his client's cash.
Here are my top 10 examples of nominative determinism.
1. Theodore Hee. Mr T. Hee was responsible for most of the early comic storylines for Walt Disney films.
2. Cardinal Sin. The classic example, I think. Jamie Sin was an Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church of the Philippines. Wikipedia helpfully notes: "His name should not be confused with "cardinal sin", which is synonymous for the seven deadly sins".
3. Judge Judge. In July of this year Sir Igor Judge was appointed Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.
4. Amy Freeze. Fox News Chicago's Chief Meteorologist could hardly have chosen a different profession. Save, perhaps, setting pay for Government employees.
5. Patty Turner. The inevitable name of the wife of McDonald's CEO Frank Turner.
6. Governor Blagojevich. The man responsible for introducing Americans to the British slang term "blag" which as the dictionary puts it means "To rob, steal [origin unknown]
7. Dr Fred Grabiner. This is what the internet is for. A forum on appropriate names yields this brilliant moniker for a gynaecologist.
8. J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon. The New Scientist campaign was spurred on by the discovery of these two authors of an article on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol 49, pp 173-176, 1977).
9. Usain Bolt. Surely his surname influenced the career of the world's fastest man? The same cannot be said of Marina Stepanova. This is the ideal name for an elite hurdler. But she earned her first titles under her maiden name of Marina Makeyeva, so her name can't have influenced her choice of career. Perhaps, though, it influenced her choice of husband.
10. Paige Worthy. Nominative determism has also fascinated the Freaknonomics blog ever since they discovered this fact checker for Good magazine.
Charles Ponzi and his scheme
The sensational rise and fall of Charles Ponzi attracted some attention this side of the Atlantic. The Times christened him the "whirlwind financier", and on July 28, 1920, reported on an amazing "get-rich-quick" scheme [click on the links for the original Times reports]:
READ THE TIMES ARTICLE
An amazing "get-rich-quick" scheme, whereby Mr Charles Ponzi, a short time ago a relatively poor man, now estimates his wealth at upwards of £1,700,000, has attracted the attention of the public authorities of Boston.
The extraordinary feature of the case is that the authorities are not at all certain that Mr Ponzi's operations are in any way illegal, and have only called a halt until his accounts, which run into millions of dollars, can be audited.
Holidaymakers hit as £1 falls to €1
The plunging pound made one-to-one parity with the euro an expensive reality for British tourists yesterday, as the currency's slump deepened.
Thousands of skiers and holidaymakers heading for European resorts to celebrate the new year were feeling the pain in their pockets as the pound hit record lows against the single currency. On the markets the pound was still clinging to levels only a fraction above one-to-one with the euro.
On Bank of England figures, it closed in London at a low of €1.0199 - a value not seen since the euro's creation in 1999. Against the dollar the pound slid to a six-and-a-half year low of $1.4385 - compared with $1.99 six months ago. However, the pound's true euro value for travellers exchanging money was already well below parity, with typical tourist rates as low as €0.98. The Post Office was offering tourist rates yesterday of only €98.04 for every £100.
Experts said that, with the pound under pressure amid fears over Britain's darkening economic prospects, a one-to-one level with the euro in the markets was inevitable within days. “There is no good news for the pound coming up that I can see,” Mike Berg, an analyst with 4Cast, a consultancy, said. “Its fall may accelerate a bit. In January, you will see parity.”
Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered, the banking group, predicted that the pound would fall to €0.90 within a month.
Growing signs emerged that the pound's record lows against the euro were already changing holidaymakers' behaviour. A survey for travelsupermarket.com found indications that British tourists were beginning to avoid trips to the Continent. Almost a fifth of those questioned said that they would seek cheaper holidays.
The pound has lost a quarter of its value against the euro this year, and 15percent in the past month alone. In the latest sign of its vulnerability, the pound's overall value on its “trade-weighted index”, against a basket of currencies, hit lows not seen since 1975. The index fell to as little as 73.4 - sharply down from 97.93 at the end of 2007.
Although the slump in the pound makes travelling abroad much more costly, it offers some boost to the economy by making British exports cheaper in foreign markets. Economists said, however, that any benefits from this were being eliminated because the global recession meant that demand for exports was falling.
The drastically weak pound is also driving up bills for imported goods, particularly for foreign food products, as well as for oil and petrol.
Petrol prices have tumbled over recent weeks and yesterday hit their lowest for almost three years, averaging 87.79p a litre, according to the AA.
The sharp reversal in the cost of fuel at the pumps follows a fall in crude oil prices of 60 per cent since January to under $40 a barrel.
Petrol would almost certainly be even cheaper but for the weakness of the pound, which has meant that, when paid for in sterling, oil prices have dropped by only a more modest 45 per cent.
Pressure is being piled on the pound as markets bet that Britain is among the worst exposed of the world's big economies to the global crisis. The aggressive selling of sterling across markets is being aggravated as the Bank of England's unprecedented cuts in interest rates cut the returns earned on any funds held in the currency.
Official figures from the Land Registry yesterday confirmed that average house prices in England and Wales dropped by another 1.9 per cent last month, leaving them 12.2 per cent down over 12 months.
30.12.08
Postcodes to celebrate 50th year
The Royal Mail is to launch a campaign to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the postcode.
It will stress the importance of using the letters and numbers that make up postcodes on mailed items.
Almost a fifth of non-business letters, cards and packets are sent without a full or accurate postcode.
Giles Finnemore, of Royal Mail, said the postcode was still important "to help Royal Mail sort and deliver mail quickly and efficiently".
There are now more than 1.7 million postcodes across the UK, covering 27 million addresses.
Postcoded letters are read by Royal Mail's machinery and sorted 30 times faster than those dealt with by hand.
| POSTCODE FACTS The UK has 1.7 million postcodes The Royal Mail online postcode checker receives about 4.5 million hits a month Each postcode covers an average of 15 addresses Buckingham Palace's postcode is SW1A 1AA Wembley Stadium's is HA9 0XX Father Christmas has his own postcode - SAN TA1 |
The first postcodes were introduced in Norwich in 1959, using the letters NOR, before being rolled out across the UK in the 1960s.
Postcodes are used widely for non-postal services, such as online shopping or satellite navigation systems.
The first steps towards the modern day postcode were taken in 1857 when Sir Rowland Hill, inventor of the postage stamp, introduced a scheme to accelerate mail delivery.
This divided the capital into 10 separate postal districts - N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW, EC and WC. The S and NE codes have since been reassigned to the Sheffield and Newcastle areas respectively.
The public were asked to add these district letters to the bottom of written addresses, to help speed up delivery.Faces of the year - the men
| Some of the men who have made the headlines in 2008, clockwise from top left: Radovan Karadzic, John Sergeant, Josef Fritzl, Usain Bolt, John Coward, Rafa Nadal, Damian Green, Jay-Z, Max Mosely, Nathaniel Rothschild, David Axelrod and Henry Conway. Click herefor the women of the year.
RADOVAN KARADZIC JOHN SERGEANT JOSEF FRITZL USAIN BOLT JOHN COWARD RAFA NADAL HENRY CONWAY DAVID AXELROD NATHANIEL ROTHSCHILD MAX MOSELY JAY-Z DAMIAN GREEN | |||||
Darkest hour for 'smallest state'
For 30 years an eccentric ex-Army major's claims that a gun platform off the Essex coast is an independent state have been ignored by the government.
But documents just declassified by the National Archives show that at one time the "world's smallest state" was such an embarrassment officials wanted to bomb it into the sea.
To the British government Roy Bates must have seemed like an insolent child sticking two fingers up from just out of reach behind a garden wall.
In 1967 the former Army major took over a World War II fortress seven miles off the Essex coast and declared it an independent state, with himself as monarch.
Standing just outside British waters (which until 1987 only stretched to three miles), the government was powerless to remove him, and there he stayed for nearly 40 years.
Mr Bates and his 'Principality of Sealand' came to be treated with the special indulgence reserved for English eccentrics; but just declassified documents show that at one time the peculiar story was close to taking an altogether darker turn.
'Coup'
The papers reveal a diplomatic row with Germany and Foreign Office officials, who were so incensed that they called for the Navy to knock the 10,000 sq ft platform into the sea.
The trouble began in August 1978 when two Germans and a Dutchman landed by helicopter on the platform, overpowered Mr Bates's son, and laid claim to the "principality".
The victory was short-lived. Soon afterwards the major staged a "counter-coup", freed his son and took the Dutchman and one of the Germans hostage.
| Is there any chance of a British patrol vessel 'passing by' the Fort and somehow knocking it into the sea? Foreign Office official |
It was not long before the Dutch and German embassies contacted the Foreign Office, asking when their citizens would be released from British captivity.
The German Embassy wrote stiffly: "The German national Gernot Ernst Putz is being held prisoner by members of a so-called 'Principality of Sealand' on the former anti-aircraft fort 'Roughs Tower', off Harwich.
"Therefore, the imprisonment of Putz is in a way an act of piracy, committed on the high sea but still in front of British territory by British citizens."
The trouble was that as Sealand lay outside British jurisdiction there was nothing the Foreign Office could do.
The embarrassment of being powerless to control the antics taking place on a concrete stack within sight of the British coastline was, it seems, the last straw.
'Strident' and 'petulant'
In a classified internal letter following the Dutch entreaties, a Foreign Office official wrote: "Could you, therefore, please discuss the approach from the Dutch embassy with the Whitehall departments concerned, and let me know what reply I can give to Mr Schaapveld?
"Is there any chance of a British patrol vessel 'passing by' the Fort and somehow knocking it into the sea?"
Before he could receive a reply, the Dutch hostage was released. But it appears this latest humiliation was a step too far and the official felt Mr Bates had to be dealt with once and for all.
He wrote: "Mr Schaapveld said he did not know whether the German… had also been released. Assuming that he has, then we can consider the problems of Sealand in somewhat slower time.
"But no doubt the same sort of problem might be thrown up at any moment until the British government feels itself able to take some effective action over its property in the North Sea."
 Sealand is seven miles from the coast of England |
As it turned out the German hostage had not been released. Instead the Foreign Office received further "strident" and "petulant" demands from the German embassy.
It was not long until the man was set free, but by now the Sealand question had gained its own momentum and the issue was raised as a parliamentary question in the House of Lords.
Lord Kennet asked: "My Lords, is it not the case that the British national on this tower has been reported in the press as having taken actions which, if they had been committed in a place where there was jurisdiction, would have been crimes, but that as there is no jurisdiction on this tower no action has been taken to restrain him from capturing or kidnapping people and holding them to ransom?"
Lord Goronwy-Roberts replied: "My Lords, I think that the noble Lord puts the position fairly."
Lord Hailsham of Saint Mary-Lebone said: "Quite seriously, my Lords, is not such an instillation a danger to navigation and, so many years after the war, is it not time that it was sunk or demolished in some other way?"
Lord Goronwy-Roberts said all options were being considered, including demolition.
The National Archives file holds a final letter from a Foreign Office official noting that the MoD had a plan for re-capturing the tower "if, and when, it became apparent that the Bates family were no longer in residence".
The official asks "whether the MoD is still ready to take action if required and also what sort of action would be taken".
There is no reply contained in the file, but Sealand was not demolished by the Navy and is still standing, still occupied and still unrecognised by the government.
In 2007 the Bates family put "their" nation up for sale. A Spanish estate agents specialising in selling islands gave it a price tag of £504m.
Artistic clues to coastal change
Nineteenth Century artwork is a useful tool for studying coastal erosion, according to a retired coastal engineer.
Robin McInnes assessed the accuracy of geological and topological features in more than 400 paintings of the Isle of Wight and Hampshire coastline.
Dr McInnes said such old masters gave engineers the chance to see coastal features before they were changed by industrial development.
He was standing in London's Tate Gallery, admiring a painting entitled Pegwell Bay, Kent - a recollection of October 5th 1858 by Pre-Raphaelite artist William Dyce, when the thought struck him that the detailed accurate depiction of groynes and foreshore, despite being painted 150 years ago, might be of use in his work as a coastal engineer.
Over the years, Dr McInnes had amassed quite a collection of paintings, prints and etchings depicting the coastlines of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, where he ran the island's coastline management strategy.
Combining his interests in paintings of the local environment, geology and coastal erosion, he looked at hundreds of artworks and came up with a method to assess their value as indicators of coastal change - especially erosion.
"From the late 18th Century, Europe was cut off by the Napoleonic wars, this resulted in travellers and artists paying greater attention to the picturesque landscapes of the British Isles," said Dr McInnes.
Artists such as William Turner visited the Hampshire coast and produced panoramic paintings in aquatint and water colour.
Dr McInnes began to examine images from the 1770s to the 1920s. From more than 400 paintings, prints and illustrations he drew up a scale to asses how useful such artworks were as coastal engineering tools.
"The ranking system is based on four or five factors, it is a qualitative assessment," he said.
"I looked at issues such as the material and the nature of the media, oil paintings versus prints; generally, water colour allowed the most accurate depiction.
"The next question was what do they actually show, do they provide understanding of the geology or beach levels? I gave each a score for that.
"Also to time periods, from a coastal engineers point of view, the most relevant period is when rapid coastal development took place."
Dr McInnes said the Victorian era saw a dramatic change in the coastline as towns, such as Portsmouth, grew with the opening up of railway links.
He also gave marks for the accuracy of the artistic style, and whether the painting showed the topography.
"In Italian landscape style accuracy was not the prime consideration, (whereas) traditional Victorian coastal painting was the most accurate as the idea was to provide an exact image to take home.
"Followers of the pre-Raphaelites captured in precise detail this period, it coincided with an interest in geology and natural sciences. "
He added that the paintings of the period were not just a tool for categorising physical change, but also environmental and developmental issues.
"Many artists returned to the same spot to capture the same scenes over a period of years.
"The study shows how Victorian development has radically changed the coastline; it's nice to strip it back because it helps you understand what might be the underlying problems of erosion and instability.
"Natural processes in the past are largely masked by coastal development," Dr Innes explained.
"Looking back 150 years, it's easier to understand the geography and topography when you don't have this coastal development covering the slopes."
The study - carried out with help from Portsmouth University, the Crown Estate and the National Maritime Museum - has been well received by organisations concerned with coastal erosion.
Dr McInnes recently presented his findings at a coastal engineering conference in Venice, where he learned of similar research that used Caravaggio's paintings to asses historic water levels in the sinking Italian city.
"A lot of people think it can be applied to other parts of the coast that are well illustrated," he says.
The study could be extended, he suggested, to cover areas of south-east England where the erosion of soft rocks, combined with human development, has led to dramatic coastal change.
Creator of unisex fashions dies
French fashion designer Ted Lapidus, who pioneered the unisex look and safari suit in the 1960s, has died from leukemia, aged 79.
Edmond Lapidus, known as Ted, was the son of a Russian immigrant tailor. He opened his fashion house in 1958.
French film stars Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon were among the celebrities who popularised his fashions. Military epaulettes were also a Lapidus feature.
His son Olivier Lapidus now runs the label, which includes many accessories.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy said Ted Lapidus had "democratised French elegance", calling him "the poet of high fashion".
Lapidus died on Monday at a hospital in Cannes, in the south of France.Duffy and Burke top 2008 charts
Duffy and Alexandra Burke were the UK's top-selling musicians of the year, according to official sales figures.
X Factor winner Burke sold 888,000 copies of her version of Hallelujah in the last two weeks of the year to take the year's biggest-selling single.
Duffy's debut album Rockferry held off a late challenge from Take That to come top of the year-end chart, with 1.685 million copies sold.
Kings of Leon, Leona Lewis and Coldplay all sold over a million albums in 2008.
| TOP SINGLES OF 2008 1) Hallelujah - Alexandra Burke 2) Hero - X Factor finalists 3) Mercy - Duffy 4) I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry 5) Rockstar - Nickelback 6) American Boy - Estelle/ Kanye West 7) Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon 8) Now You're Gone - Basshunter 9) 4 Minutes - Madonna/ Justin Timberlake 10) Black & Gold - Sam Sparro Source: Official Charts Company |
Duffy's Mercy sold 536,000 copies, the only other single to sell over half a million.
Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl was the fourth biggest-seller, followed by Nickelback's Rockstar.
Other top-selling singles included Estelle and Kanye West's American Boy, Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire, Basshunter's Now You're Gone and Madonna and Justin Timberlake's collaboration 4 Minutes.
Sam Sparro's Black & Gold rounded off the year's top 10 singles.
Rihanna, Killers, Girls Aloud, Pink and Scouting For Girls all feature in the top 10 albums of 2008.
| TOP ALBUMS OF 2008 1) Rockferry - Duffy 2) The Circus - Take That 3) Only By The Night - Kings of Leon 4) Spirit - Leona Lewis 5) Viva La Vida... - Coldplay 6) Good Girl Gone Bad - Rihanna 7) Day & Age - Killers 8) Out of Control - Girls Aloud 9) Funhouse - Pink 10) Scouting For Girls - Scouting For Girls Source: Official Charts Company |
The figures include both downloads and physical copies such as compact discs.
OCC managing director Martin Talbot said: "Duffy and Alexandra Burke have been the biggest new arrivals on the British music scene over the past year, bar none.
"But the biggest selling singles and albums of the year also show that talent, both new and old, can make an impact, if the music is right.
"Besides the obvious impact of the X Factor artists, including Burke, Leona Lewis and this year's finalists, Duffy, Katy Perry, Sam Sparro and Scouting For Girls all scored big to show that new talent can make an impact."
29.12.08
31st December 2008
31st December 2008
New Year's Eve.
(day 365, 1 remaining) (LY 366/1)
Religious events today...
Feast day of St Silvester I, pope,
St Melania the Younger,
and St Columba of Sens.
History Test for December 31st
Today in 1983, the final edition of TV's `The Good Old Days' was broadcast. Which theatre was home to the programme? -The City Varieties Theatre, Leeds
Born today in 1720 and known as `The Young Pretender', what was Charles Edward Stuart's Scottish name? -Bonnie Prince Charlie
Today in 1969, what coin ceased to be legal tender at midnight? -The half crown
Born today in 1948, who had seventies UK pop hits with `Love's Unkind' and `Macarthur Park'? -Donna Summer
Name the religious reformer who issued the first English translation of the Bible and died today in 1384. -John Wycliffe
QUOTE “I'd not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whalst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton, 1726.
Events today...
1687 The first Huguenots set sail from France for the Cape of Good Hope, where they would later create the South African m wine industry with the vines they took with them on the voyage.
1695 The window tax was imposed in Britain, which resulted in many being bricked up.
1719 Death of John Flamsteed, the astronomer for whom King Charles II built the Greenwich Observatory.
1857 Ottawa became the new capital of Canada on the orders of Queen Victoria.
1877 Death of Gustave Courbet, French painter.
1891 It was announced that the new year would see the opening of the US government's new depot for handling immigrant arrivals to New York. The year before, the government assumed sole responsibility for the screening of arrivals, a task formerly performed in the New York area by the state of New York as the government's local agent. The new depot on Ellis Island in the upper bay area, would be the nation's major immigration station. It was being trumpeted as a major improvement on the old reception facilities at the Battery on Manhattan Island and better able to cope with massive numbers of arrivals. The island was named after Samuel Ellis, who owned it in the 1770s.
1903 Five employees of the Iroquois Theatre in Chicago were arrested for manslaughter after the previous day's fire.
1922 The French government turned down a German offer of a non-aggression pact.
1923 The BBC started to use the Big Ben Chimes in its broadcasts.
1936 Death of Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish writer.
1942 Potatoes were rationed in Holland.
1948 Death of Malcolm Campbell, British racing driver.
1951 Death of Maxim Litvinov, Soviet leader.
1953 A team from Britain set off to search for the 'Abominable Snowman'.
1960 The farthing coin, which had been in use in Great Britain since the l3th century, ceased to be legal tender.
1961 The Beach Boys played their first gig.
1964 Donald Campbell set the world water speed record (276.33 mph).
1973 The miners strike caused a three day working week.
1977 American serial killer Ted Bundy escaped from custody.
1977 The Cambodian government announced that it was breaking off diplomatic relations with neighbouring Vietnam and also suspending all air services between them. The two Communist countries were at loggerheads over which of them was to blame for the recent outbreaks of intense fighting along their borders. Full-scale battles at regimental level were reported to have taken place in the region known as Parrot's Beak which juts into South Vietnam. Much of the problem seemed to have its roots in the movement of Cambodians across the frontier in the Mekong Delta soon after the fall of Saigon and before the North Vietnamese could establish full control in the area. The conflict was being exacerbated by ideological differences, with the Chinese-sponsored Cambodian regime laying claim to a more "revolutionary" outlook than that of Soviet-backed Vietnam.
1981 Former flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings overthrew the government of President Hilla Limann and seized power again in Ghana. In a radio broadcast to the nation, Rawlings described Limann and his associates as "a pack of criminals who bled Ghana to the bone" and said that they had brought about the country's "total economic ruin". Rawlings gave no indication of how long his Provisional Military Council would retain power, but he did remind his fellow citizens of the fact that he voluntarily returned the government to civilian rule three months after he toppled the military government of Lieutenant-General Fred Akuffo in June 1979.
1984 A car crash resulted in Rick Allen a drummer with Def Leppard having an arm amputated.
1985 Death of Sam Spiegel, aged 84, Movie producer 'Bridge Over River Kwai'.
1985 American rock and country singer Rick Nelson was killed, along with his fiancee and four band members. when a chartered DC3 carrying them between concerts in Guntersville, Alabama and Dallas, Texas caaught fire and crashed.
1986 The oil company Esso announced it was disinvesting in South Africa.
1988 In Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto signed the first agreement between India and Pakistan in 16 years.
1988 The award of an MBE to former darts' world champion Eric Bristow in the Queen's New Year Honours List did not hit the bull's eye. One MP said, "To give someone an MBE just because he is good at throwing darts is unbelievable". Bristow retorted that "the award is on behalf of the sport and the millions of working-class people who enjoy it".
1990 The giant Christmas tree in London's Trafalgar Square was attacked by a man with a chainsaw early in the morning. Police came upon Patrick Harward-Duffy, a 36-year-old Glaswegian, at 2.30 am as he was making his protest against the unfairness of the Norwegian legal system. Harward-Duffy had sliced one-third of the way through the trunk of the 70-ft (23 m) pine, a present from the people of Oslo who since 1947 have expressed their gratitude for British liberation from the Nazis by sending a tree each year.
1990 Titleholder Gary Kasparov of the USSR won the world chess championship match against his countryman Anatoly Karpov.
1997 Death of Floyd Cramer, aged 64, Pianist.
1997 At midnight the Morse Code “S.O.S.” ceased to be the international distress call.
1999 Boris Yeltsin resigned as from his post of President of Russia.
2002 A record-breaking 125 million text messages were sent on New Year's Eve in the UK.
2003 Parcels sent from Italy's Bologna region to European Union institutions were being blocked after a spate of letter bombs.
2003 The Hogmanay concert in Edinburgh was cancelled as gales and heavy rain hit New Year parties across the UK.
2003 Actress Joan Plowright, who became a dame, headed the showbusiness personalities on the New Year Honours list.
2004 Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych resigned but refused to admit defeat in the presidential election.
2004 Comedian Eric Sykes, actress Anna Massey and rock star Roger Daltrey received New Year honours.
2004 One of the most famous American band leaders of the swing era, clarinettist Artie Shaw, died aged 94.
2004 Ellen MacArthur remained on record pace as she passed the halfway mark of her round-the-world attempt.
2005 Russian gas supplies to Ukraine were to be cut as planned, after final talks failed.
2005 Tom Jones was made a knight in the New Year Honours list, leading a host of entertainment stars.
2005 Michael Owen suffered a fractured metatarsal and was be sidelined for two months.
2006 Bulgaria and Romania marked their entry into the EU at midnight with rock concerts and dancing.
2006 Two people were killed and two Britons were injured after several bombs explode in the Thai capital Bangkok.
________________________________________
BIRTHDAYS (for 31 December 2008)
Charles Edward Stuart, 288 (born 31 December 1720)
Scottish royal known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender whose attempt to regain the Scottish throne ended in failure.
Henri Matisse, 139 (born 31 December 1869)
French painter and sculptor who initiated the vibrantly coloured style known as Fauvism.
George Marshall, 128 (born 31 December 1880)
American general and statesman who, as secretary of state, devised the Marshall Plan for post-war economic recovery in Europe.
Sir Anthony Hopkins, 71 (born 31 December 1937)
British actor who won an Oscar for The Silence of the Lambs.
Sarah Miles, 67 (born 31 December 1941)
Actress.
Alex Furguson OBE, 67 (born 31 December 1941)
Football manager.
Andy Summers, 66 (born 31 December 1942)
Member of The Police.
Ben Kingsley (Krishna Bhanji), 65 (born 31 December 1943)
British actor best-known for his performance as Gandhi in Richard Attenborough's film of the same name.
Sarah Miles, 65 (born 31 December 1943)
Actress
John Denver, 65 (born 31 December 1943)
Died 1997. Singer.
Tim Matheson, 61 (born 31 December 1947)
Actor and cartoon voice 'Animal House'.
Donna Summer, 60 (born 31 December 1948)
Singer.
Tom Hamilton, 57 (born 31 December 1951)
Member of Aerosmith.
Val Kilner, 50 (born 31 December 1958)
Actor best-known as `Batman'
Steve Bruce, 48 (born 31 December 1960)
Manchester United Great
30th December 2008
30th December 2008
(day 364, 2 remaining) (LY 365/2)
Religious events today...
Feast day of St Sabinus of Spoleto,
St Anysia,
and St Anysius.
History Test for December 30th
Today in 1905, the operetta `The Merry Widow' was performed for the first time in Vienna. Who composed it? -Franz Lehar
Actor Jack Lord celebrates a birthday today. Which character did he play in the TV series `Hawaii 5-0'? -Steve McGarett
Named from the Russian for `debauched one', which infamous confidant of the Russian Royal Family was murdered today in 1916? -Rasputin
Irish chemist Robert Boyle died today in 1691. His Boyle's Law relates to what substance? -Gas
Tracy Ullman was born today in 1959. In which comedy series did she star alongside Lenny Henry? -`Three of a Kind'
Events today...
1460 At the Battle of Wakefield, in the Wars of the Roses, the Duke of York was defeated and killed by the Lancastrians.
1691 Death of Robert Boyle, Irish physicist and chemist.
1809 In Boston, U.S. the wearing of masks at Balls was prohibited.
1879 'The Pirates of Penzance' a play by Gilbert and Sullivan was premiered in Paignton Devon.
1880 The Transvaal was declared a republic by Paul Kruger, who became its first president.
1887 A petition to Queen Victoria with over one million names of women appealing for public houses to be closed on Sundays was handed to the home secretary.
1894 Death of Amelia Bloomer, US social reformer.
1919 The first female law student was admitted to the Lincoln's Inn legal society.
1922 Soviet Russia was renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
1924 The existence of other galactic systems was announced by Edwin Hubble.
1941 Dutch physicians were forced to join the Nazi party.
1947 King Michael of Romania abdicated in favour of a Communist Republic.
1965 Ferdinand Marcos was elected as President of the Philippines.
1967 Peter Tork a member of the Monkees pop group paid $160,000 to opt out of his contract with the band, this left him broke.
1968 Death of Trygve Lie, Norwegian politician and diplomat.
1970 Paul McCartney sued John, George and Ringo to dissolve the Beatles.
1979 Emerson, Lake and Palmer disbanded.
1979 Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert went to great lengths to secure the copyright of their operatic offering The Pirates of Penzance.
1979 Richard Rogers, one of this century's best-known composers of musicals died in New York at the age of 77.
1985 Arab terrorists threw grenades and opened fire with automatic weapons on queues at El Al check-in desks in Rome and Vienna airports, killing twelve and wounding over 100.
1988 President Regan and Vice President Bush were asked to testify at the Irangate hearings by Colonel Oliver North.
1988 In Moscow, Yuri Churbanov, son-in-law of former president Brezhnev, was sentenced to 12 years in jail for corruption.
1989 Negotiations between Washington and the Vatican restarted to bring an end to the refuge of the Panamanian dictator General Manuel Noriega in the Vatican embassy in Panama City.
1996 Death of Lew Ayres, aged 88, Actor.
1999 Former Beatle, George Harrison was attacked as he slept in his Oxfordshire home. He suffered serious knife wounds as his wife Olivia smashed a lamp over his attackers head.
2003 An Italian judge ruled that former Parmalat boss Calisto Tanzi was to stay in jail as investigators probed the food giant's accounts.
2003 Michael Jackson's chief spokesman resigned over "strategic differences" with others in his entourage.
2003 Former film actress Patricia Roc, one of Britain's top 1940s box office stars, died aged 88.
2004 Ukraine's Supreme Court rejected all of PM Yanukovych's complaints about the presidential election.
2004 Complaints by the Women's Institute prompted the BBC to make changes to hit comedy show Little Britain.
2005 Two men were arrested for attempting to sell back Jennifer Lopez's wedding video for $1m (£580,000).
2005 Lawyers for two actresses from US TV drama "Lost" represented their clients in court in Hawaii on separate drink-driving charges.
2006 Saddam Hussein was excuted. The hanging was greeted with surprise, anger and silence in various parts of the Arab world. The Iraqi prime minister hailed Saddam Hussein's execution, but it also sparked protests among Sunni communities.
2006 Singer Rod Stewart and percussionist Evelyn Glennie led arts and showbiz stars in the New Year Honours list.
________________________________________
BIRTHDAYS (for 30 December 2008)
Rudyard Kipling, 143 (born 30 December 1865)
Died 1936. English novelist and poet, most of whose works were concerned with India, where he was born.
Sir Carol Reed, 102 (born 30 December 1906)
Died 1976. British film director best-known for Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, and the Oscar-winning Oliver!.
Bert Parks, 94 (born 30 December 1914)
former Miss America Pageant emcee.
Jack Lord, 88 (born 30 December 1920)
Died 1998. Actor 'Hawaii Five-0'.
Bo Diddley, 80 (born 30 December 1928)
American rhythm and blues singer who was a major influence on pop groups such as the Rolling Stones in the 1960s.
Russ Tamblyn, 74 (born 30 December 1934)
Actor dancer - 'West Side Story' 'Tom Thumb'.
Del Shannon, 69 (born 30 December 1939)
Died 1990. Singer.
James Burrows, 68 (born 30 December 1940)
TV producer - 'Cheers'.
Michael Nesmith, 66 (born 30 December 1942)
Member of The Monkees.
Davy Jones, 62 (born 30 December 1946)
Member of The Monkees.
Jeff Lynne, 61 (born 30 December 1947)
Member of Electric Light Orchestra.
Suzy Boggus, 52 (born 30 December 1956)
Country singer.
Tracy Ullman, 49 (born 30 December 1959)
British comedienne who transplanted successfully to America, where she scored a hit with the Tracy Ulman Show.
Jay Kay, 39 (born 30 December 1969)
Member of Jamiroquai.
29th December 2008
29th December 2008
(day 363, 3 remaining) (LY 364/3)
Religious events today...
Feast day of St Thomas of Canterbury,
St Ebrulf or Evroult,
St Trophimus of Arles,
and St Maroellus Akimetes.
History Test for December 29th
oday in 1845, Texas achieved statehood. What is the state's capital? -Austin
Born today in 1928, which comedy actor had a sixties hit with the song 'Hole in the Ground'? -Bernard Cribbins
Who reached the top of the UK pop charts today in 1990 with `Saviour's Day'? -Cliff Richard
Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone was born today in 1809. What was his middle name? -Ewart
How many knights murdered Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral today in 1170? -Four
QUOTE “In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the state.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Soviet novelist, 1974.
Events today...
1170 Four of King Henry II's knights murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas à Becket, in Canterbury Cathedral. The Archbishop had only recently returned from a six-year exile in France after incurring Henry's displeasure over the question of church vs crown rights in England. The tussle between the two had led to excommunication for the bishops Roger of York and Foliot of London and several royal servants hostile to Becket, and the fear that the Pope might slap an interdict on England. There was little doubt that Henry was the unwitting architect of the Archbishop's murder. It seemed that Henry's exclamation "Will no one rid me of this troublesome cleric?"- uttered in a moment of extreme duress - was interpreted by the four knights who carried out the execution as a call to action.
1689 Death of Thomas Sydenham, English physician.
1825 Death of Jacques Louis David, French painter.
1860 The world's first true ironclad warship, HMS Warrior, was launched at Blackwall on the river Thames. The 9,210-ton battleship was the first capital ship in the world to be built of iron throughout. The British Admiralty first showed interest in the idea of iron-built warships as a consequence of the calamitous showing of wooden-built vessels during the Crimean War. The decision to build such a vessel was not taken until 1859, however, when the launch of the French ironclad La Gloire threatened British naval supremacy. La Gloire (displacement 5600 tons) was built of oak but with a belt of iron extending from the upper deck to 6 ft (1.8 m) below the waterline.
1879 Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen seemed to have a knack for hitting the raw nerves of polite society. His play The Doll's House, which opened at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen on December 21, had become a major talking point. The play ended with the main character, Nora, a pampered wife, leaving the family home. She literally slamed the door on her successful lawyer/banker husband and, most controversially of all, her children. The play had been denounced by some as militant suffragist propaganda.
1885 Gottlieb Daimler patented the first bike in Germany.
1890 An attempt to disarm Miniconjou Sioux Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, ended in bloodshed. Trouble flared unexpectedly when a force of about 500 US cavalrymen, commanded by Colonel James W. Forsyth, rode into the Indian camp at Wounded Knee Creek, where the authorities had placed Big Foot and about 350 of his people. According to the Seventh Cavalry, a medicine man incited the young braves to resist disarmament. Big Foot was among more than a hundred Sioux that died in the action; 44 were wounded. About half of the Sioux casualties were women and children, lending weight to claims that the encounter was a massacre, not a battle. The violence came as a further blow to General Nelson A. Miles, who had been hoping to settle the recent Indian unrest peacefully. News of the incident prompted thousands of Indians to barricade themselves in a large camp north of Pine Ridge Agency.
1891 "Transmission of signals electrically (radio)" was patented by Edison.
1894 Death of Christina Georgina Rossetti, English poet.
1895 The Jameson Raid from Mafeking into Transvaal, which attempted to overthrow Kruger's Boer govemment, Started.
1911 Sun Yat-sen became the first president of a republican China, following the Revolution.
1926 Death of Rainer Maria Rilke, German poet.
1952 Death of James Fletcher Henderson, US jazz pianist and composer.
1955 Barbra Striesand recorded her first ever song at the age of 13.
1967 "The Trouble With Tribbles" episode of Star Trek was first transmitted.
1967 Death of Paul Whiteman, aged 76, Bandleader.
1972 Ten of the 16 survivors from a Uruguayan aircraft that crashed in the Andes mountains ten weeks earlier admitted at a press conference in Montevideo that they ate the raw flesh of their dead companions in order to stay alive. The Old Christians rugby team - pupils or old boys of the exclusive Catholic Stella Maris College in Montevideo - had chartered the aircraft for a tour of Chile. Fifteen of the 45 passengers died as a consequence of the crashlanding; eight died later in an avalanche. Starvation and cold killed another six. The survivors were rescued after two of them found their way down to an upland pasture where a farmer was checking his stock.
1980 Death of Tim Hardin, aged 39, Folk singer.
1982 The Jamaican post office issued a Bob Marley stamp.
1986 Death of Harold MacMillan, aged 92, British Prime Minister 1957-1963.
1989 Following Hong Kong's decision to forcibly repatriate some Vietnamese refugees, thousands of Vietnamese `boat people' battled with riot police.
1993 Courtney Love sued doctors for revealing details of her medical treatment for drug abuse.
1997 Chickens were killed in Hong Kong in order to prevent the spreading of bird flu.
1997 An airliner travelling from Tokyo to Honalulu hit an airpocket shortly after take off and plummetted 1000ft. Hostess trolleys were thrown around and a 32-year-old woman was killed and many injured, as those not wearing their seat belts hit the ceiling.
2003 Ayatollah Khamenei vowed to rebuild the Iranian town of Bam after the quake which destroyed the historic city, killing at least 25,000.
2003 The US Government said foreign airlines would be required to place armed guards on certain flights to the US.
2003 Police investigating the killing of a police officer in Leeds intensified the search for a nightclub doorman.
2003 The British airline pilots' union demanded talks with ministers on plans to put undercover armed marshals on flights.
2003 Tributes were paid to comedian and television host Bob Monkhouse, who died of cancer aged 75.
2004 Romanian doctors said a 67-year-old woman, pregnant with twin girls, was set to be the oldest recorded mother.
2004 Law and Order and Dirty Dancing actor Jerry Orbach died of prostate cancer at the age of 69.
2005 Iraq's largest oil refinery was shut down at a cost of $20m a day after death threats to tanker drivers.
2005 Film fans named Tom Cruise the biggest movie star of all time but also the most irritating, in a new poll.
2005 Sir Elton John and David Furnish's civil partnership certificate was released to the public.
2005 Football officials came under pressure to review the festive programme after clubs and fans complained about late postponements.
2006 The US told its embassies around the world to prepare for the imminent execution of Saddam Hussein.
2006 Two crew of an American nuclear submarine died after falling overboard in Plymouth Sound.
2006 Thousands of fans paid their last respects to James Brown as his body lay in state at Harlem's Apollo theatre.
2006 Former boxing champion Mike Tyson was charged with possessing cocaine and driving under the influence.
________________________________________
BIRTHDAYS (for 29 December 2008)
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, 287 (born 29 December 1721)
Marquise de Pompadour, French mistress if King Louis XV and as such the holder of political influence and notable patron of artists and scholars
Charles Goodyear, 208 (born 29 December 1800)
Died 1860. Inventor Goodyear Co and Blimp founder.
Andrew Johnson, 200 (born 29 December 1808)
Died 1875. 17th US President.
William Ewart Gladstone, 199 (born 29 December 1809)
Died 1898. English statesman and liberal prime minister who dominated British politics in the latter part of the 19th century
Pablo Casals, 132 (born 29 December 1876)
Died 1973. Spanish cellist of great stature who refused to live or play in Spain while Franco ruled the country
Bernard Cribbins, 80 (born 29 December 1928)
Actor.
Mary Tyler Moore, 71 (born 29 December 1937)
American actress who co-starred in The Dick Van Dyke Show and went on to have her own television series and appear in films such as Ordinary People
John Voight, 70 (born 29 December 1938)
American actor who first found fame in 'Midnight Cowboy' and went on to win an Oscar for 'Coming Home'
Harvey Smith, 70 (born 29 December 1938)
Show jumper.
Ray Thomas, 66 (born 29 December 1942)
Member of The Moody Blues.
Marianne Faithfull, 62 (born 29 December 1946)
Singer - Mick Jagger's ex-wife.
Ted Danson, 61 (born 29 December 1947)
Actor - 'Cheers' 'Three Men and a Baby'.
Cozy Powell, 61 (born 29 December 1947)
Died 1998. Drummer.
Robert Parissi, 58 (born 29 December 1950)
Lead of Wild Cherry 'Play That Funky Music'.
Yvonne Elliman, 57 (born 29 December 1951)
Singer 'If I Can't Have You'.
Martin Offiah, 42 (born 29 December 1966)
Rugby Ace
Jennifer Ehle, 39 (born 29 December 1969)
Actress
Faces of the year - the women
It really is a Countdown conundrum
Rachel Riley: The Oxford graduate has struggled with some of the puzzles on Countdown, but Channel Four insiders blame nerves
With a masters degree in mathematics from Oxford, she has all the credentials to step into Carol Vorderman's shoes on Countdown.
But it seems that the pressure of solving number puzzles at high speed is proving something of a headache for Rachel Riley.
The 22-year-old has failed on several of the tasks given to her during the recording of a series to be broadcast next month.
Miss Riley beat more than 1,000 applicants to land the Channel 4 job after Miss Vorderman was forced out amid savage budget cutting.
She is being paid £100,000 a year compared with Miss Vorderman's £800,000.
A source at Channel 4 said: 'Rachel missed the occasional problem, but it was nerves.
'Let's get this in perspective, the girl has graduated from Oxford with a masters degree in mathematics. It's not going to be a question of ability.
'She is working on a hugely popular show, doing number tasks in front of the camera and audience – there is a lot of pressure. I think the occasional hiccup is expected.' Miss Vorderman, who has an IQ of 167, had an amazing record during her 26-year tenure on Countdown.
But the 48-year-old was also occasionally left stumped by the more difficult challenges.
Last year she was upstaged by Bradley Cates, 11, who showed her step by step how to solve a puzzle that had defeated her.
Breeding 'success' for crayfish
A breeding programme aimed at reversing declines of the white-clawed crayfish has produced 300 young this year in the Yorkshire Dales.
Natural England, the government's conservation body, said the success of the breeding scheme offered a ray of hope to the rare native crustacean.
The white-clawed crayfish is one of England's most threatened species.
Natural England and the Environment Agency are seeking funding to expand the programme, which began in 2003.
The white-clawed crayfish was once common in upland rivers and streams but is being driven out by its invasive cousin, the American signal crayfish.
The more aggressive American species, which was brought to the country to be farmed, also carries a "plague" which is fatal to the native crayfish.
'Extremely encouraging'
The project began in 2003 by ring-fencing native crayfish to protect them from the plague and predation by the American species to an active breeding programme, and developing techniques for captive breeding and rearing of the white-clawed species.
Natural England said a stock assessment recently showed that more than 60% of hatchlings survived in the captive breeding programme.
It wants to expand the programme to produce at least 500 white-clawed crayfish a year, which would be released once they reached sexual maturity.
Dr Helen Phillips, chief executive of Natural England, said: "The news that white-clawed crayfish are breeding in increasing numbers in the Yorkshire Dales is extremely encouraging and shows that targeted conservation work can make a real impact.
"The species has been all but wiped out following the introduction of its American cousin, but the success of this project gives grounds for hoping that extinction is by no means inevitable."X Factor's Alexandra stays on top
X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah has notched up a second week at number one.
The 20-year-old Londoner is joined at the top of the chart by 2006 X Factor winner Leona Lewis, whose version of Snow Patrol's Run is at number two.
Jeff Buckley's version of Hallelujah has fallen five places to number seven.
The top five albums remain the same, with reformed boy band Take That's The Circus still on top in the final sales countdown of the year.
Leona Lewis's Spirit and Kings of Leon's Only By The Night are at numbers two and three.
Back in the singles chart, Beyonce's If I Were A Boy is at number three, with Broken Strings, by James Morrison and Nelly Furtado, rising to number four.
Kings of Leon's Use Somebody goes back up the chart two places to number five.28.12.08
Four Tops to get lifetime Grammy
Motown legends The Four Tops are to receive a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement, organisers have said.
The group, best known for hits such as I Can't Help Myself and Reach Out I'll Be There will be given the honour along with late Rat Pack star Dean Martin.
Gene Autry, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Hank Jones, Tom Paxton and Brenda Lee will also receive career awards.
The prizes will be given at a ceremony in Los Angeles on 7 February, one day before the 51st annual Grammy Awards.
'Outstanding accomplishments'
Neil Portnow, President of The Recording Academy - which runs the Grammys - called the recipients a "prestigious group of legendary performers, creative architects and technical visionaries".
He added: "Their outstanding accomplishments, legendary passion and artistry have positively affected our culture and will continue to influence and inspire generations to come."
 Dean Martin died on Christmas Day in 1995 |
Previous honourees include Burt Bacharach, Doris Day and Bob Dylan's former backing group, The Band.
Meanwhile, jazz record producer George Avakian, composer Elliott Carter, and producer and songwriter Allen Toussaint have been selected to receive the Trustees Award.
The award recognises contributions made by people who work in production.
Clarence "Leo" Fender, inventor of the Fender guitar, and Universal Audio will receive the technical Grammy award.
Nominations for the main awards ceremony have already been announced. US rapper Lil' Wayne leads the pack with eight nods, including album of the year for Tha Carter III.
British rock band Coldplay were hot on his tail with seven nominations.Festive goat up in flames again
A giant straw goat erected each Christmas in a northern Swedish town has been burned down - yet again.
The 13m-high (43ft) animal in Gavle has been torched 23 times since it was first erected in 1966. It has also been hit by a car and had its legs cut off.
The vandals are rarely caught, though in 2001 a 51-year-old American tourist spent 18 days in jail after being convicted of setting it alight.
In 2007, the goat managed to make it through the festive season unscathed.
Goat committee spokeswoman Anna Ostman said this year's unlucky creature was set on fire early on Saturday morning.
The 7m-long (23ft), three tonne goat was originally designed to attract tourists to Gavle, which is 106 miles (170km) north of the Swedish capital.
| GOAT HIGHLIGHTS 1966: The first goat is burned down - beginning the tradition 1970: It is set on fire six hours after being erected 1971: Tired of arson, the project is abandoned. Schoolchildren build a miniature. It is smashed to pieces. 1976: A car crashes into the goat 1979: The goat is burned down before it is finished 1987: The goat is treated with fireproofing - but still goes up in smoke |
But in its first year it was burned down on New Year's Eve and since then has been attacked regularly.
In 2005, it was torched by two arsonists dressed as Father Christmas and the Gingerbread Man.
Authorities in Gavle have tried to protect the goat using fireproofing chemicals, security guards and a web camera.
But just 10 of the goats, which are built in the town's central square, have survived beyond Christmas since 1966.
Goats have a special place in Swedish tradition. According to folklore, they delivered festive gifts before Father Christmas took over.Maybe the Tourism Office need to have a meeting! - Ed
27.12.08
Dear All, Round Robin Letters
Hayrick Cottage
Oil Sump Lane
Lower Phlegmington
Cambs.
DECEMBER
Amazingly, Christmas is once more almost upon us, and, as I remarked to Colin whilst he was worming Bodger, we really must make a window in our busy, busy lives to bring all our wonderful, but neglected friends up to date with our doings!
January saw the year start with some good news for a change - Colin's long-awaited promotion at Prestwick's from under-assistant executive central heating operative to assistant executive central heating operative - and all within four years of joining!! His boss, Mr Cordwaining was extremely complimentary, and predicts another rise up the corporate ladder within five to seven years. It's not everyone who can achieve so much in such a short space of time, but Colin has always been ambitious.
Gordon from next door stood us a slap up meal at the Hollywood Diner at Witherington Parva in honour of St Valentine's Day in February. He and Yvette really are super friends. His excessive love of leather, her facial piercings and perhaps an over-attachment to french kissing notwithstanding, we are both looking forward no end to making the acquaintance of lots of new chums at their forthcoming Leather Liggers ball. As Colin remarked whilst he was unstopping the sink on Tuesday, it's about time we had some new blood in the area.
March came and went without too much gadding about to worry us - the twins were once again on form at the Pancake Tossers' shingdig, very kindly held in the Rectory. The Rev Vivian Knobbs-Varley has made a big impression on the community since his arrival, and although his disciplinary methods may be unorthodox, the choir has never been so well behaved, nor in such fine voice, and a light tap now and again on the cassock can hardly be considered corporal punishment.
In April, Hilary was engaged once again as an adjudicator at the Grand Easter Bonnet Parade, which wends its way through the town and on to Honstanton-in-the-Wold. Mother, of course, was present and her much-admired comedy breasts enjoyed yet another outing. How we laughed!
At Prestwick's annual beano to Snotterton in May, Colin drew gasps of amazement and, dare we say it, envy, when he produced his hand-knitted beach ensemble. It's unravelling in the sea was totally unexpected, and the police should never have been involved. Our thanks to Stella Shuddock for her speedy arrival with the sewing box.
Page 2.
June saw the County Fayre with a return of the much-loved pig-fanciers' Royal Cup. No surprises at all when Wallie Pratt received the coveted trophy for Porker of the Year, and no doubt Janet will soon be giving it the first of many a rub-down over the coming 12 months.
July, and the end of the school year brought fair to middling results from the twins. Personally, I thought their form mistress, Miss Vole, still held a grudge, and as I told her at the parents' evening, if the twins can forget about the inflatable doll episode, I'd have thought she could too. Happily, neither was expecting to need formal qualifications for their chosen careers - Weston applied like mad to every secretarial college in the area and we all felt that Elvis would walk into the Army - so we weren't over-bothered about exam results.
August saw the family depart for our annual holiday abroad at Pontins, Llandudno. The twins once again surpassed previous years' efforts and entered the fancy dress parade on the final evening as Norman and Mrs Bates from Psycho. Gasps of admiration followed their entrance into the main hall, but sadly, they were pipped at the post in the main category by Eric and Beverley Lubbock's rather showy effort of an Eastenders tableau, but picked up a prize for weirdness in the Novelty section.
September arrived and with it the Harvest Festival, where we seemed to have surprisingly more than the usual amount of recipients for a Parish Hamper. I never thought I'd see the day when Major Tersington-Sozzelle needed a free can of custard, but there you go - what with the abolition of the Lords and the end to fox-hunting, it just goes to show, "you never can tell". The poor Major hasn't been the same since his wife left him for another woman, and as I said to Colin, if a dessert sauce can put a smile back on the Major's face, who are we to judge?
October was a month of even more surprises. You could have knocked me down with a feather when Elvis got a rejection from HM Forces. He was devastated by the nit-picking attitude of the Board of Assessors, who apparently took exception to his, perhaps, rather right-wing views. You'd have thought they'd have been grateful! Luckily, they were hiring at Fjooke's herring factory in Skeet, so Elvis (that boy does lead a charmed life!) has once again fallen on his feet. He does, however, have rather a ferocious appearance at present. Having rather hastily anticipated a place at boot-camp, he got his mates to shave his head, and needless to say, they took him a tad too literally. Never mind, it'll soon grow back, and the skin is healing over nicely now.
Meanwhile in November Weston landed a position with the Reverend Knobbs-Varley at the Rectory as his "aide de camp". Not only does he get all his meals, but such is his worth to the Rev, that he's been asked "over" on occasion to help out at the increasing number of dinner parties being held. Gordon and Yvette have been to one and they said it was "exceptional".
Page 3.
So friends, we're sure you can understand why Hilary and Colin have been unable to write to you since Colin's enforced holiday in October 1997 (charges were finally dropped). So many friends, such busy and productive lives - it's a wonder we can fit in writing the Christmas cards!! We hope you all keep in good health, and to save postage, the twins have drawn stamps of their own design on the envelopes - enjoy!
Ahoy Hoy!
Colin and Hilary Smout
plus twins, Weston and Elvis, now 18 - watch out girls!
*** STOP PRESS***
Colin has just informed me that he is becoming increasingly interested in cross-dressing. No doubt this startling piece of information will impact greatly - and hopefully, beneficially! - on our social lives. More anon...
The fanatic who has pocketed £50,000 after appearing 20 times on TV quizzes
Winter winner: Leon Wilczynski on Deal Or No Deal, where he won £29,000
His career winnings include a television, an encyclopedia and - less helpfully - garden furniture for his fifth floor flat.
But after more than 20 years of appearing on some of the nation's best-known TV quiz shows, Leon Wilczynski has finally managed to land a much bigger prize.
The father of three scooped £29,000 on Noel Edmonds' Channel 4 show Deal Or No Deal - taking his total winnings over the years to some £50,000.
Mr Wilczynski's love affair with game shows began in 1986. Since then he has met Anne Robinson on The Weakest Link, spun the Wheel of Fortune and can recite most, if not all, of the catchphrases that have made the shows famous.
In total he has appeared on some 20 shows, including 15 To One, Brainteaser, Crosswits, Runway, Wipeout and The Price Is Right.
And now he wants to appear on Countdown to compete for the ultimate teatime prize - a leather-bound copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.
He said yesterday: 'I want to keep appearing on as many shows as possible in the future - it's great fun, so why not? I might win something.'
Mr Wilczynski, 52, who sells fridges for a living, added: 'The great thing is you go on these shows not knowing whether you will walk away with nothing, a fiver or £50,000.
'I remember going on Fifteen To One with William G Stewart. The questions were very difficult but I was down to the last three or four and doing well.
'But he turned to me and said that the next question would be about the Bible. That was it - the Bible is the one thing I know nothing about and my heart just sank.'
During his career on quiz shows, Mr Wilczynski has won scores of holidays and more than £50,000.
His run began in 1986 when he won £3,000 on Bob's Full House, hosted by Bob Monkhouse. Three years later he scooped a TV set on Runway which was hosted by a young Richard Madeley.
Mr Wilczynski appeared on Bob's Full House in 1986
He then appeared on Crosswits with Barry Cryer, leaving empty-handed, but won a computer version of an encyclopedia on Gridlock in 1990.
From 1992 to 1994 he was a contestant on 100 Per Cent Gold, Flash In The Pan and One False Move.
In 1995 he grabbed £750 on One To Win, he featured on Biggest Game In Town in 1998, and met Bob Monkhouse for a second time a year later when he appeared on Wipeout. Then, in 2000, Mr Wilczynski won £500 on Brainteaser and in 2001 £5,000 on Double Cross.
In 2002 he won a selection of garden furniture on Wheel Of Fortune - but as he lived in a fifth-floor flat at the time, he sold it.
On Runway with Richard Madeley in 1990
Over the next three years he competed on Pass The Buck, Jeopardy and Fifteen To One. In 2005 he played The Price Is Right. Next year his appearance on ITV quiz Golden Balls will be screened.
'I've always enjoyed quizzes and I like to participate in things,' he said. 'I was sat there in 1986 answering Bob Monkhouse's questions and my ex-wife was getting fed up.
'She basically said, "If you're so good why don't you go on it?" A number flashed up at the end so I rang them, and to my astonishment I got on after an audition. I've won several luxury holidays and quite a lot of money.
'It might sound corny but I don't go on for the money. Basically, normal life can be a bit dull and boring. This breaks up the routine and I have always liked to get involved.'
His latest win - and his largest to date - paid for a holiday to Turkey for him and his wife, Casey, 52.
With Paul Coia in 1995 on Catchword
Erratic weather 'harms wildlife'
UK wildlife is struggling to cope as erratic and unseasonal weather has taken its toll for a second consecutive year, the National Trust says.
It says birds, mammals and particularly insects have all suffered from a cold, late spring, a wet summer with little sunshine and a long, dry autumn.
The trust says species under threat include puffins, marsh fritillary butterflies and lesser horseshoe bats.
They warned another wet summer in 2009 could be a disaster for insects.
Studies of the past year by the trust's conservation experts show the impact of the weather and how some wildlife has become out-of-step with the usual seasonal patterns:
• Snowdrops and red admiral butterflies were first spotted in January, earlier than normal.
• Bees were hit hard in April by frost and snow
• Rain in late May caused many birds' nests to fail, including those of the blue and great tits, because of the lack of insect food
• It was a poor summer for migrant insects - butterflies, moths, hoverflies, ladybirds and dragonflies - because of the wet and cold June
• In July, puffin numbers on the Farne Islands were down 35% on what they had been five years earlier
• The common autumn cranefly, usually in pest proportions in September, was all but absent
Matthew Oates, a conservation adviser for the National Trust, said: "Many iconic species closely associated with the four seasons are having to cope with higher incidents of poor weather as our climate becomes more unpredictable.
"After two very poor years in a row we desperately need a good summer in 2009 otherwise it's going to look increasingly grim for a wealth of wildlife in the UK.
"Climate change is not some future prediction of what might happen, it's happening now and having a serious impact on our countryside every year."
This year's weather has brought some advantages however.
The cold and wet October made it a bumper year for fungi, with 26 species of waxcap spotted.
Unseasonal weather also led to a spectacular display of red, yellow and orange autumn leaves.
Poor weather in August had its benefits for certain cabbage white butterflies which prospered as their predators were depleted, the trust said.
26.12.08
How an old phone can make money
It is unlikely that the global recession has completely dampened people's enthusiasm for new gadgets this Christmas.
But for cash-strapped consumers with a shiny new mobile in their hands, there is a way of making money from their old, unwanted handsets.
According to mobile phone trade-in website FoneBank, only 20% of UK consumers are recycling their mobiles but those that do can recycle their old mobiles for cash.
A survey it conducted to find out what people did with their mobile found that 28% put them away in a drawer while 23% simply threw them away.
"It's crazy that a lot of people out there are still just chucking their phones in the bin when they no longer have any use for them," said Mark Harrison, director of Fonebank.
 In November Fonebank recycled 10,000 mobiles |
The need to recycle electronic devices such as phones, PDAs and digital music players is more than just a financial one as many contain materials that can be harmful to the environment.
The main problem lies with the batteries used to power the phones, some of which contain toxic substances such as cadmium, which can contaminate the water table.
Mobile phones now come under the WEEE directive, a piece of European legislation which aims to reduce the amount of electronic waste that ends up in landfill sites.
It requires member nations to collect and recycle the equivalent of 4kg of e-waste for every person living in the country.
Manufacturers, importers and retailers of electronic equipment are obliged to put systems in place that allow customers to recycle their obsolete devices free of charge although households are under no obligation.
Fonebank recycled around 10,000 phones in November, the majority of which are earmarked for Africa, Pakistan, India and South East Asia.
"It is a lot more difficult to buy a brand new phone in Africa and they are prohibitively expensive, so a good, second-hand phone is very attractive," said Ollie Tagg, director of Fonebank.
Right thing
During November Fonebank sent out £200,000 worth of cheques, with an average per person of £50, although an iPhone can raise much more.
"One of the most popular ones traded in during October was Nokia's N95 which can raise £102 for the owner," said Mr Tagg.
"People recycling their phones make a bit of money and feel they are doing the right thing. The whole process takes three minutes online and then they just have to stick their phone in a jiffy bag," he added.
This year Fonebank has teamed up with Oxfam to donate a minimum of 10% of the value of the phone to aid the charity's work in the developing world.
Other charities, including Age Concern and the British Red Cross, are also offering people the chance to donate phones.
During December some six million handsets will have been exchanged.
And for those who really can't be bothered to post off their old handset there are other ways of recycling them.
"I have spent literally hundreds over the years on toys for my kids but the thing they've liked the most are old mobiles, particularly ones that flip and flash," one respondent to the FoneBank survey revealed.US singer Eartha Kitt dies at 81
Eartha Kitt singing Santa Baby
American singer, dancer and actress Eartha Kitt has died at the age 81, her friend and publicist has said.
Kitt died of colon cancer on Thursday, Andrew Freedman said.
She was one of the few artists to be nominated in the Tony, Grammy and Emmy award categories and was a stalwart of the Manhattan cabaret scene.
She famously played Catwoman in the Batman television series in the 1960s and was known for her distinctive, feline drawl.
She also had a number of hit songs, including Old Fashioned Girl, C'est Si Bon and Santa Baby.
Kitt was blacklisted in the US in the late 1960s after speaking out against the Vietnam War at a White House function.
Eartha Kitt's publicist Andrew Freedman paid tribute to a ''great performer''
She also caused controversy when she toured apartheid South Africa in 1974, arguing that she had helped wean the regime by raising awareness of racism.
However, she returned triumphantly to New York's Broadway in a 1978 production, Timbuktu!, and continued to perform regularly in theatre shows and concert halls.
From the 1980s onwards she appeared in numerous films, and her 1984 hit Where Is My Man found her another generation of night club fans.
Big break
Kitt rose to the top of the entertainment world from humble origins.
Her mother worked on a cotton plantation in South Carolina and was just 14 when she gave birth.
Kitt was then given away at the age of eight and sent to live with an aunt in New York.
Her break came at 16 when she got a job as a dancer with a professional troupe touring Europe. She later sang in Paris nightclubs and appeared in several films in the 1950s.
Kitt, who had one daughter from a brief marriage in the 1960s, lived in the US state of Connecticut.
23.12.08
52 weeks 52 questions
52 weeks, pt I First in our best-of compilation of 2008's quizzes
52 weeks, pt II The second brain buster quiz on events of 2008
52 weeks, pt III Ah the summer months... but what do you remember?
52 weeks, pt IV Palin, Woolies, VAT - the grand finale of our quiz of 2008
Funding secured for toy archive
An east London museum has been given a Lottery grant of almost £250,000 to archive rare catalogues and papers from four companies which made classic toys.
The manufacturers of Corgi cars, Spacehoppers, Sindy dolls and Action Man figures donated the material when they closed in the 1970s and 1980s.
But the V&A Museum of Childhood, in Bethnal Green, has been unable to do anything with the collection until now.
An archivist will oversee a three-year project so the items can go on display.
The material comes from Abbatt Toys, which made interactive early-learning toys; Lines Brothers, known for its dolls and cars; Mettoy, manufacturer of Corgi cars and Spacehoppers; and Palitoy, which made Action Man and Star Wars figures.
It includes original toys, company files and documents, and catalogues listing products made from the 1920s to 1980s.
 The Mettoy toy firm made Corgi cars, such as James Bond's Aston Martin |
Catherine Howell, the museum's collections officer, said it was "a real gift" to be able to "preserve the historical records of some of the most famous children's toys of the past".
The collection will also be digitised and made available as an online resource, so people can look through it while conducting research.
The money, which totals £244,500, is not the first such Lottery award for the Museum of Childhood.
A £3.5 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund paid for most of the attraction's £4.7 million refurbishment programme in 2005.Christmas dinner 'loaded with salt'
When you sit down to your turkey and Christmas pudding this week, how much thought will you give to whether it's good for you or not?
We all know that the average Christmas dinner is not the most healthy of meals - but new research has revealed it contains more than 11 grammes of salt, almost double the recommended maximum for an entire day.
The group Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH), analysed an average Christmas dinner for the BBC and found high levels of salt in all three courses.
Too much salt can cause high blood pressure, which is linked to increased risk of stroke and heart disease.
Guinea pigs
We sat down with east London's Murison-Goodwin family for an early Christmas lunch, to see which parts of the festive spread present the biggest risk.
| People are eating all this salt unwittingly and putting up their blood pressure Professor Graham Macgregor CASH |
Billy, eight, James, six, and Tess, three, tucked in with enthusiasm.
But within a few minutes, they had already eaten nearly two grammes of salt each.
We followed the snacks with smoked salmon on brown bread.
That was popular all round, but it turns out there is a price to pay for the tastiness of the salmon - even a small portion has more than three grammes of salt in it.
The turkey itself was not too bad when it comes to salt content, but once we had added supermarket-bought bread sauce, gravy, pre-made stuffing, and two or three chipolatas wrapped in bacon, the total for the meal was already more than 10 grammes.
The Christmas pudding and brandy butter was fairly low on salt, but the Stilton and biscuits to follow brought the grand salt total to nearly 12 grammes of salt each.
That is nearly a tablespoonful in a single meal, enough to cause serious health problems if it is consumed on a regular basis.
Serious message
Of course, most of us don't eat that kind of spread more than once in a while, and CASH acknowledge that the salt content of a Christmas dinner will not do any harm if you only eat it now and then.
| I'm sure we can get away with it once a year Janet Goodwin |
Professor Graham Macgregor, CASH chairman, said: "We don't want to get too worried about this - but our survey showed that, surprisingly, there's a lot of hidden salt in a Christmas lunch.
"The reason we are concerned about this is that people are eating all this salt unwittingly and putting up their blood pressure."
When we showed the Murison-Goodwins how much salt they had just eaten, eight-year-old Billy pulled a face.
"Yuk!" he said. "I can't taste any salt."
"I think it's amazing, because you can't really see the salt," said his six-year-old brother, James.
Their dad, Rob Murison, said he was surprised the total was so high.
He said: "We try not to put too much salt in our food, so when you see that amount, it is quite shocking."
But Janet Goodwin accused the researchers of being spoilsports.
"We don't have this sort of food every day," she said.
"I'm sure we can get away with it once a year."
The researchers themselves said they weren't trying to put people off their Christmas dinners.
But it does serve as a reminder that there are high levels of hidden salt in a lot of the food we eat on a regular basis.Windows XP allowed to live again
Microsoft has given yet another reprieve to its seasoned Windows XP operating system.
The cut off date for PC makers to obtain licenses for the software was 31 January 2009.
But now Microsoft has put in place a scheme that will allow the hardware firms to get hold of XP licences until 30 May 2009.
Previously Microsoft extended XP's life until 2010 - provided it was installed on netbooks and low-cost laptops.
Windows XP was originally due to disappear off shop shelves on 30 January 2008. It was to be removed so as to make way for Windows Vista which went on sale to consumers early in 2007.
Despite Microsoft's claims that Vista has sold well, consumers have reacted badly to its release.
Microsoft granted the reprieve largely because of customer's preference for XP.
Many PC makers also got around the restrictions by exploiting a clause in Microsoft's licensing terms that allowed them to offer a "downgrade" licence. Issued with a new PC running Vista it allowed customers to replace it with XP.
The latest reprieve affects PC makers and resellers who were working to a 31 January 2009 deadline to order licences for XP.
Many feared they would have to stockpile licences before the cut-off and hope they could sell them in the coming months.
Now, Microsoft has changed the terms allowing the resellers to order before 31 January but take delivery at any time up to 30 May.
The change in policy is another indication of the general resistance to Windows Vista.
Early versions of Windows 7, the replacement for Vista, are due to appear in late 2009.22.12.08
Pop Challenge
1 Who were the first Dutch group to top the British charts?
2 Philip Blondheim had a 60s No.1 under what name?
3 Which female spent 13 weeks on the chart before making No.1 in February 1995?
4 Who was the uncredited vocalist of Adamski's "Killer"?
5 Who had a 50s No.1 with "The Day The Rains Came"?
6 What was the final No.1 of the hippy decade the 60s?
7 Which record ended Bryan Adams's 16-week record run at No.1?
8 Who produced all the T. Rex No. 1s?
9 Where in England was the Music Factory Studios that mixed the Jive Bunny discs?
10In which month did "Here Comes Summer" top the charts in 1959?
11 Who had a No.1 with "Shaddap Your Face"? .
12 Who was on the other side of Hale and Pace and the Stonkers' No.1?
13 Which song was coupled with Elvis's "Little Sister"?
14 Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite" made No.1 in 1986, but in what year did it first chart?
15 How many instrumentals topped the charts in the 80s?
16 What was Petula Clark's first No. 1?
17 Under what name did Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes make No.1?
18 Who wrote Lena Martell's chart-topper "One Day At A Time"?
19 What was the fourth and last No.1 for the Everly Brothers?
20 Who wrote "Everything I Own"? '
21 Who was the first artist at No.1 to wear an eye patch? )
22 Who were the last all-girl group to reach No.1 before Eternal in 1989?
23 Which was the first No.1 for Adam Ant as opposed to Adam and the Ants?
24 Which island is lamented in "La Isla Bonita"?
25 Which No.1 begins, "Starry, starry night"?
26 Under what name did Mary Sandeman reach No.1?
27 Who produced No. 1s for Guy Mitchell, Frankie Lane and Johnnie Ray?
28 What was Mud's last No. 1? '
29 Who had a 50s No.1 with "As I Love You"? .,
30 What was the first Stock, Aitken and Waterman-produced No.1?
Pop: No. 1s )
I Pussycat.
2 Scott McKenzie.
3 Celine Dion.
4 Seal.
5 Jane Morgan.
6 "Two Little Boys" (Rolf.Harris).
7 "The Fly" (U2).
8 Tony Visconti.
9 Rotherham.
10 October.
11 Joe Dolce Music Theatre.
12 Victoria Wood.
13 "His Latest Flame".
14 1957.
15 None.
16 "Sailor".
17 The BuggIes.
18 Kriss Kristofferson:
19 "Temptation".
20 David Gates.
21 Johnny Kidd.
22 St Winifred's School Choir.
23 "Goody Two Shoes".
24 San P-edro.
25 "Vincent".
26 Aneka.
27 Mitch Miller.
28 "Oh Boy".
29 Shirley Bassey.
Unknown 'da Vinci drawings' found
Enlarge ImagePreviously unknown sketches have been discovered on the back of a Leonardo da Vinci painting in Paris that experts think may have been drawn by him.
The sketches, which were discovered by accident, feature a horse head, part of a skull and baby Jesus with a lamb.
The Louvre Museum discovered them on the back of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, which was painted on wood.
The sketches were discovered when the painting was taken down and the curator noticed two drawings on the back.
"This is an exceptional discovery because drawings on the back of paintings are very rare and no example by Leonardo was previously known," the Louvre said.
"The style of the drawings recalls the style of Leonardo, but research is ongoing to clarify their authorship."
Photographs taken with an infrared cameras discovered there were actually three drawings.
The museum said some staff members were at first unable to believe the marks were drawings, and thought they must be stains.
The stories of the Christmas hits
| By Liam Allen Entertainment reporter, BBC News |
A select few songs, played on heavy rotation every year, have come to be considered Christmas classics.
The writers and co-writers of three of the biggest festive favourites tell the stories of their songs.
How did the song come about?
I decided to start writing a Christmas song.
Marcia, my wife, said it was a load of rubbish, lyrically and narratively speaking, so she suggested a storyline about a couple who are down on their luck.
| FINER POINTS  Christmas number two for The Pogues in 1987 It was co-written with the band's frontman, Shane MacGowan The hit version, featuring Kirsty MacColl and produced by Steve Lillywhite, was recorded two years later Multi-instrumentalist Finer, 53, of London, last performed song "the night before last" with The Pogues Favourite other festive song is Captain Beefheart's There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evenin' Stage |
The guy went out with what little money they had to buy a Christmas tree and presents but, on the way, he decided to go into the bookies and it all went horribly wrong - he came back and they had a row.
The row was quite a crucial part of it. But then there was a redemptive quality - love took over from the more material aspects of Christmas.
Shane [MacGowan] had been working on the same idea as well, a Christmas duet. He had written the first section and we kept the melody from my first song - the one with the really bad story - and basically the storyline from the second one, which Shane transposed to New York and rewrote in his own inimitable style.
Do you get bored of it?
I never got bored of performing it. There's always a lot of excitement. There's excitement when another singer arrives on stage - for the last few years it's been one of our daughters, Ella. Then when people realise it's Fairytale of New York, the piano starts out, then they get more excited.
The audience always respond in increments of excitement.
It must be disappointing that the song didn't reach number one.
| I wrote a Christmas song called Is It Christmas Time on Venus? I don't think it's going to knock Fairytale off its pedestal |
It doesn't surprise me that the Pet Shop Boys with a not-very-interesting remake of an Elvis Presley song [Always On My Mind] got the Christmas number one. I suppose it might be nice to be number one but, as far as I'm concerned, it's had a longer life than that particular song.
Have you written any other Christmas songs?
I worked in an astrophysics department for a couple of years as an artist-in-residence, and I formed a band there. I wrote a Christmas song there called Is It Christmas Time on Venus? I don't think it's going to knock Fairytale off its pedestal.
Has the song provided you with your pension?
I don't know because I'm not of pensionable age. I'll let you know when I've got my bus pass.
How did the song come about?
I actually had some ideas for the song about two years before we recorded it and I'd written bits for it and kept it in a folder until I was in the mood to write the whole thing.
We recorded it in the August and, to try and get the atmosphere going, I went into the recording studio early on with the road crew and we put on some big fans and blue lights and left them on for an hour.
| WIZZARD FACTS  Wood's song, performed by his band, Wizzard, reached number four in 1972 Wood, aged "older than you", lives in Derbyshire, and performs with The Roy Wood Rock 'n' Roll Band He last played the song "two nights ago" Wood has a gold disc for the record - from "the days when you really had to sell a lot of records" Favourite other festive song is All I Want for Christmas Is You, by Mariah Carey |
So we got the band to record the song in overcoats and scarves and we put a Christmas tree up and lights and all that sort of stuff.
Do you get bored of it?
A lot of songs that were hits for me years ago, I do get bored of, to be honest, because I've been singing them for donkey's years. The Christmas one's different.
I listen to a lot of the stuff I've recorded in the past when it comes on the radio and you think, with modern technology you could have recorded it a lot better than that.
But the Christmas one is different because it's just got a certain atmosphere about it and you think, well yeah, it was all right.
It must be disappointing that the song didn't reach number one.
I think the main reason that Slade hit the Christmas number one slot that year [with Merry Xmas Everybody] was that their record company released it three weeks before ours and they had more time to get the sales.
Have you written any other Christmas songs?
In 1980, I wrote a New Year song called Sing Out The Old, Bring In The New. Unfortunately, the radio stations were just playing I Wish It Could Be Christmas and they wouldn't play the new one. I was competing against myself.
Has the song provided you with your pension?
I'd rather rely on that than the modern day pension.
You don't get it at Christmas, though. You have to wait until they work it all out so I'm usually broke at Christmas!
How did the song come about?
It was written in 1976 for a musical of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Match Girl, which I directed.
The song was written as almost the opposite to its meaning now. We wanted a satirical Christmas carol when the little match girl is being kicked away into the snow by the unfeeling middle classes in a Dickensian setting.
| MISTLETOE MAGIC  It was Christmas number one for Cliff Richard in 1988. It sold 750,000 copies It was co-written with Leslie Stewart and Keith Strachan Cliff's 99th single, it was the best-selling single of the year Screenwriter and playwright Paul, 69, admits the song has been mocked by "sophisticated musos" as "old codswallop" Favourite other festive song is Santa Baby, by Eartha Kitt |
The turning point of it was when Twiggy sang it on a TV production of the show in 1987. By this time it had got itself into being used in a different way in the show - she sings it as a sort of pub song - she's playing the local whore. She sings it lustily and all the people in the pub sing it along with her.
The director of the television show, Michael Custance, moved house. This is the freaky thing about it - his new next door neighbour had been a roadie with Sir Cliff [Richard].
They got talking, virtually over the garden fence, and Michael played the show to this guy and he picked out Mistletoe and Wine and he said, "I think Cliff would be interested in this".
In 1988, he brought it out for the Christmas song and the rest is history - the moral is never throw out your old songs.
We were absolutely overwhelmed by it.
We didn't particularly, the three of us co-writers, at that point, understand the power of Cliff's world.
Do you get bored of it?
No. I think kids can skip to it, old granddads can enjoy it.
| My strike rate is absolutely unbelievable |
I think it evokes Christmas past, even going back to the war. Each generation can bring a private view of it.
It hits the spots that surprise people. And as many people as get it on the level I've just described, are the people that are saying "what a trashy song" and they're entitled to that, as well.
Have you written any other Christmas songs?
No. Because the only context in which I have written any songs at all is in the context of writing a musical - I'm not really in the business.
My strike rate is absolutely unbelievable.
It's a one-off. It's a freak or a fluke - a happy accident.
Has the song provided you with your pension?
The truth is it has. And it's pretty constant. Each time you think, 'oh, it'll dip this year', it sort of flares back into life.22nd December 2008
(day 356, 10 remaining) (LY 357/10)
Religious events today...
Feast day of St Flavian of Tuscany,
St Zeno,
St Chaeremon and Others,
and St Ischyrion.
History Test for December 22nd
Which radio show, first broadcast today in 1967, features speakers who mustn't hesitate, deviate or repeat themselves? -`Just A Minute'
Born Mary Ann Evans, who wrote the novels `The Mill on the Floss' and 'Silas Marner' and died today in 1880? -George Eliot
Born today in 1907 who won an Oscar for her role as Mrs Moore in the film `A Passage today India'? -Dame Peggy Ashcroft
Today in 1808, Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth symphonies were premiered in Leipzig. In which city was Beethoven born? -Bonn
Which members of the Bee Gees were twin brothers, born today in 1949? -Maurice and Robin Gibb
Events today...
1715 James Edward Stuart, son of James II, the deposed Roman Catholic King of England, landed at Peterhead in north-east Scotland to lead a Jacobite rebellion.
1810 The British frigate Minotaur sank and 480 died.
1870 Jules Janssen flew in a balloon to study a solar eclipse.
1880 Death of George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), English novelist who wrote Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda.
1894 Alfred Dreyfus, the French officer who was falsely convicted for selling military secrets, was sent to Devil's Island.
1895 Willhelm Rontgen photographed his wife's hand to reveal the bones underneath the skin using his newly discovered X-rays. This discovery was made quite by accident while Rontgen was experimenting with electrical discharges in an evacuated glass tube. In the experiment electrons were accelerated to high velocities, then struck the walls of the tube, giving rise to penetrating radiation. It seemed this invisible electromagnetic radiation was of much shorter wavelengths than visible light. X-rays could pass through objects or substances with a low density but are stopped by heavier or denser materials, so skin and muscles allow rays to pass through, while bone reflects them. The medical applications for this discovery had already sparked much interest.
1910 In Lancashire, 350 miners lost their lives in Britain's second worst mining disaster.
1910 In Leipzig, British officers Lieutenant Trench and Captain Brandon were found guilty of spying.
1917 The Bolshevik government began peace talks with Germany at Brest-Litovsk while the Allies made accusations of Russian betrayal.
1919 British prime minister David Lloyd George announced that Ireland would have self-government with two parliaments.
1921 The US Congress set up a $20 million (£10.8 million) fund to aid the 20 million Soviet citizens facing starvation.
1940 American novelist Nathaniel West, author of The Day of the Locust and Miss Lonely-Hearts, died with his wife in a car crash.
1943 Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit and many other well loved children's book characters, died. Born an only child of wealthy parents, Miss Potter was never sent to school and as a result led a lonely life as a child. To amuse herself, she taught herself to draw and paint small natural objects. Her first book, the Tale of Peter Rabbit, was written for the son of her former governess in 1893, in the form of letters. Beatrix Potter illustrated the book herself and went on to write many more books. She lived at Sawrey in the Lake District from 1905 and in 1913 married William Heelis, a solicitor in the area. The rest of her life was chiefly devoted to her farms and to the newly established National Trust which aimed to preserve Britain's heritage.
1944 Death of Harry Langdon (aged 60) Silent movie comedian
1961 US soldier James Davis became the first American to die in Vietnam since America's involvement in the conflict. US involvement was initially limited to military advisers - some 200 Air Force members were joined by 700 Army training personnel in providing military advice, including bomber training. However, President Kennedy announced that the US would increase the number of advisers by as many as 16,000 over the following two years, giving rise to fears that American participation in the war would become entrenched and that direct military activity would soon follow.
1965 The speed limit of 70 m.p.h. was introduced in Britain.
1965 Death of Richard Dimbleby, British broadcaster.
1975 Palestinian terrorists seized more than 70 hostages at the Austrian Opec summit held in Vienna. Led by Venezuelan killer Carlos, the terrorists took a number of oil ministers and demanded a plane to fly them to an undisclosed destination. It seemed that the authorities were willing to comply with the terrorists' wishes.
1978 Kenny Jones joined The Who and replaced Keith Moon who had died.
1979 Death of Darryl F Zanuck (aged 77) Movie Mogul
1981 General Galtieri was sworn in as Argentine President.
1983 Egyptian leader Mubarak and PLO leader Yasser Arafat met for talks.
1984 "Like a Virgin" by Madonna went to number one in the U.S. and stayed in that position for 6 weeks. This was her first big international hit.
1984 Dom Mintoff resigned as prime minister of Malta.
1988 South Africa, Angola and Cuba signed treaties for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola.
1989 Death of Samuel Beckett, Irish author and dramatist.
1989 The civil war in Romania ended, with it the 24-year-long reign of terror by one of Europe's worst dictators, Nicolae Ceausescu. The dictator and his wife fled from the roof of their burning palace by helicopter to an unknown destination. Their flight followed the fighting which exploded after Laszlo Tokes, a priest, was threatened with arrest in Timisoara. Around 5000 were killed in Timisoara alone, but accurate numbers of fatalities on both sides was difficult to determine. Securitate forces had been fighting the Romanian army, who supported the protesters, leaving hundreds dead. Tanks were deployed to try to quell the uprising but the protesting forces held the TV and radio stations, and set up a Committee for National Salvation. The previous night Ceausescu spoke to the people from the balcony of his palace demanding the return of peace, but was met with jeers from the crowd.
1990 Lech Walesa was sworn in a Poland's President.
1991 Eleven of the 12 Soviet republics (excluding Georgia) agreed, in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, on the creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States.
1995 Borge Ousland reached the South Pole. He had achieved the record for skiing to both Poles alone and without aid.
1999 After losing his libel case against Mohamed Al Fayed, former MP Neil Hamilton faced legal fees of £1million.
1999 Scottish Widows agreed to a £7billion takeover by Lloyds TSB.
1999 A Korean Cargo plane caught fire and crashed in woods after takeoff from San Francisco, killing all four crew.
2003 Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was taken to hospital after a confrontation with angry Palestinians in Jerusalem.
2003 A Briton and four Israeli hostages were released by their Colombian rebel captors after three months.
2003 Fifteen people went on trial in Serbia, accused of direct involvement in the murder of PM Zoran Djindjic.
2003 The final instalment of The Lord of the Rings made more than $125m (£71m) in five days in the US.
2003 Substitute Antoine Sibierski's late equaliser earned Man City a 1-1 draw against Leeds.
2003 Juventus midfielder Pavel Nedved was named European Footballer of the Year.
2003 Crystal Palace named former Oldham boss Iain Dowie as their new manager.
2004 A former landscape gardener who cut rare maps from atlases at the National Library of Wales was jailed.
2004 Little Britain and Ant and Dec were among the winners at the 15th British Comedy Awards.
2004 TV stars Jill Halfpenny and her dance partner won a live festive edition of Strictly Come Dancing.
2004 The sixth Potter book topped bookseller Amazon's chart less than 24 hours after its release date was announced.
2005 The fourth Harry Potter movie topped the chart of the year's most successful films in the UK.
2005 Girl group Sugababes unveiled their new member just a day after Mutya Buena announced she was leaving.
2005 X Factor winner Shayne Ward was on track for the Christmas number one spot after first day sales pass the 313,000 mark.
2006 A 48-year-old man appeared in court charged with murdering five women found dead near Ipswich.
2006 Singer Russell Watson pulled out of BBC talent show "Just the Two of Us", three months after having brain surgery.
________________________________________
BIRTHDAYS (for 22 December 2008)
Giacomo Puccini, 150 (born 22 December 1858)
Died 1924. Italian composer of operas such as La Boheme, Tosca and Manon Lescaut.
Lord J Arthur Rank, 120 (born 22 December 1888)
(Died 1972) Film producer.
Dame Peggy Ashcroft, 101 (born 22 December 1907)
Died 1991. English stage and screen actress superlative both in classical roles and in films such as David Lean's A Passage to India.
Patricia Hayes, 97 (born 22 December 1911)
(Died 1997) Actress.
Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor Johnson, 96 (born 22 December 1912)
wife of Lyndon Baines.
Hector Elizondo, 72 (born 22 December 1936)
Actor - Chicago Hope's Dr Philip Walters.
Noel Edmunds, 60 (born 22 December 1948)
Ubiquetous TV presnter
Maurice Gibb, 59 (born 22 December 1949)
(Died 2003) A Bee Gee.
Robin Gibb, 59 (born 22 December 1949)
Another Bee Gee (twin of Maurice).
Alan Williams, 58 (born 22 December 1950)
Member of The Rubettes - biggest UK hit 'Sugar Baby Love'.
Ralph Fiennes, 46 (born 22 December 1962)
Actor 'English Patient' 'Quiz Show'.
Richey Edwards, 41 (born 22 December 1967)
Member of Manic Street Preachers (the one who disappeared in Wales in '95!).
Vanessa Paradis, 36 (born 22 December 1972)
Singer/model - biggest UK hit 'Joe le Taxi'.
'Illegal threat' to hen harriers
Hen harriers are nearing extinction in England owing to illegal persecution in areas managed for rearing game birds, Natural England has said.
The conservation watchdog said the birds of prey were persecuted at communal winter roosts.
In a 12-month period it found six birds fitted with satellite transmitters disappeared from the north Pennines.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said the birds of prey were "not pests to be killed out of hand".
Natural England reported that hen harriers were particularly at risk from systematic persecution and disruption in areas managed for rearing red grouse or game-birds.
Just 26% of breeding pairs on red grouse moors managed to produce fledged chicks, it was reported.
The six missing birds vanished from parts of the north Pennines managed as driven grouse moors.
Natural England chairman Sir Martin Doughty said: "The hen harrier has unfortunately become the emblem of man's callous disregard for the spectacular and majestic wildlife that we have in England.
"Following seven years of intensive monitoring and detailed research, the picture is unequivocal - hen harriers are being persecuted while they attempt to nest and birds are simply not returning to their breeding areas the following spring."
Restricted
Since the 2002 start of a hen harrier recovery project in England, only a small area in Bowland, Lancashire, where Natural England and the RSPB work with private landowners and gamekeepers, has seen an increase in the birds of prey.
Bowland was home to 50 of the 72 successful nesting attempts by hen harriers in England in the last seven years.
RSPB and Natural England reported in September that chicks were successfully reared in 10 cases in England this year, from 19 attempts.
"The hen harrier should have a much wider range than it does, which begs the question why its breeding success is now restricted to one regular site," said Mr Doughty.
"The simple answer is that this magnificent bird is being persecuted to the brink of extinction as a breeding species in England."
RSPB director of conservation Mark Avery said "The findings of this report reinforce what the RSPB has been saying for years: the hen harrier is being driven to extinction in England by illegal killing."
He added: "The majority of those involved in shooting are decent, law-abiding people.
"This report puts the onus on them to root out those bad apples prepared to break the law and drag the good name of shooting through the mud."
The hen harrier became extinct in the UK in Victorian times, and was reintroduced in Scotland between the wars.
There are now 630 breeding pairs in Scotland, but despite a return to England in the 1970s, numbers there remain low.21.12.08
It's Behind You - Oh Yes It Is!!!
1. Which word, associated with Christmas comes from a Greek word meaning 'we can act anything'?
Pantomime
2. What is odd about the principal boy and the dame in a pantomime?
They're both played by a member of the opposite sex
3. In the Pantomime 'Jack and the Beanstalk', Jack receives beans in exchange for what?
His Mother's Cow - mother called Dame Trott
4. Which Pantomime features the character Maid Marion?
Babes in the Wood
5. Its name will ring a bell with members of the legal profession; in 1716 which London theatre put on England's first pantomime ?
Lincoln's Inn (Theatre)
6. In the pantomime Aladdin what was the name of Aladdin's brother?
Wishy Washy
7. Dressed as which pantomime villain did Leslie Grantham, allegedly, indulge in sex play on his webcam in 2004?
Captain Hook - Amanda, the 23-year-old blonde with whom Leslie Grantham played online sex games was known as The Halo Polisher!
8. In traditional pantomime who is the sweetheart of Harlequin?
Columbine
9. In which Christmas pantomime does buttons appear?
Cinderella
10. Which pantomime character marries Alice Fitzwarren?
Dick Whittington
11. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad The Sailor and Aladdin all derive from which collection of Middle East tales?
The Arabian Nights
12. In the original pantomimes, what were breeches roles?
Male roles played by women
13. What is the name of the father of Cinderella and The Ugly Sisters?
Baron Hardup
14. Which wooden bat, originally used as a prop by the character Harlequin, came to give its name for a type of comedy used in pantomime?
Slap Stick
15. Which famous clown pioneered the use of pantomime dames during the 19th century?
Joseph Grimaldi
16. Charles Perrault wrote whose book of Fairy Tales which included Puss In Boots, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood?
Mother Goose's
17. Fe Fi Fo Fum I smell the blood of an Englishman is a classic line from which pantomime?
Jack & the Beanstalk
18. In which Pantomime does Idle Jack appear?
Dick Whittington
19. Which two pantomimes did Cliff Richard record soundtracks of in the 60s?
Aladdin and Cinderella
20. The last lines of a pantomime have two traditions associated with them - name either?
They should be in rhyming couplets and they should never be spoken in rehearsal
21. Which traditional pantomime features a character called Dandini?
Cinderella
22. What is the name of the cow in the pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk?
Old Buttercup
23. What name is given to the leading male role in a pantomime, usually played by a woman?
Principal Boy
24. Which pantomime contains the goose that lays the golden egg?
Jack & the Beanstalk
25. Medieval English Christmas pantomimes did not include which character - St. Nicholas, The Bold Slasher, Father Christmas or The Turkish Knight?
St. Nicholas - In Medieval England, Nicholas was just another saint - he had not yet metamorphosed into Santa Claus and had nothing to do with Christmas
26. In pantomime, what is Aladdins surname?
Twankey (his mother was widow Twankey)
27. In Pantomime, who is Princess Marcella?
Sleeping Beauty
28. Which Pantomime character slaps his thigh every time he speaks his name?
Dick Whittington
29. What does Cinderella's Fairy Godmother turn into a coach?
A Pumpkin
30. Who eat the Gingerbread House?
Hansel and Gretel
31. In pantomime who was the son of mustafa a poor tailor of China?
Aladdin
32. What told Dick Whittington to 'turn again'?
The Bells of London
33. Who took the Babes into the Wood?
Their Father
34. What is the occupation of the Seven Dwarfs who befriend Snow White?
Miners
35. In which pantomime would you meet a ticking crocodile?
Peter Pan
36. Which pantomime character shares their name with a brand of children's confectionary?
Buttons
37. In which pantomime would you find King Rat?
Dick Whittington
38. Does the Fairy Godmother come on stage right or stage left?
Stage right
39. Which is the most popular Pantomime?
Cinderella
40. In which year was the first pantomime produced in Britain?
1717
- In which year did Frank Bruno retire after losing to Mike Tyson leaving him plenty of time for Panto?
1996
Christmas double for Hallelujah
Newly-crowned X Factor queen Alexandra Burke has topped the Christmas singles chart with Hallelujah.
Burke won the battle for Christmas number one ahead of the late Jeff Buckley, whose version of the same song was in second place.
It is 51 years since the same song sat at numbers one and two, and the first time ever at Christmas.
Burke's Hallelujah became the fastest-selling single by a female solo artist, with 576,000 copies sold.
The cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah by Buckley, who died in a drowning accident in Memphis in May 1997 aged 30, finished at number two on download sales only.
| It's ironic that it's taken the X Factor to get a lot more of us to appreciate the music of Leonard Cohen Gennaro Castaldo, HMV |
The Official Charts Company said the only other time the scenario occurred was in January 1957 when Tommy Steele and Guy Mitchell held the top two places with Singin' The Blues.
Cohen - who wrote the hit more than 20 years ago - made it a triple Hallelujah in the top 40 with a new entry at number 36.
Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot said: "It is a particularly amazing week for Alexandra Burke who has broken a string of records to announce her arrival in spectacular style.
"And, chart placings at 1, 2 and 36 are remarkable for a 25-year-old song which has never previously reached the top 40."
HMV's Gennaro Castaldo said: "It was pretty much a given that Alexandra Burke's cover of Hallelujah would dominate the race for this year's Christmas number one, but it's been such a strange year that we thought the charts would throw up some kind of a surprise, and the twist came in the form of the Jeff Buckley cover.
 Buckley's Hallelujah is widely regarded as the definitive version |
"It's ironic that it's taken the X Factor to get a lot more of us to appreciate the music of Leonard Cohen and the talent of Jeff Buckley."
Burke's victory pushed 2006 X Factor winner Leona Lewis off the top after two weeks. She is at number three with her cover of Snow Patrol's Run.
The reality TV theme continued in the chart charts after comedian Peter Kay's spoof reality TV singer Geraldine entered the top 10 at number five with Once Upon A Christmas Song.
Comeback kings Take That claimed Christmas number one in the album chart with The Circus.
The album is the fastest-selling album in the UK so far this millennium, according to the Official Charts Company, and the second biggest-selling album of 2008.
Duffy's Rockferry was the year's runaway biggest seller so far, with 1.5 million copies sold in 2008 to date.TOP 100 SINGLES -
20.12.08
Severed cable disrupts web access
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.
It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.
A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.
Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.
| For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern. Jonathan Wright, Interoute |
"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised."
"If you think how quickly trades can be placed, if they are suffering from bad latency times, then by the time a trade is placed, the market may well have moved on."
The cause of the break is as yet unknown, although some seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before the cut was detected.
 A second subsea cable to Malta is currently being laid |
In a statement released in relation to one of the breaks, France Telecom said: "The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear."
The French firm said it was sending a ship out to fix the line between Italy and Egypt, although it could take until 31 December to fully repair the line.
The main damage through is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.
It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.
Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area - off the Egyptian coast - although only two lines were snapped then.
"We've lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we're looking at a total blackout in the Middle East," said Mr Wright.
"These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we're going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet," he added.
"Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern."
Swiss glaciers 'in full retreat'
| By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco |
Swiss glaciers are melting away at an accelerating rate and many will vanish this century if climate projections are correct, two new studies suggest.
One assessment found that some 10 cubic km of ice have been lost from 1,500 glaciers over the past nine years.
The other study, based on a sample of 30 representative glaciers, indicates the group's members are now losing a metre of thickness every year.
Both pieces of work come out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
"The trend is negative, but what we see is that the trend is also steepening," said Matthias Huss from the Zurich university's Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology.
| What really matters is how much ice we have in the big glaciers, because the small ones will disappear; that seems clear Daniel Farinotti, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology |
"Glaciers are starting to lose mass increasingly fast," he told BBC News.
The retreat is being driven largely by longer melting seasons. The other key factor in glacier health - the amount of winter snowfall to replace ice melt - shows no long-term changes.
The two studies are being presented here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.
They are not the first to assess the status of Swiss glaciers but few others can match their scope.
Summer heatwave
In one, Daniel Farinotti and his team tried to assess the total volume of ice in Swiss glaciers -1,500 of them, from the mighty Aletschgletscher (the largest glacier in the Alps) to small ice fields that cover less than three square km.
The research used direct measurements where available, and combined this with modelling to estimate ice volumes for areas that are data-deficient.
The assessment found a total ice volume present in the Swiss Alps of about 75 cubic km by the year 1999 (a baseline for the purpose of the study). It is a bigger figure than previously thought.
"However, 1999 is quite some time ago now, so what we did was try to calculate the volume lost since this baseline; and we estimate a figure of 13% - from 1999 to today," explained Mr Farinotti.
For 2003, remembered for its strong heatwave across Europe, the team estimates that 3-4% of the volume in Switzerland at that time was lost in that one year alone.
Mr Farinotti said his study highlighted the importance of the largest glaciers as ice reservoirs: more than 80% of the total ice volume is stored in the 50 largest glaciers.
"Aletschgletscher, for example, has about 12% of the area of Swiss glaciers but it contains about a quarter of all ice that is present in Switzerland," he told BBC News.
"What really matters is how much ice we have in the big glaciers, because the small ones will disappear; that seems clear. For them, it's just a matter of years. But in glaciers like Aletsch that have a lot of ice, they will be around for decades."
| THE DECLINE OF FOUR SWISS GLACIERS SINCE 1860  The four glaciers here represent a range of types, sizes, locations, and climatic zones. The assessment has now been extended to 30 glaciers Area covered by the glaciers - Aletsch: 83.01sq km; Rhone: 16.45sq km; Gries: 5.26sq km; Silvretta: 2.89sq km Distinct phases of growth (I & III) and strong ice loss (II & IV) are seen within an overall trend for the period which is negative The cumulative mass balance is given in "metres of water equivalent". Essentially, it records the net thickness change of the glaciers Thickness change over the entire period - Aletsch: -65m; Rhone: -43m; Gries: -97m; Silvretta: -35m |
The study by Mr Huss and his team takes a slightly different approach. It considers just a key group of 30 glaciers, representing all sizes, types, and locations.
Again, using a mixture of direct data and modelling, the scientists analysed the mass trends from 1900 to 2007.
Over this period, there is a significant negative trend. It is not linear, however. There are two distinct phases when glaciers gained mass, and even a phase in the 1940s when the glaciers lost mass faster than they do now.
But in general, over the period, there is a retreat; and in the last 30-50 years, the shrinkage has accelerated.
Mr Huss has applied future climate projections to the 10km-long Rhone Glacier, which in Swiss terms is mid-sized.
"Rhone Glacier will have almost gone in 100 years," said Mr Huss.
"It first retreats not very fast, until about 2050. Then, it retreats really quite fast. It means that most glaciers, the smaller ones, will have disappeared by the end of this century."
Switzerland's glaciers are iconic but their shrinkage is more than just an issue for the tourists with their cameras; their loss would have profound ecosystem and economic consequences.
"Glaciers store the water in winter and release it in the summer when it is dry and warm when there is more need for water," added Mr Huss.
"And they can also store it in the wet and cold years and release it in the hot and warm years. That's an important reservoir.
"In the south-western part of Switzerland, almost all run-off water from glaciers is temporarily stored and used for electricity production. More than half the electricity consumed in Switzerland is produced from hydropower."
The Huss-led research builds on work published in the Journal of Geophysical Research this year. The Farinotti-led research has been submitted to the Journals of Glaciology, and the Journal of Global and Planetary Change.
Take That 'to pass million mark'
Take That's latest album The Circus will have sold more than a million copies by the end of Friday, according to the Official Charts Company.
The album had sold just over 990,000 copies by the end of Thursday, putting it well on course to pass the million mark on its 19th day in UK shops.
Only Oasis's Be Here Now reached that point quicker, taking 11 days to shift a million copies in 1997.
The Circus is now 2008's second biggest seller, behind Duffy's Rockferry.
The Welsh singer's debut album has sold 1.5m copies since its original release in March.
Retailers
"Take That will have to go some to overtake Rockferry and establish The Circus as the biggest-selling album of 2008, but it is not impossible," said the Official Charts Company's Martin Talbot.
Take That released their second album since reforming on 1 December - the same day Britney Spears released her similarly-named record Circus.
The foursome's previous album, Beautiful World, is currently the third fastest record to sell a million copies, having taken 27 days to do so in 2006.
The Official Charts Company compiles its charts from sales information from over 6,200 retailers, including all major high street chains.19.12.08
10 things we didn't know last week
Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
1. Sugar does not cause hyperactive behaviour.
More details
2. Oliver Twist was not hungry when he asked for more.
More details (Daily Telegraph)
3. Leonard Cohen's original Hallelujah has more than 80 verses.
More details
4. Sneezing can be a sign of sexual arousal.
More details
5. It's legal to serve legal papers by Facebook, in Australia.
More details
6. It's a bad idea to put out a chip pan fire with a wet tea towel.
More details
7. The world's oldest singer and actor is 105.
More details
8. Some villages in Wales still don't have mains electricity.
More details
9. Japan has its own version of the foot-measurement - called the kanejaku.
More details
10. The average global temperature is about 0.7C above pre-industrial times.
More details
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17.12.08
Quiztime Themed Quizzes
QUIZTIME THEMED QUIZZES
What is the greatest TV sports theme tune of all time?
It makes you hark back to the old days when David Coleman, Brian Moore, Harry Carpenter and Dickie Davies were kings and the diet of TV sport was around two hours midweek if you were lucky plus a full Saturday.
Broadcasting legend: David Coleman was Mr Grandstand
In the 60s, 70s and 80s all the theme tunes were instantly recognisable because everyone watched the programmes - that's all you got!
So sit back and let the nostalgia wash over you as Sportsmail presents its top ten sports music themes.
Unless, of course, you know any different and want to leave suggestions in the comments box at the foot of this story.
The Big Match (1st)
Sunday afternoons just after Randall & Hopkirk (deceased), Brian Moore with highlights from three BIG games. Usually the London giants if you were in the south, occassionally Millwall, Orient or Charlton, very occasionally it was Gillingham. But what a theme tune, adopted by Danny Baker for his TV show about parks football on Hackney Marshes.
Video: Spot the stars
The Big Match (2nd)
Sunday afternoons after How with Fred Dinenage and Jack Hargreaves, the smell of roast beef in the air. It must be time for the Big Match with their new-fangled theme tune and montage of magnificence. About 90 per cent as good as the first tune, the show had the same format and was packed full of action - except when there were three 0-0 draws, including a 'special' from 'new-boys Wimbledon'.
Video: Spot the stars (again)
Same theme with different montage
The Big Match (3rd and final)
By the time live football was on the screens, ITV opted for a Jeff Wayne theme and it was never quite the same. Like giving a starving dog a rubber bone, it left punters feeling empty. Still plenty of great action and great commentary from Mr Moore, but...
Video: This is no War of the Worlds Mr Wayne
Midweek Sports Special
Pre-Sky all there was to look forward to midweek was the occasional European Cup tie and FA Cup replay. Rarely Brian Moore at the Mic, this brought in the second division chatters such as Gerald Sinstadt or Gerry Harrison.
Video: Welcome to regional football at its best
Sportsnight
The voice of boxing Harry Carpenter landed the BBC's prime midweek slot and did not disappoint. What did though was the sport on offer. On major football nights, they just used to put up the results and then do big features on some Irish jockey, Welsh gymnast or a biathlete somewhere in Helsinki. 'Know what I mean 'Arry' also managed to go through his entire career without using a single vowel - ie Wmbldn for Wimbledon, etc.
Video: What a tune. What memories
Sportsnight With Coleman
The most polished of them all - David Coleman - was the original and best host of Sportsnight. Had the knack of making even the most mundane focus on 'the great hope of British skiing' seem like back page news.
Video: Same music as before but with black and white sporting icons
Grandstand
Now shamefully no more, a victim of satellite TV. Coleman, Lynam, Bough, Ryder, Icke and Rollason to name but a few of the legends that presented the show. FA Cup Final Grandstand (with Mastermind, Road to Wembley, It's a Knockout, etc) will never be beaten.
Video: The biggest and the best
World of sport
Home of sports such as wrestling, lumberjacking and racing's ITV six from Ripon WOS was hosted by the impeccable Dickie Davies - he of the white bit in his hair and dodgy porn star moustache. This is the programme that spawned Saint & Greavsie
Video: Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks are on later - but for now it's log rolling from Manitoba
BBC Cricket
The most recognisable theme of them all...Caribbean and groovy, summer holidays were made for sitting down and watching Tony Greig & Co getting hammered by Viv Richards or Dennis Lillee or Ian Botham winning a series single-handed. With Richie Benaud and Jim Laker at the mic, it felt like two uncles were discussing the game and letting you in on a few secrets
Video: Still used despite cricket being farmed out to allcomers
Wimbledon
Ooh I say that's a dream of a half-volley. The voice of tennis, Dan Maskell, may have passed away in 1992 but his rich tones and sometimes excited shoutings won't be forgotten. Wade winning the title in 1977, a British man winning a first-round match (until the advent of Tim and Andy!) and the cost of strawberries and cream. And nothing can beat the sense of anticipation when the first day of the All-England Championships begins and the credits are even longer - but it's raining...
Video: I hope Sampras/Borg gets knocked out early this year
Should we idealise Christmas past?
The bemoaning of the commercialised, anodyne, mass-produced Christmas is a familiar refrain. But are we right to idealise the Christmases of the past?
Christmas isn't like it used to be.
Many of us, having finished our trudged marathon beneath the flickering fluorescent lights of the supermarket aisles and the crowded concourses of the shopping malls, can take no more.
|  Recreation of a Victorian drawing room at Christmas 1870 (picture courtesy Chris Radley/Geffrye Museum) |
Some of us berate ourselves for having taken part in the decline of Christmas. Christmas is too commercialised. Christmas isn't enough about the family. We watch too much television at Christmas. We work too much.
What are our thoughts of ideal Christmas? Of roaring open fires, walks in the snow, delighted children, nuclear families united in festive fun. Many of us hark back to Christmases of long ago.
These are Christmases we were not alive for, but have experienced through the prism of festive celluloid. Whether it's Alastair Sim in Scrooge or James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, we bombard ourselves with nostalgia for Christmases past.
|  A 1930s Christmas (picture courtesy Steve Speller/Geffrye Museum) |
But harking back to a Victorian Christmas of homemade toys and modest consumption might not be entirely justified.
"Excess and a big blow out - you can take it back to the pre-Christian Christmas," says Bill Purdue, co-author of The Making of the Modern Christmas.
"There has always been this conspicuous consumption aspect."
Nor is the apparent dislocation between a secularised commercial-tinged version of Christmas and the religious festival an entirely new thing. But those who campaign for a return to a Christmas that was a celebration of Jesus' birth, and nothing more, may have the wrong end of the stick.
|  A 1960s Christmas (picture courtesy Steve Speller/Geffrye Museum) |
"The assumption underneath those campaigns is I wish we could go back to that pure spiritual holiday before we ruined it in the last century or so," says Bruce David Forbes, lecturer in religious studies at Morningside College, author of Christmas: A Candid History and an ordained minister.
"But it has always been a winter festival and a spiritual occasion."
The pre-Christian winter festival acted as a psychological boost, a time to slaughter the fatted calf.
Even in later times, Christmas would still have served this function.
"My impression [even] of the medieval or reformation era celebrations is that it was [about] trying to get through the winter," Dr Forbes adds.
And those who have a problem with the endless round of office parties and the boozy carousing of a modern Christmas will find it has its antecedents.
| DAILY UNIVERSAL REGISTER 1787 Let the larder be well stuffed with provisions. Let the cellar be well stored with liquors, and let there be plenty of fuel to make roaring fires - for Christmas is come... there should not only be enough to eat, and enough to drink, but also enough to give away. When the heart rejoices in the hour of conviviality, it should be remembered, that thousands are oppressed with grief. Christmas Day editorial in forerunner of Times, 1787 |
You can trace the history of Christmas back to Saturnalia, the Roman festival where everything was turned on its head. The slave would act the master and vice versa. Presents were exchanged within families.
Even if we go on to the Middle Ages we would find a Christmas that differed from the Victorian vision.
"Victorians romanticised childhood and put them at the centre of things," says Mr Purdue.
"Pre-Victorian Christmases were social in the wider sense - less the nuclear family, more adult, more convivial."
Mr Forbes concurs with this vision.
"It wasn't so family centred it could be wilder instead of this wonderful sweet celebration at home. You might go to a special church service and drink at the tavern."
Puritan party poopers
The rise to dominance of Puritanism during the English Civil War led to a period of sporadic assaults on the Christmas tradition.
"When Puritans opposed Christmas they felt the partying had taken over," says Dr Forbes.
 For nearly two centuries Christmas has been all about the nuclear family |
By the end of the 18th Century, Christmas had declined in importance as a holiday. But in the 19th Century it enjoyed a resurgence in Britain that spread across the Atlantic and helped shape the way much of the world celebrates it today.
Charles Dickens played a big part in it, setting out in his novels a vision of Christmas that people could re-engage with.
"Although many would say Dickens was the inventor of the Victorian Christmas, he based it very much on the 18th Century - stagecoaches in snowy lanes, jovial landlords, squires giving presents to the poor and presiding over groaning tables," says Mr Purdue.
 People now are under pressure to have the perfect magazine Christmas |
One of the key aspects for us about Christmas is a break from work - a couple of weeks for the luckiest. But in Victorian times Christmas Day was often just another day of grimy toil.
And there were plenty of new traditions. The tree, the turkey, Christmas cards and crackers all came to a prominent place in the celebrations.
Many believe it was Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who first brought the German Christmas tree concept to Britain. The idea of a fir tree festooned with decorations and candles did not immediately catch on, having to wait until its enthusiastic adoption by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Turkey had been in the country for centuries, but only in the 19th Century started to make its journey to Christmas meal hegemony, finally achieved after World War II.
 Present giving dates back at least to the Romans |
If there is one significant element that truly can be said to have been lost from the Christmas experience it is the exhortations to a personal brand of charity.
Go back 150 years, and the Christmas Eve editorial in the Times cried out: "We do not take Christmas as the theme of a cheerful carol, but as the text of a solemn appeal to the humanity and kindlier sympathies of those whom providence has blessed with more abundant means."
In the post-war years we have added fresh ritual to the celebration, such as the "Christmas film". And every time we moan after a festive mission to the supermarket, we are in touch with the ancients. Our nostalgia is part of the historic thread of Christmases.
"It is innate," says Mr Purdue. "The best Christmases are the ones of our childhood. They are never quite as good as they were then. We idealise.
"And one of the traditions is complaining about the commercialisation of Christmas."
Just whose hallelujah is it anyway?
Rooftop bathing. S&M. Gunfights. A haircut. What is going on in this year's likely Christmas Number One - and possible Number Two?
Two versions of Hallelujah are headed for the Christmas chart. But there is a version of Hallelujah for everyone.
For the pre-pubescent fan of animated ogres, there's the one in Shrek that plays as the titular monster feels ugly. For the teen soap devotee, there's the sensitive acoustic montage music for profound moments in shows like The OC.
| NOTABLE VERSIONS John Cale (stately) Bon Jovi (soft rock) Bono (spoken word) Imogen Heap (a capella) Fall Out Boy (emo) |
For the baby boomer ex-beatnik, its writer Leonard Cohen offers two renditions with almost completely different lyrics.
And now, for everyone - indeed, for Christmas - there's the X Factor victory single.
But exactly how Christmassy is this song, with lines like "your faith was strong but you needed proof", where the singer is "not somebody who's seen the light"?
Well, while there's not a lot of "behold the Baby Jesus" and not a donkey in sight, there's certainly a lot of Bible in there - it's just that it's some of the raunchier and more violent episodes from the Christmas-free Old Testament.
Evil spirit
We kick off in the Book of Samuel with David who is, as well as a nifty fighter, a mean harpist. His "secret chord" that "pleased the Lord" is enough to release an evil spirit from Saul, the man he is shortly to succeed as king.
 David is said to have scoped out Bathsheba having a bath on the roof |
That done, David spies the beautiful Bathsheba "bathing on the roof" and gets her pregnant. Little good comes of this - Bathsheba's husband Uriah is one of David's soldiers and winds up dead.
Then before you know it, we skip to the Book of Judges and David has become Samson. When we hear the line "she broke your throne and she cut your hair", we all know what happened next - although Hallelujah doesn't depict the part where Samson, his eyes gouged, pulls down a temple killing himself and around 3,000 guests for good measure.
In X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's version, we only have one more verse to go.
In it, she tells us that "all I've ever learned from love is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you" and closes by announcing, as if any doubt were now needed, that the chorus is "a cold and a broken Hallelujah". Ho, ho, ho.
Singalong chorus
There's something odd here. The key shifts up. The strings crescendo. The gospel singers - who, incongruously, entered the stage of the X Factor final on the word "maybe" of "maybe there's a god above" - raise the volume even higher.
Far from cold and broken, the final chorus is more like Handel's original Hallelujah Chorus mashed up with Cher's I Found Someone.
Devotees of Hallelujah - and there are many - might wonder why Burke's people didn't choose some of the other available verses (there are reportedly 80).
Cohen's own ends on a far more upbeat note, lyrically, with a vow to "stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah". At the very least, this fits a festive feel better than the S&M of "she tied you to a kitchen chair".
| I filled two notebooks and I remember being in the Royalton Hotel, on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor and saying, 'I can't finish this song' Leonard Cohen |
If 80 verses seem excessive, that's because Leonard Cohen belongs to the old school of proper, serious, tortured songwriters.
His versions - one Biblical and another secular - take us through a huge range of emotional places, with the different hallelujahs expressing despair, sexual ecstasy and religious devotion.
As the Bishop of Croydon put it in a recent Radio 2 documentary, "what it comes from is being open and transparent before God and the world and saying 'this is how it is, mate'".
It's not immediately clear which of these we get in Alexandra Burke's single. Lyrically, it's about being crushed by irresistible passion. But the video makes it about the "journey" of winning a TV talent show, meaning all that's Christmassy about it is the pretty tune and the singalong chorus.
Angry fans
Fans of Leonard Cohen (and of the late Jeff Buckley, whose 1994 version is treated as sacrosanct) are predictably outraged at the big-arms, eyebrow-raised bombast, with the now traditional online campaigns and rival singles vying for the Christmas Number One.
But maybe they need not worry so much. For one thing, viewings of the other Hallelujahs on the global jukebox YouTube are rising every day, with comments underneath such as "Glad the song won X Factor - even with a rubbish version - otherwise I wouldn't have discovered this".
And for another, Cohen was last in the news when a court ruled that his manager had stolen £5.4m which he was unlikely to recover. So there may be another kind of joyous cry this Christmas - the kind that means "a beautiful woman has sung my song and restored my financial solvency". Hallelujah.
Smashed Hits is compiled by Alan Connor'Ancient city' unearthed in Peru
The ruins of an entire city have been discovered in northern Peru, researchers say.
Archaeologists say the find could provide the missing link between the ancient cultures of the Wari people and the earlier Moche civilisation.
The site, near the Pacific coastal city of Chiclayo, probably dates to the Wari culture which ruled the Andes of modern Peru between the 7th and 12th Century.
The once buried city showed evidence of human sacrifice.
The remains of the victims were thrown over the nearby cliff, Cesar Soriano, the chief archaeologist on the project, told the Andina news agency.
 |
"It provides the missing link because it explains how the Wari people allowed for the continuation of culture after the Moche [died out about 600 AD]," Cesar Soriano was quoted by Reuters as saying.
Mr Soriano said the find provides the first evidence of Wari culture, which was based in the south of the country, at the northern site.16.12.08
Heavy snorers 'burn more energy'
People with bedtime snoring and breathing problems may be using up far more calories while they sleep.
Those with the worst sleep apnoea symptoms burned 373 extra calories a day compared with those with only mild symptoms, US researchers found.
Nervous system changes triggered by the condition may be responsible.
The payback comes in the daytime, said a UK specialist, with sleep apnoea sufferers craving food and too sluggish to exercise.
| I used to joke that sleep apnoea was free exercise at night - it's nice to have that confirmed Professor John Stradling John Radcliffe Hospital |
While heavy snoring is a nuisance for partners, it can be a sign of a far more serious problem for the snorer.
Sleep apnoea, in which the airways are partially or completely obstructed during sleep, stops the person getting a good night's rest, making them very sleepy during the day.
It has also been linked to a greater risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems.
Scientists have been probing the link between weight gain and sleep apnoea, and the team from the University of California, San Francisco, measured the number of calories burned "at rest" by 212 patients.
On average, the volunteers expended 1,763 calories a day this way, but those with the worst apnoea symptoms expended 1,999, while those with the mildest form of the condition expended an average of 1,626.
The extra calories consumed are the same as a vigorous 30-minute workout in the gym.
The authors of the study, published in the journal Archives of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, led by Dr Eric Kezirian, suggested that energy used by the nervous system as it responded to the poor quality sleep patterns of heavy snorers might be to blame.
However, he said it did not help explain why being obese and having apnoea went hand in hand.
Weight struggle
Professor John Stradling, a sleep expert from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said that the study findings were "entirely plausible", and fitted the experience of his patients, who found it hard to lose weight after their sleep apnoea symptoms had been relieved.
He said: "I used to joke that sleep apnoea was free exercise at night - it's nice to have that confirmed."
There were three reasons why sufferers might burn more calories at night, he said.
Firstly, they spent less time in deep sleep, where the body temperature naturally drops, they might expend more energy just struggling to breathe, and each time their sleep was interrupted by breathing problems, their body would fire a dose of adrenaline, burning up yet more calories.
However, he warned that the powerful effects of sleep apnoea meant it was not a way to lose weight.
"If you have sleep apnoea, you are very sleepy during the day, and demotivated to do any exercise - we also know that sleep deprivation increases appetite and decreases willpower."
Hallelujah becomes fastest-selling download EVER
The first single from X Factor winner Alexandra Burke is on course to become the fastest
selling record ever.
The former waitress has recorded a version of Leonard Cohen’s classic song Hallelujah.
More than 105,000 copies were downloaded on Sunday – smashing the previous record of 82,000 held by another X Factor winner, Leona Lewis, with her debut release A Moment Like This.
Miss Burke’s track is selling so quickly online that it could reach the Christmas No 1 slot
before the CD even hits shops later this week.
HMV said yesterday that the 20-year-old’s debut single is its fastest-ever selling download.
Spokesman Gennaro Castaldo said: ‘It is not impossible that it will break the million mark.
‘Over that would see it beat Do They Know It’s Christmas? and claim the fastest-selling single record title.’
Miss Burke’s fellow finalists JLS and Eoghan Quigg – as well as fourth placed Diana Vickers – also look set to get record deals.
They are signed with Simon Cowell’s Syco until they complete a nationwide tour, but it looks likely the arrangement will be made permanent.
X Factor judge Louis Walsh said: ‘I think that all three finalists have a very strong future in the
music industry.’
A source added: ‘Simon and his team will finalise any deals in January.’
Eclipsed: Alexandra has outsold Leona Lewis, pictured here performing at Z100 Jingle Ball at New York's Madison Square Gardens
Simon has already vowed to turn Alexandra into a bigger star than Leona, telling friends that this year's X Factor winner is 'more versatile'.
He is already talking to the industry's most acclaimed writers and producers to find the right songs for his new protégé.
Leona, 23, who recently signed a £5million five-album deal, won the talent show in 2006 and is hailed as its most successful discovery so far.
A peak of 14.6million viewers watched Saturday night's final, which 20-year-old Alexandra, a former waitress from North London, won by more than a million votes.
That figure was no doubt boosted by her powerful duet with American guest star Beyoncé Knowles.
The pair performed the power ballad Listen, which Beyoncé sang in the hit film Dreamgirls in which she starred.
The performance was such a hit that Cowell was left gushing: 'A star is born'.
He was rather less enthusiastic about his own act, schoolboy Eoghan Quigg, calling him 'a good kid'.
Alexandra auditioned for the show three years ago and failed to make the final 12 after she was sent home by Louis Walsh who decided she was 'too young'.
A source close to Cowell said: 'He thinks Alexandra will be a big international star, if they get the music right.
'In many ways she is more versatile than Leona - she can really dance and there is a greater variety of things that she can do.'
A peak of 14.6million viewers watched Saturday night's final, which 20-year-old Alexandra, a former waitress from North London, won by more than a million votes.
That figure was no doubt boosted by her powerful duet with American guest star Beyoncé Knowles.
The pair performed the power ballad Listen, which Beyoncé sang in the hit film Dreamgirls in which she starred.
The performance was such a hit that Cowell was left gushing: 'A star is born'.Last year's winner Leon Jackson benefited by dueting with Kylie Minogue, who topped the bill of guest stars.
Alexandra is already scheduled to appear on Christmas Day's Top of the Pops.
She will also perform at the New Year's Eve concert at London's O2 Arena sharing the bill with stars such as Elton John.
And she revealed last night that she had been invited to perform on stage with Beyoncé when she tours the UK next year.
16th December 2008
(day 350, 16 remaining) (LY 351/16)
Religious events today...
Feast day of St Irenion,
Saints Ananiah, Azariah, and Michael,
and St Adelaide.
History Test for December 16th
Born today in 1775, who wrote the novels `Persuasion' and `Northanger Abbey'? -Jane Austen
Also known as the Battle of the Ardennes, what name was given to the last German offensive on the Western Front, which began today in 1944? -The Battle of the Bulge
Name the author of the novels 'Cakes and Ale' and `The Moon and Sixpence', who died today in 1965. -William Somerset Maugham
Today in 1937, the original version of which musical featuring `The Lambeth Walk' opened in London? -`Me and My Girl'
Nicknamed `Big Bird' which West Indian fast bowler was born today in 1952? -Joel Garner
Events today...
1653 Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England, giving him the powers of an uncrowned King.
1773 Whooping and brandishing axes, a band of intrepid colonists thinly disguised as Indians boarded three ships in Boston harbour and emptied 342 chests of tea worth £9,000 into the sea. This became known as the Boston Tea Party.
1809 Napoleon divorced his wife Joséphine Beauharnais, because she could not provide him with an heir.
1838 The Zulu chief Dingaan was defeated by a small force of Boers at Blood River - celebrated in South Africa as 'Dingaan's Day'.
1850 The first immigrant ship, the Charlotte Jane, arrived at Lyttleton, New Zealand.
1859 Death of Wilheim Grimm (b.1786) (aged 73) Author of the "Grimms Fairy Tales"
1880 The Republic of South Africa was formed.
1893 "New World Symphony" by Dvorak received its premiere.
1905 "Variety Magazine" was published for the first time.
1913 Charlie Chaplin started work for Keystone.
1921 French composer, pianist and organist Camille Saint-Saëns died at the age of 86.
1922 Polish president Gabriel Narutowicz was assassinated after only two days in office.
1944 American bandleader Glenn Miller was presumed dead after his plane went missing over the English Channel.
1944 The Battle of the Bulge, in the Ardennes, began with a Strong counter-attack by the Germans under General von Rundstedt.
1962 The David Lean movie "Lawrence of Arabia" starring Peter O'Toole received its premiere.
1965 British novelist and playwright William Somerset Maugham died in Nice at the age of 91.
1969 The death penalty was abolished in Britain.
1980 Death of Colonel Harland Sanders, aged 80 (b.1890) Founder of "Kentucky Fried Chicken".
1988 Death of Sylvester (b.1947) (aged 40) Disco singer and famous transvestite.
1988 Edwina Currie, Britain's out-spoken junior health minister was forced to resign in the wake of her statement that most British eggs were infected with salmonella.
1990 Forty-five-year-old pop singer Rod Stewart married a 22-year-old model, Rachel Hunter.
1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a leftist priest, was elected president in Haiti's first democratic elections.
1991 In London, the new director-general of the security service MI5 was officially named for the first time - and the name Stella Rimington, who became the first-ever female boss of the agency.
1991 The UN General Assembly voted to repeal its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.
1993 Shannon Doherty who played Brenda in the television series "Beverly Hill 90210" was fired.
1993 Death of Kakuei Tanaka, Japanese politician.
1997 A ban of the sale of beef on the bone came into effect, following an increasing BSE scare.
1997 Death of Nicolette Larson (b.1952) (aged 45) Country singer.
2003 It was announced that Stansted, Heathrow and Birmingham are to get extra runways under the UK's new 30-year plan for air travel.
2003 Labour's ruling board voted by 25-2 to pave the way for Ken Livingstone's readmission to the party.
2003 Sky lost its monopoly on live Premiership games after a compromise with the EU.
2003 Arsenal reached the Carling Cup semi-finals after beating West Brom 2-0 at The Hawthorns, and Henrik Pedersen's dramatic late goal also sent Bolton into the semi-finals.
2004 Saddam Hussein had his first meeting with a member of his family-appointed legal team in Baghdad.
2004 Geoff Hoon announced a major restructuring of the Army, which would see four battalions cut and regiments merged.
2004 Fairytale of New York, by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl, was voted favourite Christmas song in a poll.
2005 The surviving Beatles and relatives of the band's late members sued EMI over £30m in allegedly unpaid royalties.
2005 Award-winning comedian Chris Langham was arrested during an inquiry into internet child pornography.
2005 Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher accepted "very substantial" libel damages over newspaper allegations.
2006 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for elections to solve the country's crisis, but Hamas rejected the move.
2006 Leona Lewis won the live final of "X Factor", beating teenager Ray Quinn to a £1m recording contract.
2006 The Discovery crew began a fresh spacewalk to complete the rewiring of the International Space Station.
2006 Former Spice Girl Emma Bunton was voted out of "Strictly Come Dancing" in the penultimate show of the series.
________________________________________
BIRTHDAYS (for 16 December 2008)
Catherine of Aragon, 523 (born 16 December 1485)
(Died 1536, aged 50) Famous for being the first of Henry VIII's six wives.
Ludwig Van Beethoven, 238 (born 16 December 1770)
composer.
Jane Austen, 233 (born 16 December 1775)
(Died 1817, aged 41) English novelist whose major works included Emma, Pride and Predudice, and Sense and Sensibility.
Sir Noêl Coward, 119 (born 16 December 1889)
English playwright, composer and actor whose best-known plays include Hay Fever and Blithe Spirit.
Arthur C Clarke, 91 (born 16 December 1917)
Author of "2001 A Space Odyssey".
Liv Ullman, 69 (born 16 December 1939)
Norwegian actress who has appeared most notably in Ingmar Bergman films such as Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sontana.
Tony Hicks, 63 (born 16 December 1945)
Guitarist with The Hollies.
Benny Anderson, 62 (born 16 December 1946)
Swedish. Member of Abba, pianist. Singer/Songwriter.
Christopher Biggins, 60 (born 16 December 1948)
English actor. TV baffoon. Radio and stage. Showbiz luvvie.
Billy Gibbons, 59 (born 16 December 1949)
Member of ZZ Top
Steven Irvine, 49 (born 16 December 1959)
Drummer with Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.
Donovan Bailey, 41 (born 16 December 1967)
Singer
Craig White, 39 (born 16 December 1969)
Cricketer.
Nicholas Cochrane, 35 (born 16 December 1973)
Actor Andy McDonald in 'Coronation Street'
Scrabble: 60 facts for its 60th birthday
1) Scrabble - The World's Leading Word Game – celebrates its 60th birthday in 2008.
2) Over 150 million games have been sold in 121 countries around the world.
3) Scrabble is currently produced in 29 different languages. The latest is the Welsh language Scrabble introduced in 2006.
4) 53 per cent of all homes in Great Britain have a Scrabble set.
5) Scrabble can be played by email and post.
6) Each hour, at least 30,000 Scrabble games are started.
7) There are around 4,000 Scrabble clubs around the world.
8) Somewhere in the world there are over a million missing Scrabble tiles.
9) The original name for Scrabble was 'Lexico'.
10) The original game did not have a board but was played with tiles only.
11) Alfred Butts, the inventor, decided on the frequency and distribution of letters by analysing the front page of the New York Times.
12) He also invented a game similar to Scrabble called 'Alfred's other game' – it was not a success.
13) There are over 260,000 legal words allowed under British Scrabble rules.
14) There are 124 permissible two-letter words containing every letter in the alphabet except V.
15) The highest number of points that can be scored on the first go is 128 - with 'muzjiks' (Russian peasants).
16) Dr Karl Khoshnaw from Manchester holds the record for the highest word score achieved in a competition, scoring 392 points with 'caziques' - the plural for a West Indian Chief.
17) The highest score for one game is 1049 by Philip Appleby from Lymington in 1989.
18) The US Scrabble dictionary has banned all offensive words.
19) The French play all competitions with a version called Duplicate Scrabble where each player plays with the same letters for each move.
20) It's not possible to play Scrabble in Japanese or Chinese, but they play in English with a rule book in their own language.
21) Scrabble is used all over the world as a method of teaching English.
22) At the 1st World Championships in 1991 in London, there was a minor hiccup before play could get underway – there were no tiles to play with.
23) A Scrabble Championship is one of the only places players aren't penalised for swearing and inappropriate languages – all words that feature in the official Scrabble dictionary can be played.
24) The world's largest game of Scrabble took place in Britain's Wembley Stadium to mark the game's 50th anniversary in 1998. Each tile measured an enormous 6ft square and took two strong men to lift. The game is recorded in the Guinness Book of Records.
25) The English Scrabble World Championships take place every other year. The current winner is Nigel Richards of New Zealand, who beat his opponent in 3 straight games. Winning words included 'jerbil', 'quohog' and 'fax'. French and Spanish World Championships also take place.
26) The World Record for the most number of games being played simultaneously by one player is held by Malaysian player Ganesh Asirvatham who played 25 games at once. These took place over two and a half hours and he won 21 of the games.
27) A ballet called Scrabble had its premiere in South Africa in the 1980s.
28) A horse called Scrabble, trained by Harvey Smith's wife Sue, made a few appearances on an English racecourse before being retired due to lack of success.
29) Dutch gave us the generic word Scrabble – 'schrabbelan' means to claw or scrape and may have come into the language via Dutch settlers in North America.
30) Jenny Watson, an Australian artist, staged an exhibition called 'Scrabble and Paintings on Hessian' in Mannheim, Germany in May 1994.
31) In 1988, a guitarist in an American rock band won $2 million dollars in a scratch and win competition sponsored by McDonald's restaurant chain.
32) Musician Duke Ellington once said: "Playing bop is like Scrabble with all the vowels missing."
33) The Simpsons television series includes an episode in which Bart Simpson plays the bogus word 'kwyjibo' for a huge score defining it as a "balding North American ape with a small chin".
34) Underwater Scrabble was played at Portsmouth University on 12 December 1995 in aid of Children In Need. Special laminated boards were used and the tiles had lead weights attached.
35) If all the Scrabble tiles ever produced were placed end to end they would reach the equivalent of eight times around the earth.
36) UK players have their own organisation, the Association of British Scrabble Players (www.absp.org.uk) which was taken to court in 1995 by an irate player for allowing too little time for him to go to the toilet between games.
37) In 1996 a woman was charged with assault in Haggerstown, USA, when she struck her husband over the head with a Scrabble board.
38) A resident in a UK old people's home was thrown out when she admitted she didn't play Scrabble.
39) A five-year-old boy phoned Leicester police to complain his sister was cheating at Scrabble.
40) Scrabble is used in Douglas Adams' 'The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy' to decide the answer to the ultimate question 'What is the Meaning Of Life?'.
41) Gerry Adams once castigated the British for quibbling over the wording of peace treaties with the phrase: "This is not a game of Scrabble".
42) There is a town called Scrabble in Berkeley County, West Virginia, USA. They don't have a Scrabble club.
43) The record for two players over 24 hours is 162,390 points, scored in Milton Keynes Shopping Centre in 2002 by Chris Hawkins from Peterborough and Austin Shin from Aylesbury. They played 162 games - over six per hour.
44) In 1985 Lt Cdr Waghorn and Lance Corporal Gill played Scrabble continuously for five days when trapped in a crevasse in Antarctica.
45) There are World Scrabble Champions in three languages – English – Nigel Richards (New Zealand), French - Eric Vennin (Belgium), Spanish – Enric Hernandez (Spain).
46) The 2008 National Champion is Allan Simmons from Coldingham on the Scottish Borders.
47) The youngest National Champion was Allan Saldanha from London who was just 15 in 1993 when he won the title.
48) In French Scrabble, there are five tiles worth 10 points – K, W, X, Y, and Z.
49) English Scrabble has 100 tiles, the most tiles are in Italian and Portugeses which both have 120 tiles.
50) There are 19 As in the Malaysian Scrabble set nearly a fifth of the total number of tiles in that game.
51) There is a version of Scrabble themed to the Simpsons TV programme.
52) A pink coloured version of Scrabble was sold to support the Breakthrough charity which aims to heighten awareness of breast cancer.
53) In English speaking Scrabble if you draw seven tiles on the first move, there is a one in eight chance that they will make a seven-letter word.
54) Scrabble tiles have featured on the covers of bestselling albums by Crowded House and World Party.
55) Scrabble features in the best selling books: Lolita, the Handmaid's Tale and Rosemary's Baby.
56) The longest word playable with only vowels is 'euouae' (a Gregorian cadence) and the longest word with only consonants is crwth(s) (an old Welsh stringed instrument).
57) To celebrate the 60th birthday of Prince Charles and Scrabble, which both occurred in 2008, a portrait of Prince Charles made from Scrabble tiles was created.
58) Janet Street-Porter once described Scrabble as more addictive than cocaine, champagne and group sex.
59) Celebrity Scrabble players include: Keanu Reeves, Madonna, Jonathan Ross, the Queen, Sharon Stone and Charles Saatchi.
60) Earlier this year, Scrabble once again became the best-selling board game in Britain, the first time it had held the spot since the 1980s.
Man admits having sex with 1,000 cars
Edward Smith suffers from “mechaphilia”, and he's not shy about discussing his passion. The 57-year-old lives with his current "girlfriend" – a white Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla – and says that his most intense sexual experience was "making love" to the helicopter from 1980s TV hit Airwolf. He has not had a relationship with a woman for 12 years.
Spider as big as a plate
A spider as big as a dinner plate has been found living in one of the world's last scientifically unexplored regions.
The Greater Mekong, which is made up of 600,000 square kilometres of wetlands and rainforest along the Mekong River in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and China, is also home to striped rabbits, bright pink millipedes laced with cyanide and a rat that was believed to have become extinct 11 million years ago.
A host of new species has been found in the area, which is so full of life that previously unknown animals and plants have been turning up at a rate of two a week for a decade.
At least 1,068 new species were identified in the Greater Mekong from 1997 to 2007 along with several thousand tiny invertebrates, the Times reports.
Do you know your Hallelujahs?
Alexandra Burke is certain to score this year's Christmas number one with her version of Hallelujah. But more than 50 artists have already covered the Leonard Cohen 1984 song.
See if you can tell who is singing each version.
GO TO LINK
Wise widow funds home town statue
A statue of funnyman Ernie Wise is to be built in his home town, 10 years after his death.
Fans have wanted a statue of Wise in Morley, West Yorkshire, for years but have been unable to raise enough money.
An application for lottery cash for a £38,000 bronze statue was rejected earlier this year.
A stone version costing about £10,000 will now be created by local sculptor Melanie Wilks, after Wise's widow Doreen agreed to fund the project.
The sculptor has been commissioned by Morley Murals Committee, which had been trying to raise the money.
She told BBC News: "I am absolutely over the moon, I am so excited about it now that it's going to happen."
She said she would start work on the project in the new year, once her final design had been given the go-ahead by Wise's widow, and hoped the statue would be completed in June.
National institution
The committee will meet in January to decide on the site for the statue.
Ernie Wise died in 21 March 1999, at the age of 73.
Born Ernie Wiseman, he forged his comedy partnership with Eric Bartholomew when he was 16, in the 1940s.
But Wiseman and Bartholomew was too long for bright-lights and billboards and they renamed as Morecambe and Wise.
For four decades, the duo whose Christmas specials became a national institution, captured the public's affection with a mix of self-deprecating charm and schoolboy humour.
They were both awarded OBEs in 1976.
Their theme tune was Bring Me Sunshine but the final curtain came with Morecambe's death in Gloucestershire from heart failure in May 1984, aged 57.
Ernie described it as the saddest day of his life.Leona's Run keeps up chart pace
Leona Lewis's version of Snow Patrol track Run has claimed a second week on top of the singles chart.
The download-only track fought off competition from Kings of Leon's Use Somebody to stay at number one.
But the 2006 X Factor winner is likely to have to make way for her successor Alexandra Burke's Hallejulah in next weekend's Christmas countdown.
Lewis's album Spirit rose to number two in the album chart, while Take That's The Circus remained at number one.
But Britney Spears' Circus fell heavily in its second week on release, dropping 10 places to number 14. Her single Womanizer remains in the top 10, at number four.
Sir Terry Wogan returns to the chart for the first time in three decades performing Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth, alongside Aled Jones for Children in Need.
The Radio 2 breakfast host last graced the charts in 1978, with The Floral Dance.
 Alexandra Burke is likely to be at No 1 next week |
The track has already been released online ahead of its physical release on Wednesday. Retail chain HMV said it was its fastest-selling download.
Spokesman Genarro Castaldo said: "Hallelujah promises to be the biggest X Factor release yet, and the chances are that Alexandra will have the Christmas number single in the bag, even before her CD single officially hits the stores in midweek.
"Alexandra's biggest challenge for the festive top spot is likely to come from Peter Kay's alter-ego Geraldine McQueen.
"But the reality is that while he may sell in the tens of thousands, Alexandra will sell in the hundreds of thousands - it's really all about the race for the number two spot now."
Burke's chances were rated as 1/8 by Ladbrokes, and 1/5 by William Hill.
Ladbrokes spokesman Nick Weinberg said: "It's as close to a certainty as you're likely to find."
Internet Explorer security alert
Users of the world's most common web browser have been advised to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.
The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.
Microsoft is investigating the problem and preparing an emergency software patch to resolve it, it says.
Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users.
"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.
Microsoft says it has detected attacks against version seven of the browser - its most widely used edition.
But the company warned that other versions were also potentially vulnerable.
As many as 10,000 websites have been compromised since last week to take advantage of the security flow, said antivirus software maker Trend Micro.
The websites have been mostly serving up programs that steal computer game passwords, but the flaw could be "adopted by more financially motivated criminals", a Trend Micro security researcher said on Monday.15.12.08
Sports Personality 2008
Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy has been named 2008 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
The Scot, who won three gold medals in Beijing, beat Lewis Hamilton and Rebecca Adlington to the honour.
Hoy, 32, becomes the first cyclist to win the prestigious award since Tommy Simpson in 1965.
Vote result:
Chris Hoy 283,630 votes
Lewis Hamilton 163,864
Rebecca Adlington 145,924
Ben Ainslie 35,472
Joe Calzaghe 34,077
Andy Murray 19,415
Nicole Cooke 18,256
Christine Ohuruogu 7,677
Bradley Wiggins 5,633
Rebecca Romero 4,526
14.12.08
Summer Wine star Staff dies at 80
Actress Kathy Staff, who played Nora Batty in long-running BBC One sitcom Last Of The Summer Wine, has died.
The 80-year-old, who was born in Dukinfield, Cheshire, also played cleaner Doris Luke in long-running ITV soap Crossroads.
She also appeared in Emmerdale Farm, Coronation Street, and with David Jason and Ronnie Barker in Open All Hours.
Last of the Summer Wine producer Alan Bell told BBC News the actress had been ill for some time.
"We're distraught, but we have very fond memories of her," he said.
Mr Bell said she often yearned for her character to be more gentle.
"She would play a scene quite gently, and I'd say, 'But Kathy, you've got to harden up, because that's who we all love, the hard, tough Nora Batty.'
"And she said, 'Why can't I be just soft and gentle at times?' And I said, 'Maybe some time we will.'
"She was such a good lady, she was religious, she would never do anyone any harm.
"But above all that, she was thoroughly professional."Alexandra crowned X Factor winner
| Hallelujah! Alexandra wins (Courtesy The X Factor ITV1) Singer Alexandra Burke has been voted the winner of The X Factor, beating four-piece group JLS into second place. The 20-year-old from Islington, London, who made an unsuccessful bid to be in the contest three years ago, was widely praised for her final performances. She sang with her idol and US star Beyonce, and performed her version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, a sure bet to become the Christmas number one. Northern Ireland teenager Eoghan Quigg finished in third place. Burke, who has landed a £1m recording deal, was very emotional after hearing the news, but eventually said: "I am the happiest girl alive". 'Speechless' She was presented with a copy of her debut single, and dedicated it "to everyone who voted for me". Simon Cowell said he was "speechless" after Burke scooped the crown, adding: "You deserve it". The song became available for download after the programme, with the physical release set to hit the shelves early next week. Burke was mentored by Girls Aloud star Cheryl Cole, completing her first season as a judge on the show.
She emulates the feat of Dannii Minogue, who won with Leon Jackson last year during her initial stint on the judging panel. Burke is to perform with Sir Elton John at the O2 Arena in London on New Year's Eve. JLS, who were under the guidance of Louis Walsh, looked very disappointed, but vowed to pursue their dream. The act performed with Irish group Westlife, one of the most successful chart acts of recent years. Quigg, 16, exited the ITV1 show earlier in the evening after polling the fewest votes of the three acts, leaving JLS and Alexandra Burke still in the running. The singer from Dungiven was mentored by Simon Cowell and performed with Irish group Boyzone during the live show. Cowell said Quigg could leave the programme "with his head held high". X Factor presenter Dermot O'Leary said in the programme that eight million votes had been cast during the final. | |
13.12.08
Hamilton gets hands on F1 trophy
Lewis Hamilton finally got his hands on the Formula One world title trophy at a glitzy ceremony in Monte Carlo and then proclaimed himself as "number one".
The 23-year-old has had to wait since 2 November when he won the world title in thrilling fashion on the final day of the season in Brazil.
An hour long ceremony preceded his introduction before being unveiled next to his McLaren at the FIA Gala dinner.
"This year has been very special, the fulfilment of a dream," he said.
"It is the conclusion of an ambition that has taken me and my family on an amazing journey.
"The fact that I have the drivers' world championship trophy in my hand makes me so proud, and it's testament to the great determination and spirit that has helped me get here.
"Tonight has been an incredible evening, so very special.
"To be here with the Prince (Albert of Monaco) and my family, is again another very overwhelming experience.
"As you can imagine, it was a very emotional moment for me to be standing there holding the trophy - I am number one."Earth enjoys full moon close-up
A full moon has occurred closer to the Earth than it has done at any time for the past 15 years.
The Moon's elliptical orbit means its distance from the Earth is not constant.
It was a little over 350,000km away as it passed over the northern hemisphere, about 30,000km closer than usual.
Astronomers said the moon would appear brighter and larger than usual, but the sky in the UK was almost completely covered by cloud.
Closest path
Friday's full moon was predicted to appear up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year, according to Nasa.
The Moon's orbit is elliptical, meaning it does not follow a circular but rather an oval path.
It has reached the point where this oval orbit is nearest to the Earth.
"It's only every few years that a full moon happens to coincide with the part of the Moon's orbit when its closest to the Earth," said Marek Kukula, an astronomer at the UK's Royal Observatory.
The moon appears largest as it rises and sets, but this is a psychological illusion, Dr Kukula said.
"When it's close to the horizon, our brain interprets it as being bigger than it actually is, this is called the moon illusion," he said.
"The size may be striking when it's near the horizon," said Robert Massey of the UK Royal Astronomical Society.
However, he cautioned against expecting too much.
"The Moon may be brighter and may appear somewhat larger, but it's really quite hard for the eye to notice the difference; the eye will compensate for the extra brightness, it's not like going from night to day," said Dr Massey.
The Moon's brightness varies throughout its annual cycle, during the mid-winter in the northern hemisphere it can appear brighter simply because it is higher in the sky.
1000 Questions Free from Worldsbrainiest.com
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X-Fractured
It’s the X Factor final on Saturday and even though everyone knows that the carbon copy of Leona Lewis will win, we thought we’d just recap it for you anyway. You know, just in case everyone is proved wrong by the funny named weeping leprechaun who’ll flood the studio if he wins.
Here’s the X Factor profile for JLS.
Despite dyslexically naming themselves after high street furniture store DFS, JLS have done the impossible and emerged as a credible group-based act which has made it to the X Factor final. Last year we all winced at the incesty-looking group Same Difference who, quite frankly, still give us nightmares with their creepy smiles.
In the past, boybands from this sort of manufactured competition haven’t done so well. Remember One True Voice from Popstars: The Rivals? They were created in a laboratory around the same time as Girls Aloud but divebombed after one single. Chances are your local binman was once in this horrific group. Ask him the next time he’s peeling that rotten banana skin from the outside of a binbag.
It could have been quite easy for one member of JLS to fluff his lines and arse things up for everyone, but to their credit they have steadied the ship well. So far it is impossible to determine which member will come out as gay, which one has an overwhelming appetite for Twix bars and which one will compare a terrorist attack to the plight of elephants.
But will they win? Based on the fact that only teenage girls will vote for them, probably not. Come Saturday night, their mobile phone credit will have been maxed out from texting “OMG have you seen JLS they are like so totally fit” to each other all week. Looks like there may be some competition for those binmen jobs.
Here’s the X Factor recap for Eoghan Quigg.
Apparently he’s actually called Owen, even though his name looks like it could be pronounced ‘Ego Han’ ‘Eggnog’ or ‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeee Og Han!’ Just to have an exclamation mark in his name would have made him automatically cool in our book. However, we’ll put his funny name down to the fact he’s Irish and because whoever wrote his name on the birth certificate was probably drunk on Guinness.
Even though X Factor hasn’t finished, the young Irish scamp has already caused all sorts of problems for people. Diana Vickers – aka the limp-wristed blonde - has reportedly split up from her boyfriend of eight months so she can be with Egohan. Maybe it was his leprechaun style that took her fancy. Whatever the case, if Eoghan doesn’t win we’re sure some magazine will pay megabucks for the exclusive love story involving the two.
For someone his age, Eoghan does have a remarkable voice and we’re glad he’s out making grannies happy instead of collecting ASBOs with his friends. Sadly he hasn’t got any sort of original sob story and is actually copying the crying boy tactic of last year’s winner Leon Jackson. Whenever he could, Leon Jackson turned on the tears and forced people to vote him as the winner. Good thing we did pick him, or else he’d still be crying now and the country would be under 60ft of salty man-water.
But will Eoghan win? Because he decided to cry when his friend and supposed lover Diana got voted out, most people probably lost a bit of respect for him. Jesus, one of you was going to be booted off the show at some point. That’s unless Simon Cowell had plans to fuse the pair together to make sort of crying hand monster that only eats bats.
“Howay man pet, vote for my Alex she’s got a geet canny voice and she should definitely win. If you vote for her, I’ll buy you a stottie”.
The words of Alexandra Burke’s X Factor mentor Cheryl Cole, there. Even if you don’t like Alexandra, at least vote for her anyway as it’ll make Cheryl win and hopefully force Dannii Minogue off the show in some sort of girly rage.
Tomorrow is the grand finale of X Factor 2008. Who knows what we’ll get in 2009. Maybe robots will be allowed to enter the competition. Until that happens, we’ll have to contend with this year’s winner. With JLS and Eoghan Quigg already dealt with, let’s have a look at Alexandra Burke…
How Alexandra got through this far is a bit of a mystery to us. When we watch her each week, she definitely reminds us of someone. Is it Whitney Houston? Is it Mariah Carey? No, it’s - oh, what’s her name - Leona Lewis. You know, the person who won X Factor in 2006.
Go on look at the evidence. There both female, both come from London, look vaguely similar and both have the ability to go “Wooooohhhhhhhhhhwoooooooow” when singing. Do we really want Alexandra Burke to come along and release nothing but ballads, cover versions and music videos with awkward dancing?
On the flipside, if she does win, we may get to some porn out of it! The News Of The World reported that her former boyfriend may have kept a video of them doing all sorts of sexual stuff together. With a £100,000 asking fee, whatever Alexandra did on the tape must be something special. Perhaps Alexandra is able to float using her special powers or can make a sandwich at the same time. Either way, it’ll be better then Paris Hilton’s effort.
So who’ll win tomorrow, and who’ll have to pretend to congratulate the winner like they’re happy for them? Using an ingenious piece of logic, hecklerspray believes the following:
JLS should win, because a group hasn’t won this competition yet, but it depends if teenage girls aren’t too busy out on street corners getting pissed on cider and forget to phone in.
Eoghan Quigg will win if ITV continue the trend of getting annoying children to win their TV shows. See Britain’s Got Talent. Even if he doesn’t win, we predict he’ll cry at least three times on the night. Bring an umbrella if you’re in the audience.
Alexandra Burke will win if the people of the UK decide they want another Leona Lewis in their lives. Technically this might not be a bad thing, as if she wins, everyone might forget about Leona. Chance would be a fine thing.
Visit http://www.hecklerspray.com/ if you enjoyed this review for more.....
Not long now kids. Soon you’ll be able to smash down the door of your local record shop to buy the sound of the X Factor winner destroying Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah!
12.12.08
10 things we didn't know last week
Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.
1. Emily, of Bagpuss fame, was paid with a bag of sweets.
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2. Reindeers are genetically programmed to stop growing in cold weather when food is scare, cutting their calorific needs by 70%.
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3. Kissing can damage hearing.
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4. Butch Cassidy was a Geordie.
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5. Councils are banning number 13 houses on new developments.
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6. Potatoes can weigh 24lbs (11kgs).
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7. The more brothers a man has, the more likely he is to have sons himself.
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8. Dogs get jealous.
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9. Secondary school pupils in England are the best in Europe at science.
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10. The Moon's distance from the Earth can vary by about 30,000km.
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Javelin train speeds into London
A new high-speed train which will be used to transport spectators to the 2012 Olympic Games has made its first journey into London.
The 140mph "javelin" train travelled from Ashford in Kent to St Pancras in 37 minutes - a journey which would normally take 83 minutes.
The Japanese-built trains will speed spectators from central London to the Olympic Games' site in seven minutes
The trains will come into service on domestic routes in December 2009.
The Southeastern train company plans to run 29 of the trains on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Kent to central London.
Transport Minister Lord Adonis, who travelled on the inaugural journey, said: "When these trains enter service next year they will transform the journeys of large numbers of rail passengers travelling between Kent and London - in some cases halving journey times."
The javelin will cut journey times from Ramsgate to London from 119 minutes to 84 minutes, Dover to London will be cut from 112 minutes to 74 and Canterbury to London will come down from 102 minutes to 61 minutes.
'Oldest human brain' discovered
Archaeologists have found the remains of what could be Britain's oldest surviving human brain.
The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped.
Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain.
The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago.
More tests will now be done to establish what it is actually made of.
The team from York Archaeological Trust had been commissioned by the university to carry out an exploratory dig at Heslington East, where campus extension work is under way.
The skull was discovered in an area of extensive prehistoric farming landscape of fields, trackways and buildings dating back to at least 300 BC.
Preservation
The archaeologists believe the skull, which was found on its own in a muddy pit, may have been a ritual offering.
| There is something unusual in the way the brain has been treated, or something that it's been exposed to that has preserved the shape of it York Hospital neurologist |
It was taken to the University of York where CT scans were used to look at the skull's contents.
Philip Duffey, the consultant neurologist who carried out the scans, said the find was "amazing".
"It's exciting that scanning has shown structures which appear to be unequivocally of brain origin.
| FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME |
He added: "This could be the equivalent of a fossil. The brain itself would generally not survive. Fatty tissues would be feasted on by microbes.
"This isn't like the remains found in bogs; it doesn't have any skin on the skull or any tissue remains elsewhere.
"There is something unusual in the way the brain has been treated, or something that it's been exposed to that has preserved the shape of it."
TB victim
Dr Sonia O'Connor, research fellow in archaeological sciences at the University of Bradford added: "The survival of brain remains where no other soft tissues are preserved is extremely rare.
"This brain is particularly exciting because it is very well preserved, even though it is the oldest recorded find of this type in the UK, and one of the earliest worldwide."
 The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago |
The find is the second major discovery during investigations at the site.
Earlier this year, a team from the university's department of archaeology unearthed a shallow grave containing the skeleton of a man believed to be one of Britain's earliest victims of tuberculosis.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the man died in the fourth century, the late-Roman period.
The vice-chancellor of the University of York, Professor Brian Cantor, said: "The skull is another stunning discovery and its further study will provide us with incomparable insights into life in the Iron Age."
Specialists now hope to carry out further tests on the skull to establish how it has survived for so long, and perhaps more about the person whose brain it was.FINAL Countdown
It's an emotional day for Carol Vorderman as she bows out of Countdown after 26 years. The co-host leaves the Channel 4 programme after 4,7500 editions following a bitter dispute with show producers who had wanted her to take a 90 per cent pay cut earlier this year. Tonight, as a special 'goodbye Carol' show airs which shows her past highs and lows, a former Countdown star says that TV bosses have ruined the show for good.
The irony was there from the start. The first show to be broadcast on shiny new Channel 4 — a TV station with a brief to be distinctive, innovative, creative, alternative and cutting edge — was Countdown.
And what was it? A simple teatime ‘words and numbers game’, presided over by an initially wooden regional broadcaster, Richard Whiteley, and three hostesses, including the then unknown, slightly gawky Carol Vorderman.
Based on a leaden French TV original, Des Chiffres et Des Lettres, Countdown would have been at home on British TV in the Fifties and Sixties. You could imagine it presided over by someone like Eamonn Andrews, and with guest clever clogs in Dictionary Corner such as Gilbert Harding and Isobel Barnett of the quiz show What’s My Line.
Carol Vorderman with Des O'Connor as she ends her 26 year career presenting Channel 4's Countdown
But the irony did not end there. After that first appearance of Countdown on November 2, 1982, it took the show a few score (if not hundreds) of editions to get into its stride and to obtain a loyal following. Yet while the rest of Channel 4 went about its own sweet, progressive way, it was fusty old Countdown that brought in the viewers.
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