ON THIS DAY
FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE
SEPTEMBER 11, 1940
AIR raids on London have had little effect on the country’s food supply. The Minister of Food said yesterday: ‘The amount of damage done is annoying, but unimportant as regards the food supplies of London or of the nation. People will get their sugar, butter and bacon as usual.’
SEPTEMBER 11, 1990
A SMILING Prince William began boarding school, Ludgrove prep in Berkshire, yesterday with a confident handshake. But his parents found it a little more difficult to take the big day in their stride. Princess Diana looked tearful and Prince Charles gave his eight-year-old a brief pep talk during their final farewell.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
BRIAN PERKINS, 81.
The New Zealand-born ‘voice of Radio 4’ was impersonated on the show Dead Ringers, where he was portrayed as a mafia don who had taken over the BBC and regularly announces: ‘This is Radio 4, I’m Brian Perkins. I’m the daddy.’
RICHARD ASHCROFT, 53. The singer-songwriter from Lancashire was frontman of the Verve, whose hits included The Drugs Don’t Work. He was denied royalties from Bitter Sweet Symphony for two decades because he sampled four seconds of strings from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ composition The Last Time.
BORN ON THIS DAY
FRANZ BECKENBAUER (19452024). The Bayern Munich footballer, nicknamed Der Kaiser, captained West Germany to World Cup victory in 1974 and lifted the trophy as manager in 1990, making him one of only three men to do both. BETSY DRAKE (19232015). The US actress starred in Every Girl Should Be Married and Room For One More, both with Cary Grant, before giving up her career after marrying him. She went on to become a children’s therapist and said of Hollywood: ‘I divorced the whole town as well as Cary – and they divorced me.’
ON SEPTEMBER 11…
IN 1994, London-born Oscar-winning actress Jessica Tandy died, aged 85. IN 2005, the Beatles’ A Day In The Life was named the best British song of all time in a poll of music experts.
WORD WIZARDRY
GUESS THE DEFINITION
Caitiff (coined 1600s)
A) Foreign prisoner. B) Wild flower. C) Despicable wretch or villain.
Answer below
PHRASE EXPLAINED
The living daylights: meaning the very life of someone, an action done with great severity; daylights were ‘eyes’ in the 18th century, and ‘living’ came later to give it emphasis.
QUOTE FOR TODAY
Character – the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.
Joan Didion, US writer (1934-2021)
JOKE OF THE DAY
WHY did the paper go to the doctor?
Because it was feeling a little blank. Guess The Definition answer: C.