Author: Purple Brolly

The BRIT Awards were first devised for the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (25 years on the throne) by the Britannia Music Club, as a way to celebrate British popular music. It was in 1982 that it started to be an annual event in London in February, organised by the British Phonographic Industry.

In 1982, there were nine Awards ~ this has now become thirteen with the inclusion of a critics’ award and three international ones. There are nominations for each category, e.g. Best Album of the Year, and the winner is announced at the BRIT Awards event.

From 1990 to 2006 this has been recorded, edited and put out on TV the following night, but in the other years it has been live. On occasion, this has been unfortunate when things have gone slightly awry. However, it is generally seen as a showcase of musical talent and an entertaining evening.

(Top image: Scorpions and Centaurs at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

A force of nature, Yorkshireman Brian Blessed (1936-) is an actor on stage and screen, a voiceover artist and narrator, and, if that were not enough, he is an adventurer with a couple of world records to his name. Once heard never forgotten, Brian Blessed is known for his huge voice, boisterous personality and full beard.

Boxing and judo are two sports to which his physique was well suited and he has also ploughed his amazing energy into mountaineering ~ he has climbed on Mount Everest three times ~ and trekking in extreme conditions. He holds the world record for being the oldest man to walk to the North Pole, as well as the world record for climbing to a height of 28,500 feet without oxygen!

He has appeared in many different plays, TV series and films, e.g. Z-Cars, Cats, Flash Gordon, Blackadder and of course, Shakespeare. He was awarded an OBE in 2016 for his services to the arts and charity, as he is involved in animal welfare. Oh, and he has completed the training to be a cosmonaut!

(Image: Tim Ellis at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

‘The Mousetrap’, written by Agatha Christie (1890-1976) from Devon, is the world’s longest-running play. It opened in the West End of London in 1952 and has continued ever since. It has also been taken on tour around the country, adding to the record-breaking thousands of performances over the years.

Why it has lasted so long is a subject for debate, but it has become a much-loved piece of British nostalgia. The plot is a murder-mystery, with a twist at the end which was probably unusual in 1952 but not at all surprising today. However, audiences are traditionally asked not to tell anyone the secret, although it has been parodied in comedy sketches and is well-known in that way.

There has never been a film version because it was stipulated in the rights to the play that this could not happen until six months after the first West End run had finished… which isn’t happening any time soon!

(Image: The Lowry at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)