Category: Entertainment

Born in Surrey in 1919 as Margaret Hookham, Dame Margot Fonteyn‘s mother was key to her future success. She put her in for ballet lessons at the age of four and made sure she continued practising, even when the family moved to China for a while. Her daughter would go on to become Britain’s most famous ballerina and the most celebrated dance partner of Rudolf Nureyev (pictured above).

Away from the stage, her Panamaniam husband, Dr Roberto Arias, involved her in a failed attempt to overthrow his country’s government in 1959 and she was briefly put in prison. In 1964 he was shot several times and became paralysed for the rest of his life.

Amidst all of this, Dame Margot was gaining fame and celebrity across the world as a prima ballerina. She had three main dance partners, the last of which was Rudolf Nureyev, nineteen years her junior. They were an exquisite pairing and audiences were willing to pay double the price to see them perform. They remained very close friends and when Dame Margot was dying from cancer in 1991, Nureyev paid towards the cost of her treatment.

(Image: Eric Koch at Wikimedia Commons / CC0)

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)

Pantomimes are a very British part of the Christmas season. They are theatrical shows, featuring current celebrities, and they run for several weeks as there is high demand for family tickets. Comedy, songs, slapstick, satire and audience participation are crucial elements of a ‘panto’. Most traditional pantomimes are based on the children’s stories of ‘Cinderella’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘Peter Pan’, ‘Dick Whittington’ or ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, as the plots are so familiar the audience can focus on and enjoy the rest of the show.

Pantomime developed into its present form during the last century, with the emergence of the all-important characters of ‘the Dame’ (a man dressed as a caricature of a larger-than-life, obnoxious woman), two lovers, a villain, an animal or two (actors in costume), plus others who aid the story and join in with the comedy and singing.

Confusing? No, not at all. You really have to see a panto to appreciate this piece of British eccentricity… and don’t be shocked to see adults shouting out with their children: “It’s behind you!”, “Oh, yes it is!” or “Oh no, it isn’t!”. That’s all part of the fun.

(Featured photo courtesy of www.coventrytelegraph.net)

Conkers is an old, traditional game that used to be played by schoolchildren (and sometimes adults), but is not so much nowadays. A ‘conker’ is the seed of the horse chestnut tree, so autumn is the time to be looking for them on the ground. They have green or brown prickly cases.

Cheating has always been part of playing conkers, primarily with the aim of toughening up your conkers for the battles ahead. Methods used include soaking them in vinegar and/or baking them in the oven. The object of the game is to smash up your opponent’s conker so that it falls off the string, so the firmer your conker is, the better.

All the official rules can be found on the World Conker Championship website, but some players use different rules for turn-taking.

(Top image: MrsEds at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

London-born Ian Fleming (1908-1964) wrote fourteen books featuring the fictional secret agent James Bond, Agent 007. As an intelligence officer during World War 2, Fleming knew of the espionage world and was suave and sophisticated, with an eye for the ladies.

Fleming emigrated to Jamaica and took the name ‘James Bond’ from the author of a book on birds of the West Indies. His first Bond novel was ‘Casino Royale’, published in 1953. He was living in his villa, now an exclusive holiday home with its own private beach, ten minutes’ drive from what is now named the Ian Fleming International Airport.

From 1962 onwards, James Bond has been an incredibly popular film series, covering many of the books and short stories written by Fleming. However, at least six of the twenty-five films have not had any roots in a Fleming novel, but have been written by other authors. There have been eight different British actors playing James Bond.

Ian Fleming was also the author of ‘Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car’ (1964), published two months after his death and made into a film in 1968 with a screenplay written by director Ken Hughes (1922-2001) and Roald Dahl (1916-90), the children’s author.

(Image of Ian Fleming and Sean Connery: Scio Central School at Flickr.com / CC BY-ND 2.0)

Blackpool in Lancashire has been a popular seaside resort since the mid-18th century. When electric lights were invented, Blackpool’s town council took the forward-thinking decision to have electric street lighting ~ the first in the world. So it was in 1879 that the ‘Blackpool Illuminations‘ were born.

It has grown from a mere eight arc lights to around a million lamps, covering six miles of seaside promenade. The lights have been switched on every year, except for the War years, and a different celebrity is asked to pull the main switch. The lights stay on for sixty-six nights from the end of August to the beginning of November.

The expression “It’s like Blackpool Illuminations in here” means that someone has left too many lights on!

(Image: Andrew Hurley at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Eric Clapton (nicknamed ‘Slow Hand’) was born as Eric Patrick Clapp in 1945 in Surrey and spent his youth immersed in American blues music and honing his guitar-playing skills. At just 17 years old, he joined the first of many bands in his long career. These included The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek & The Dominos.

After surviving the rock’n’roll lifestyle of the 1960s, he began playing under his own name and performing vocals for his own songs in the early 1970s. His guitar-playing style is revered by millions of fans worldwide and other musicians. He is a master of the wailing, bluesy rock guitar sound, with fine control of the vibrato, bends and power chords.

His favourite London venue is the Royal Albert Hall, having played there more than two hundred times so far. ‘Layla’ (1970), ‘Wonderful Tonight’ (1977), ‘Cocaine’ (1977), ‘Tears in Heaven’ (1992) and ‘My Father’s Eyes’ (1998) are a small sample of Clapton’s prolific output. His best-selling album is ‘Unplugged’ (1992), a live performance in a studio in Berkshire. It has sold 26 million copies worldwide and is also the best-selling live album by anyone, anywhere! Clapton has also sold 49 million copies of his other albums.

(Image: Majvdl at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)