16 September: Andrew Bonar Law

Andrew Bonar Law, British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister was born on this date in 1858. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in New Brunswick, Canada, the son of a Scottish clergyman named James Law.

2. His mother wanted to name him after Robert Murray M'Cheyne, a preacher she greatly admired. However, she already had a son called Robert so had to settle for naming him Andrew Bonar, after a biographer of M'Cheyne. His family and friends always called him Bonar, rather than Andrew.

3. His father had a smallholding to supplement his income. He worked there to help out until he was 12 when he went to live in Scotland with his late mother’s cousin and began work in the merchant bank the family owned.

4. He left school aged sixteen to work in the iron industry rather than attend university. By the time he was thirty, he was a wealthy man.

5. He liked to play Chess and would carry a chess set on his daily commute, challenging other commuters to a game. He even competed with internationally renowned chess masters.

6. He married Annie Pitcairn Robley, the daughter of a Glaswegian merchant, in 1891. Her death in 1909 hit Law hard; despite his relatively young age and prosperous career, he never remarried.

7. In 1900 he was elected Conservative MP for Glasgow Blackfriars. He lost his seat in the 1906 Liberal landslide General Election, but he returned to represent Dulwich following a by-election later that year.

8. During the first world war he worked closely with the Liberal Party as a coalition. He admired David Lloyd George enough to decline the job of Prime Minister in favour of him. Their coalition was re-elected by a landslide following the Armistice.

9. However, his admiration didn’t quite extend to allowing enough Conservatives to defect to Lloyd George’s proposed new party. Law made a speech at the Conservative Carlton Club which changed their minds and saved the Conservative party. When Lloyd George resigned the King invited Bonar Law to form a new administration in 1922.

10. He resigned in May 1923 due to ill health, and died of throat cancer 6 months later. He was the fourth shortest-serving prime minister of the United Kingdom (211 days in office).

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

15 September: Chestnuts

In the French Revolutionary Calendar today is “Marron”, or Day of the Chestnut, so here are 10 things you might not know about chestnuts:

1. Sweet chestnuts belong to the genus Castanea, in the Beech family.

2. What did the Romans ever do for us? Plant sweet chestnut trees all over Europe, for one. They did so because chestnuts were an important part of their diet. They ground them into flour or coarse meal to make Bread, and Roman soldiers were fed a type of Porridge made from chestnuts before heading into battle.

3. In places where it was hard to grow grain and food was scarce, chestnuts became the staple food for poor people. In Honore de Balzac's novel Père Goriot, Vautrin states that Eugène de Rastignac's family is living off of chestnuts; this represents how poor Eugene's family is.

4. When you think of chestnuts, you probably think of roasted ones. Chestnuts roasting on an open Fire and all that. They can also be boiled, pureed, grilled, steamed, deep-fried, candied, ground into flour, churned into Ice cream or stirred into savoury Stuffing. In fact, an old Corsican wedding tradition says to prepare 22 different chestnut dishes for a couple’s big day.

5. Don’t, however, eat them raw. Chestnuts contain tannic acid, which can upset the stomach.

6. Chestnuts are the only nut which contains Vitamin C. In fact, a 30g serving providing 20% of our recommended daily intake. They’re also a great source of Potassium, as well as minerals such as Iron, Calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, Zinc and B vitamins.

7. The oldest and largest chestnut tree in the world is between 2,000 and 4,000 years old and, when it was measured in 1780, had a circumference of 190 feet. It is located on the eastern slope of Mount Etna, 8km from the crater. It’s known as “Castagno dei Cento Cavalli” or “The Hundred-Horse Chestnut”, not because it’s a Horse chestnut, but because a Queen and her entourage of a hundred knights took shelter under its branches during a storm.

8. The oft parodied poem, “Under a spreading chestnut-tree/the village smithy stands” was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When the tree mentioned in the poem was cut down, part of it was made into an armchair and presented to Longfellow by local schoolchildren.

9. Chestnuts are a recurring motif in In George Orwell's 1984, referenced in poems referring to nature, modern life, or the saying: 'that old chestnut'. Protagonist Winston Smith frequents a bar called the Chestnut Tree Café.

10. The French and Italians have two words for chestnut. An ordinary chestnut is called a châtaigne, whereas the best, sweetest chestnuts are called marrons. In England we know them as the Spanish chestnut.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

14 September: Passion flower

Today’s Plant of the day is the Passion flower. 10 passion flower facts:

1. Passion flowers belong to the genus Passiflora.

2. There are about 500 species of them with a wide range of variations in the flowers and leaves. They are mostly tendril-bearing vines, but some are shrubs or trees.

3. Most are native to Mexico, Central America, the United States and South America, but some are found in Southeast Asia and Oceania.

4. They are often grown in butterfly farms, as many species of Butterfly feed on them.

5. The plant has been used in medicines, to relieve anxiety, insomnia, pain, epilepsy and high blood pressure.

6. The Victorians loved them and created many cultivars and hybrids.

7. Spanish missionaries in the 15th and 16th centuries used them to illustrate aspects of the story of Christ’s crucifixion, and it was they who gave them the name passion flower, after the passion of Christ. The symbolism includes: The ten petals and sepals represent the ten faithful apostles; The tendrils represent the whips used in the flagellation of Christ; The flower's radial filaments represent the crown of thorns.

8. Names for the flower in other languages reflect this: Spanish: espina de Cristo ('thorn of Christ'); and old German names include Christus-Krone ('Christ's crown'), Christus-Strauss ('Christ's bouquet') and Dorn-Krone ('crown of thorns').

9. Outside the Christian religion, the flowers are often known as “Clock flower/plant”. This is the case in Japan, Greece and Israel. In Hawaii, they focus on the tendrils and call the flower liliko, where the element “li” means a string for tying fabric together.

10. In India, it is known as Krishnakamala because its dark violet blue colour resembles Bhagwan Krishna.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

13 September: Scooby Doo

On this date in 1969 the first ever episode of Scooby Doo was shown on TV. 10 things you might not know about Scooby Doo:

1. Originally, the show was going to be about a band called The Mysteries 5 and Scooby was to be a sheepdog called Too Much who played the bongos. The human characters were going to be called Geoff, Mike, Kelly and Linda, with an extra character, Linda’s brother 'W.W'. Who's S-S-scared? was another possible title.

2. Scooby’s name was lifted from the Frank Sinatra song, Strangers in the Night after TV executive Fred Silverman heard the song being played on the PA during a flight. Though Sinatra actually sings “doobie,” not “Scooby.”

3. Shaggy’s real name is Norville Rogers. Scooby’s full name is Scoobert.

4. Scooby is a Great Dane with a speech impediment (pronounces all words as beginning with R) and is perpetually seven years old. His appearance was created by Iwao Takamoto. He consulted a Great Dane breeder who told him the important points of a Great Dane: straight back, straight legs, small chin. Takamoto turned this on its head and gave Scooby a hump back, bowed legs and a big chin.

5. The gang’s vehicle, the Mystery Machine, is a customised 1968 Chevrolet Sportvan.

6. The voice of Fred has been provided by voice actor Frank Welker in every Scooby series except A Pup Named Scooby Doo. Welker has has more than 850 acting credits, but Fred was his first at the age of 23.

7. Scooby is a triplet and his triplet brothers are called Skippy Doo and Dooby Doo. He also has a sister, who is the mother of Scrappy Doo, three other brothers and a cousin, Dixie Doo. He has an ancestor called Yankee Doodle Doo, and another called Great-Grandpa Scooby, who is a ghost.

8. The running gag about Velma always losing her glasses came about by accident. The voice actor who played her, Nicole Jaffe, also wore glasses and during an early recording session, lost them. The producers liked her utterances at the time so much that they kept them in.

9. Casey Kasem voiced Shaggy from 1969 to 1997, and left because he was asked to voice a Burger King commercial as Shaggy. Kasem was a vegan and thought Shaggy should be vegan as well.

10. The term "Don't have a Scooby" is recognised rhyming slang for "clue".

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

12 September: Marie Name Day

Today is the name day for people called Marie. Marie is a variation of the feminine given name Maria. 10 famous Maries:

1. Marie Antoinette: Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria, who was decapitated by a guillotine during the French Revolution

2. Marie Curie: Polish physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific categories.

3. Marie Laveau: New Orleans voodoo practitioner

4. Marie Lloyd: English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", "My Old Man "

5. Marie Osmond: American singer, actress, television personality, author and businesswoman. As a singer, she has had several chart-topping country music songs such as "Paper Roses"

6. Marie Tussaud: commonly known as Madame Tussaud, French artist known for her wax sculptures and Madame Tussauds, the wax museum she founded in London.

7. Marie: name attributed to The X-Men character Rogue in the films X-Men, X2: X-Men United, and X-Men: The Last Stand

8. Marie Kondo: Japanese organising consultant, author, and TV presenter.

9. Marie of Romania: last queen of Romania as the wife of King Ferdinand I.

10. Marie Schrader: fictional character in the television series Breaking Bad.

NEW!!

The Gingerbread Man

A short story collection including aliens, princes and princesses, dragons, superhero origin stories and of course, a gingerbread man.

Paperback

  E-book

11 September: Magical Mystery Tour

On this date in 1967, filming began for The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour. 10 facts about it:

1. This is the third film featuring The Beatles.

2. It’s about a bunch of people on a mystery tour, a mystery tour being a type of cheap weekend trip popular at the time, in which people travelled by coach to an unknown destination. Some of the passengers on this trip are magicians who cause strange things to happen.

3. The film was shot mostly at RAF West Malling, a decommissioned military airfield in Kent.

4. The coach was a Plaxton-bodied Bedford VAL, with the registration number URO 913E. It is now outside the Hard Rock Cafe in Orlando, Florida.

5. The coach was adorned with a hand written "Magical Mystery Tour" sign, which attracted curious onlookers who began following it and causing traffic congestion. John Lennon got so fed up of it all that he ordered the Bus to stop, got out and tore the sign off. At Teignmouth, Devon the local constable chased them on for disturbing the peace.

6. There wasn’t much of a script. Paul McCartney, inspired by Ken Kesey‘s Merry Pranksters, who drove around California in a multi-coloured school bus spreading the LSD gospel. On the flight home, McCartney jotted down ideas, including the lyrics for the title song, on a piece of scrap paper. This was as near to a script as the film got. Most of the actors didn’t even realise until they were actually on the bus, that they were going to have to improvise.

7. One scene was inspired by a dream John Lennon had, that he was a waiter shovelling Spaghetti onto a customer.

8. Some of the flying scenes are outtakes from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

9. The Disney Channel broadcast the movie in the 1990s, with the strip club scene edited out.

10. The film premiered on TV on Christmas Day 1967 and received poor reviews. It’s said that Ringo Starr blamed the BBC for this because they broadcast the film in black and white (Colour television was in its infancy at the time). He rang the BBC to complain and as a result they broadcast it again in January on BBC2 in colour. The critics still didn’t like it.

10 September: Beryl Cook

Beryl Cook, artist famous for painting pictures of fat ladies, was born on this date in 1926.

Much as I'd like to put an actual painting by Beryl Cook here,
I could find nothing in the public domain.

1. She was born in Egham, Surrey and christened Beryl Francis Lansley.

2. Her parents were Adrian S. B. Lansley and Ella Farmer-Francis, and she had three sisters.

3. She left school at fourteen and had a variety of jobs, including as a showgirl in a touring production of The Gypsy Princess. Another of her jobs was in the fashion industry.

4. She married John Cook in 1948. He was a childhood friend who was in the Merchant Navy.

5. The couple ran a pub in Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk for a while, then went to live in Southern Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) for ten years.

6. Beryl had never been trained as an artist and hadn’t shown any interest in painting before, but one day, on impulse, she picked up some of her son’s paints and painted a picture. She found she enjoyed painting so much that she couldn’t stop and when she ran out of paper, used anything she could find: scraps of wood, fire screens and a breadboard.

7. When the family returned to England, Beryl carried on painting. In 1968 they bought a guest house in Plymouth and a few years later, one of their guests noticed her paintings and put her in touch with the management of the Plymouth Arts Centre, where her first exhibition took place in November 1975.

8. Unlike her trademark fat ladies, Beryl Cook was a very shy, private person. When she was awarded an OBE in 1995 she was too shy to attend the main ceremony but received her award at a quieter ceremony in Plymouth.

9. In 2004 TV company Tiger Aspect made two half hour animated films of some of Beryl Cook’s fat ladies, who meet at Plymouth’s Dolphin Pub. The series was called Bosom Pals, with Alison Steadman, Rosemary Leach, Timothy Spall and Dawn French providing the voices.

10. She once said, ‘I don’t know how my pictures happen, they just do. They exist, but for the life of me I can’t explain them’.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

9 September: Luigi Galvani

Born on this date in 1737 was Luigi Galvani, Italian physicist. Here are 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Bologna, Italy, Via Marconi, 25, to be exact. The house in which he was born is still standing.

2. His father was Domenico Galvani, a goldsmith, and his mother was called Barbara Caterina Foschi.

3. Galvani was a very religious man and had a strong faith since his youth. At 15 he considered taking religious vows, but his parents were against it.

4. He went to university in Bologna to study medicine instead, graduating in 1759. He also took a degree in philosophy.

5. His thesis was on the formation and development of bones. From there he went on to become a lecturer in anatomy at the University of Bologna and professor of obstetrics at the Institute of Arts and Sciences.

6. He was also a member of the Bologna Academy of Science, of which he would become president in 1772. It was here that he met his wife, Lucia, who was the daughter of a professor there. Lucia died in 1790 at just 47. The couple had no children.

7. Galvani is best known for his experiments into what he called animal Electricity. He discovered this by accident on 20 September 1786. When he touched the nerves in a Frog’s leg with scissors during an electrical storm, the muscles contracted.

8. His work inspired Mary Shelley, who’d taken his report as holiday reading on the trip where a ghost story writing contest resulted in her creating Frankenstein.

9. When Napoleon’s Cisalpine Republic was established, Galvani refused to swear allegiance to it and so was, as we would say today, cancelled. He was dropped from the faculty rolls, and his salary was terminated. He moved back to the family home with his brother. Although the law did change so that he could be a professor without swearing allegiance to Napoleon, by this time the stress of it all had ruined his health to the extent that he died at just 61 in the house in which he was born.

10. The world galvanise, meaning to shock or excite (someone) into taking action, originates from Galvani and his work.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

8 September: Johannesburg

The town of Johannesburg was founded on this date in 1886. 10 facts about it:

1. The exact origin of the name isn’t known. There were several people with the name "Johannes" involved in the early history of the city, but records about the naming of the settlement are lost, so nobody knows which of them it was named for.

2. The origin of the city’s nickname, eGoli or the City of Gold, is more obvious. EGoli is a Zulu name which means place of gold. The city sprang up when gold prospectors arrived in the late 1880s. Johannesburg is home to the world’s deepest mine, the Mponeng gold mine, with a mining shaft depth of 2,800m-3,400m below the surface. 40% of the World’s Gold is found in the greater Johannesburg region.

3. It’s the largest city in South Africa with a population, in 2011, of 4,434,827.

4. Hardly surprising, then, that it is home to several of Africa’s “largests”. Between 1973 and 2021, it was home to the tallest building in Africa: the Carlton Centre in the CBD until 2019 and then The Leonardo in Sandton. In 2021, the Iconic Tower in Cairo, Egypt took the honour. The Johannesburg stock exchange is the largest on the continent. The OR Tambo International Airport (named after Oliver Reginald Tambo, an anti-apartheid activist) is the busiest in Africa, while the Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital is the largest hospital in Africa and the third-largest in the world. it has 3,200 beds and more than 6,700 staff members. Then there is the world’s largest dry port, City Deep, developed in 1977 by South African Railways, and the largest sports stadium, the FNB Stadium.

5. Staying with sport for a moment, Johannesburg is one of only two cities in the world to have hosted finals for the FIFA World Cup, Cricket World Cup and IRB Rugby World Cup. The other is London.

6. There are arguably more trees than people in Johannesburg. As the area was originally grassland, the trees were planted by mankind. There are over 10 million trees, with more being planted every year, to combat the greenhouse effect of mining.

7. Vilakazi Street in Soweto (an acronym for South Western Townships) has the distinction of being the only street in the world to have been home to two Nobel Prize winners, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.

8. There’s a zoo, founded in 1904, which was once the home of the only two Polar Bears in Africa.

9. The area around Johannesburg is known for its fossil finds and is said to be the birthplace of humanity. The Cradle of Humankind is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and 40% of all fossil finds have taken place here.

10. Johannesburg’s twin cities include: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Birmingham, United Kingdom; Beijing and Shanghai, China; Ramallah, Palestine; Montreal, Canada Rio de Janiero, Brazil; Windhoek, Namibia and New York City, United States.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

7 September: Buddy Holly

This date in 1936 saw the birth of Buddy Holly. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. His real name was Charles Hardin Holley. "Buddy" was his childhood nickname, and the spelling of his surname came about as a result of a spelling mistake on his contract with Decca records in 1956.

2. One of his earliest musical appearances was alongside his brothers in a local talent show. He appeared with a Violin. He couldn’t play it, so his brother Larry greased the bow so it would not make any sound. The brothers won the contest.

3. The song Peggy Sue was originally written as “Cindy Lou” after Holly’s niece. However, co-writer Jerry Allison prevailed upon the others to name it after his girlfriend, Peggy Sue Gerron.

4. The song That’ll be the Day, which topped the charts in 1957, was inspired by a John Wayne movie called The Searchers, which Holly went to see in 1956. "That'll be the day" was a line John Wayne uttered several times in the film.

5. Formed in 1956, the Crickets consisted of Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Joe B. Mauldin. At first, they called themselves The Two Tones.

6. He was known for his distinctive horn-rimmed glasses. He needed the glasses, because he had 20/800 vision. However, to begin with, he wore nondescript plastic and wire-framed glasses. It was his optician, Dr. J. Davis Armistead, who suggested he tried a new style, like those of Phil Silvers’s character, “Sergeant Bilko”.

7. In his home town of Lubbock, Texas, there is a 5-foot tall, 13-foot wide, 750-pound sculpture of the glasses, created by Lubbock artist Steve Teeters, which has stood at the entrance to the Buddy Holly Center since 2002.

8. He met his wife, María Elena Santiago, during a visit to a New York music publisher where she worked. He asked her out the first time they met and proposed on their first date. He married her despite advice that being married might disappoint his fans and hinder his career. When Maria accompanied the band on tours, she’d be passed off as the Crickets' secretary.

9. The Crickets were an influence on other up and coming artists of the time, including The Beatles. In fact, when the Fab Four were trying to come up with a better name for themselves than the Quarrymen, the Crickets inspired them to think of insects. Beetles became Beatles, a musical pun.

10. Shortly after 1:00 a.m. on February 3, 1959, Holly was killed when the aircraft he was on crashed into a cornfield five miles northwest of Clear Lake, Iowa, shortly after take-off. (see American Pie). Holly was 22 years old. The wreckage was strewn across 100 yards. Holly’s glasses weren’t found until the spring, when the snow melted. They were handed in to the sheriff's office and ended up in storage until they were discovered there in 1980.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

6 September: George and Mildred

On this date in 1976 George and Mildred was first broadcast on Thames TV. 10 things you might not know about the show:

1. This show was a spin off from Man About the House in which George and Mildred Roper move out of their flat and into a house in an upmarket estate. Their neighbour, Jeffrey Fourmile, is a snob who thinks that the presence of a working class couple will adversely affect property prices in the neighbourhood. His wife, Ann and Mildred, however, become firm friends.

2. There was a US version called The Ropers, which was itself a spin off of the US version of Man About the House, Three’s Company.

3. George and Mildred’s address is 46 Peacock Crescent, Hampton Wick. The exterior shots were filmed at 46 and 44 Manor Road, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 8AB. The interior scenes were shot at Thames Television studios in Teddington. However, the studio interiors are actually too wide to belong to the real houses. Their kitchens and hallways would overlap unless, according to IMDB Trivia “there was a weird duplex workaround.”

4. In the first series, George buys Mildred a Yorkshire Terrier called Truffles, which she registers with the kennel club as "Truffles duBorbon Fitzwilliam III".

5. The local Residents' Association committee is comprised of Mr and Mrs Morecambe and Miss Wise.

6. George has a 1933 Brough motorcycle and sidecar, which is now exhibited at the London Motorcycle Museum.

7. There was a film made of George and Mildred which focussed on the Ropers celebrating their anniversary in an upmarket hotel.

8. There were five series. There was to be a sixth, but Yootha Joyce, who played Mildred, died suddenly in August 1980, just as rehearsals were about to start, and before the film was released, so the movie is dedicated to her. She died of liver failure, having hidden her alcoholism from friends and colleagues. It was said she’d been drinking half a bottle of brandy a day for ten years.

9. Norman Eshley, who plays Jeffrey Fourmile, also appeared in Man About the House as Robin's brother Norman. However, the likeness between Robin’s brother and Fourmile is never alluded to in George and Mildred.

10. In 1976 and 1977, Murphy and Joyce appeared as the ugly sisters, Georgina and Mildred, in the London Palladium pantomime, Cinderella.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

5 September: Harry Name Day

In Sweden, people called Harry celebrate their name day today.

Harry is a male given name of English, Norse and Germanic origin. A diminutive form of Harold, Harrison or Harvey, it eventually came into use as a name in its own right.

10 famous people called Harry:

1. Harry Houdini: escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

2. Harry Secombe: Welsh comedian, actor, singer and television presenter.

3. Prince Harry: Duke of Sussex second son of King Charles III of the United Kingdom.

4. Harry Styles: British singer, songwriter, actor as well as member of the boy band One Direction.

5. Harry Kane: English professional footballer who plays as a striker for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and captains the England national team.

6. Harry Enfield: English comedian, actor, writer and director. He is known in particular for his television work, and for the creation and portrayal of comedy characters such as Kevin the Teenager.

7. Harry S Truman: 33rd President of the United States.

8. Harry Corbett: English magician, puppeteer, and television presenter. He was best known as the creator of the glove puppet character Sooty in 1952.

9. Harry Patch: English supercentenarian, briefly the oldest man in Europe, and the last surviving trench combat soldier of the First World War from any country.

10. Harry Potter: title character in Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle