Pop History Moment: Europe Celebrates V-E Day

With Hitler dead and his dream of a Third Reich to last for a thousand years crumbling, on this day in 1945 Germany's Generaloberst Alfred Jodl signed his country's Instrument of Surrender on behalf of German President Karl Dönitz's Flensburg government, effectively ending World War II in Europe; the signing of the document, at Reims in France on the 7th and again in Berlin on the 8th, ushered in a two-day celebration in most of the world, which was (and indeed still is) known as V-E Day.

In October 1946, following his appearance at the Nuremberg Trials, Jodl was executed for conspiracy to commit crimes against peace.
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POPnews - May 7th

[It took just 18 minutes for the RMS Lusitania to sink after being torpedoed by a German U-boat 15 km (8 miles) off Ireland's Old Head of Kinsale. The last living survivor of the wreck, Audrey Lawson-Johnston (née Pearl), was just three months old when she was saved by her governess, Alice Lines. She was one of the lucky ones; only 289 of the dead were ever recovered, 65 of whom were never identified, with 885 victims unaccounted for. To this day, rumours persist that Lusitania was sunk because she was carrying 'contraband of war' and therefore considered a warship by the Imperial German Navy...]
558 CE - The dome of Constantinople's Hagia Sophia collapsed following an earthquake; Emperor Justinian I immediately ordered Isodorus the Younger to rebuild it, which he'd done by 562 CE.

1274 - Having been convoked on the final day of March 1272, the Second Council of Lyons opened (in France, of all places, since that's where Lyons is) to regulate the election of the Pope; as presided over by Gregory X, it was also called to act upon a pledge made by Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII to end the Great Schism by uniting the Eastern and Western churches.

1429 - Joan of Arc ended the Siege of Orléans after pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning, wounded, to lead the final charge; the victory marked a turning point in the Hundred Years' War, although it did nothing to stop all that 'weaker sex' crap...

1664 - France's King Louis XIV inaugurated the Palace of Versailles, having officially moved his court there from Paris the previous day.

1697 - Stockholm's royal castle, the Tre Kronor - parts of which dated back to medieval times - was destroyed by fire, only to be replaced early in the next century by the current Royal Palace, built by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. Today, this remains the official residence of the Swedish Royal Family, while their private residence is at Drottningholm Palace.

1718 - The city of New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, who'd been born in Ville-Marie (which is better known today as Montreal).

1824 - The world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was given at Vienna's Kärntnertortheater. The work was conducted by Michael Umlauf, under the deaf composer's supervision; as it was Beethoven's first public appearance in a dozen years, the theatre was packed, and when the concert was over the crowd gave him five standing ovations.

1832 - The independence of Greece was recognized by the Treaty of London, whereupon Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria was elected King.

1840 - The Great Natchez Tornado struck Natchez, Mississippi, killing 317 people and injuring 109 - making it the second deadliest tornado in US history, after the Tri-State Tornado.

1895 - Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrated his invention - the world's first radio receiver - to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society in Saint Petersburg; the Russians still celebrate this day as Radio Day.

1915 - A German U-20 submarine sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people (including 128 Americans and more than a hundred children); public reaction to the sinking turned many formerly pro-German Americans against the German Empire, and the event would be instrumental in the US entry into World War I.

1947 - NBC's Kraft Television Theater debuted; the series would run for the next 11 years and launch many future movie stars in their careers, including James Dean and Grace Kelly.

1954 - During the Indochina War the Battle of Dien Bien Phu - which began on March 13th - ended in a French defeat at the hands of the Viet Minh. In all 11,721 prisoners (of whom 4,436 were wounded) were taken by the Vietnamese in that battle alone, of whom only 3,290 were repatriated; the rest died of disease, privation, and abuse at the hands of their captors. The war effectively over, the following day the Geneva Convention convened, with the victorious Ho Chi Minh in attendance.

1960 - At the height of the Cold War - and in the midst of the U-2 Crisis - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced that his nation was holding American pilot Gary Powers, who'd been shot down in his U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk six days earlier.

1964 - Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashed near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reported that the cockpit data recorder indicated the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger, later identified as Francisco Gonzales.

1974 - West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigned in scandal over allegations that one of his assistants, Günter Guillaume, was a spy for East Germany's Stasi; the story of the Guillaume Affair was later told in the play Democracy by Michael Frayn.

1992 - Space Shuttle Endeavour was launched on mission STS-49 - its maiden voyage.

1999 - A jury found The Jenny Jones Show and its producer Warner Bros. liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure, after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz into appearing on a secret same-sex crush episode. Schmitz later murdered Amedure and a jury awarded Amedure's family US$25 million, an award which was later overturned; Schmitz was also sentenced to serve 25-50 years in prison where hopefully he's been overturned a few times himself.

2007 - The tomb of Herod the Great was discovered by Ehud Netzer, in the exact location at Herodium where historian Flavius Josephus said it was 2000 years ago.
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Toots Shor: Saloonkeeper To The Stars

Bernard 'Toots' Shor - born on this day in 1903 - was fond of calling himself a saloonkeeper, when in fact he was actually a restaurateur and more of an impresario than anything else; while it was open, Toots Shor's Restaurant gave him more than just the ideal perch from which to watch a passing parade of stars, it gave him a staging area to help launch a nightly spectacle featuring those famous faces in the crowd.

In keeping with that fine Manhattan tradition of restaurant owners keeping their celebrated clientele humble with a clever facade of contempt - a tradition made famous during Prohibition by Texas Guinan, who greeted patrons with a cheery 'Hello suckers!' - Shor referred to his bold-print friends as 'crum-bums'. Of course, he saved this sobriquet for the ones he really liked...

In 2006 Shor's grand-daughter Kristi Jacobson made a documentary about her famous ancestor, the trailer for which appears above; the film's accompanying website appears you know where.
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Pop History Moment: Queen And Miterrand Open Chunnel

On this day in 1994 Britain was joined to Europe by a permanent rail ink when the Chunnel was opened jointly by The Queen and French President Francois Mitterrand. The ceremony was actually two; first, the Queen travelled to Calais via the tunnel, where her train was met nose to nose by one bearing the French President. Once the French side was opened the two travelled to Folkestone to open the English side.

The idea of a tunnel linking France and England was first suggested as long ago as 1802, only to be nixed by what was then a very real fear that the tunnel could have been used by Napoleon to invade England.
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Pop History Moment: Princess Margaret Married Antony Armstrong-Jones

On this day in 1960 a television audience estimated at 20 million watched as The Queen's sister Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones at a lavish, glamourous wedding in Westminster Abbey; it was the first televised royal wedding in history, much as the coronation seven years earlier had been the first ceremony of its kind ever on television. The wedding - like the coronation and the wedding of Princess Margaret's sister - was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher.

The following year Armstrong Jones was created Earl of Snowdon in advance of the birth of their children, David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (now Lady Sarah Chatto).

The Earl and Countess were divorced in May 1978 amid mutual accusations of adultery, their marriage having long since broken down...
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"Where Have All The Flowers Gone" by Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich - who died on this day in 1992 - was so fond of Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson's song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? she sang and recorded it in French, German, and English; whereas she could have larded her cabaret act with those classics from the 1930s and 40s for which she'd become a legend, she liked to keep current...

Dietrich is seen here performing the song during the Royal Variety Performance in November 1963* at the height of her cabaret career, a dozen years before her retirement from the stage**, which saw her sink into reclusion at her Paris apartement in the Avenue Montaigne.  Her privacy was most famously invaded by Maximilian Schell, whose 1984 documentary Marlene features her voice only and provides a fascinating perspective on a cantankerous star in her declining years.

*In the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.
**She broke her leg onstage at a concert in Sydney in September 1975, following which she never performed live again; Dietrich's last film appearance was in the bizarre 1979 David Bowie vehicle Just a Gigolo.
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In Memoriam: Orson Welles

Born this day in 1915, Orson Welles first attained prominence following the October 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, which caused widespread panic.

His masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941) was nominated for 9 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and Welles himself for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. This achievement alone established him as a major Hollywood presence. In the end, he won only Best Original Screenplay, which he shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Citizen Kane is generally regarded as one of the finest American films ever made.

Despite a run of films including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), The Third Man (1949), and Touch of Evil (1958), Welles was hampered by the studios, who viewed him as a major troublemaker.

He died in October 1985.
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Pop History Moment: The Hindenburg Explodes

Shortly after 7:25 PM on this day in 1937, during the second transatlantic flight of its second season in service*, a German zeppelin named Hindenburg helmed by Captain Max Pruss spectacularly crashed and burned while docking at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, 13 passengers and 22 crew died; 1 member of the ground crew was also killed, bringing the day's death toll to 36. It took less than a minute for the ship to be completely engulfed in flames and destroyed; the cause of the blaze has never been sufficiently determined.

Much of the hyperbole concerning the disaster comes from radio commentator Herbert Morrison's live coverage of the airship's arrival. The first half of his broadcast contains the famous lines 'Oh the humanity' and is made all the more compelling by the emotion in Morrison's voice; during the second half of his recording however, which takes place after he'd had time to compose himself, he was sounding more circumspect and considerably calmer. Morrison's audio recording, however, was manipulated after the fact; not only was it sped up (to give it a more frantic tone) it was later paired with filmed footage of the disaster, misrepresenting the event for mass consumption.

No matter... Of all the damage done that day the worst of it was to public confidence in airships; despite the fact that a single airplane crash can claim many times the lives lost in the Hindenburg Disaster and whereas the Graf Zeppelin had flown 1.6 million km (1 million miles) including a circumnavigation of the globe without incident air and noise polluting planes soon came to dominate the aviation industry, as well as claiming untold hectarage of precious arable land for airports.

*It had already flown from Germany to Brazil and back at the end of March 1937 in addition to 17 round trips across the Atlantic Ocean in 1936 for a total of 308,323 km (191,583 miles) with 2,798 passengers and 160 tons of freight and mail. All without incident.
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"Knock Knock Who's There" by Mary Hopkin

One of the first artists - if not the first - signed to The Beatles' Apple label*, Mary Hopkin's first single, 1968's Those Were the Days, not only bumped her employers' classic Hey Jude out of the Number One spot after just two weeks it also out-performed another version of itself, by Sandie Shaw, in the same year. Her second single, Lennon and McCartney's Goodbye, was then itself held to the Number 2 spot on the UK chart in 1969 by The Beatles' Get Back.

Hopkin later represented the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1970 with the spritely little ditty you see here; Knock Knock, Who's There? was selected from a field of six by a postal vote, and won by a wide margin with 120,000. She'd sung all six songs during the UK National Final, which that year was called A Song for Europe, and which aired on the television variety series It's Cliff Richard! This one - number six, in fact - proved the most popular; despite her flawless performance, though, Hopkin came second to All Kinds of Everything, performed by Irish singer Dana.

Born in Wales on this day in 1950, Mary Hopkin married Tony Visconti in 1971 (they would divorce in 1981) and thereafter withdrew from the 'scene' as such, although she continued to record and occasionally even perform despite her aversion to the limelight and reputed distaste for the music industry. She released an album, entitled Valentine, on her own label as recently as 2007.

*Paul McCartney signed her on the advice of Twiggy, who saw Hopkin perform on the televised talent show Opportunity Knocks - which was the Britain's Got Talent of its day.
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Pop History Moment: The World Caught Its First Whiff of Chanel No. 5

Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel was an innovator in many different aspects of the fashion industry; as a couturiere, for instance, she was the first to do away with corseting, and she is also credited with the creation of women's sportswear*. As a businesswoman, though, she realized the importance of ancillary lines such as jewellery and cosmetics in the creation of a brand's ethos, and arguably her most enduring innovation was in one such enterprise, namely that of luxe perfumery.

Nowadays, it seems, no fashion house can do without its range of scents; these proliferate**, and don't just emanate from the ateliers of Paris either but from the egos of celebrities and pseudo-celebrities alike too numerous to mention. Yet for all the work and money that goes into them, the vast majority come and go like (and smell little better than) something one might blame on the dog. All of which makes the longevity of Chanel No.5 the more amazing...

It was on this day in 1921 that Chanel unveiled her first perfume for a select group of friends. The legend has it she had perfumer Ernest Beaux create six scents for her, and out of them she chose her favourite, which happened to be the fifth one. Chanel's lucky number was also 5, which accounts for the day of its debut as well; it also demonstrates that for all her savvy, there was superstition in her method too.

The scent itself was innovative in many ways: it was the first to utilize synthetic aldehydes as opposed to entirely natural floral and plant ingredients, and it was also the first to use civet musk as a fixative, which made it last longer than its competitors. In both instances Chanel was being consistent in her adherence to modernism as it applied to the kind of woman to whom she was marketing; the perfume she offered was 'artificial' - which, in an age when plastic was still a novelty, was considered a good thing - and by lasting longer it was meant to appeal to women who were working, and therefore too busy to re-apply scent every half hour. Even its packaging - as elegant as it was utilitarian, and reminiscent of a medicine bottle - was a reaction against the fussiness and fripperies commonly associated with traditional femininity.

Although she initially gave bottles of the scent away free with purchase, it soon became so popular that it was offered for sale; in 1924 Chanel partnered with Pierre Wertheimer, keeping just 10% of the proceeds in exchange for total control over the product - an entirely lucrative arrangement with the Wertheimer family which persists until this day. Today it is estimated that a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold every 55 seconds, making it one of the most enduring (and profitable, which is why it's enduring) brands in what is an almost entirely ephemeral and transitory industry.

*A logical progression... Women who exercise don't need whalebone, they have muscle tone.
**Especially at Christmastime - and not by accident either!
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Viva Cinco de Mayo!

The victory of Benito Juarez (and General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín) over the forces of France's Napoleon III under Charles de Lorencez at the Battle of Puebla on this day in 1862 set the stage for the modern Republic of Mexico; Cinco de Mayo is as much a celebration of the man and his vision of a sovereign Mexico as it is of this victory.

Although the French army persisted - in June 1863 they captured Mexico City and installed Maximilian I as Emperor of Mexico in April 1864 - by June 1867 he'd been executed, at which time Juarez was once again returned to power.

Within Mexico itself Cinco de Mayo is principally a regional holiday, celebrated mainly in the state of Puebla, where the famous battle took place; in California (and therefore the rest of the United States), however, the festivities are more widespread - akin to Chinese New Year, St. Patrick's Day, or Oktoberfest.

Viva Cinco de Mayo!
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"Chasing Pavements" by Adele

Birthday wishes go out today to Adele, the Londoner whose blue-eyed soul has earned her a legion of fans both in the UK and around the world, thanks to singles like this one, Chasing Pavements, which originally appeared on her 2008 debut album 19. She has since performed the song on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross and Saturday Night Live; as well, it's has been used numerous times on Hollyoaks.

The song was inspired by a spat with a boyfriend, after which she went chasing after him in an empty street; nonetheless, the Urban Dictionary has a considerably more grotesque definition of a similarly fruitless activity that got the song banned from many American radio stations.
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POPnews - May 5th

[Originally known as the Music Hall, Carnegie Hall is today one of the most famous concert venues in the world; it was once said that the best way to get there was to 'practice, man, practice' but in reality the N, Q, R, and W trains stop at the 57th Street Station right outside the door. Practicing really only works for talented people...]
1260 - Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, became ruler of the Mongol Empire.

1494 - Christopher Columbus 'discovered' Jamaica (which he claimed for Spain) during his Second Voyage.

1640 - England's King Charles I dissolved the Short Parliament.

1762 - Russia and Prussia signed the Treaty of St. Petersburg, ending the Seven Years War.

1789 - France's Estates-General convened for the first time since 1614.

1809 - Mary Kies became the first woman awarded a US patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1821 - Emperor Napoleon I died in exile on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena; his last words were 'France, armée, tête d'armée, Joséphine.'

1862 - At an event commemorated today in Mexico as Cinco de Mayo, troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halted a French invasion of their country at the Battle of Puebla.

1877 - Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrendered to US troops in Nebraska.

1886 - The Bay View Tragedy occurred when militia fired upon a crowd of protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing seven.

1890 - At the opening night of Carnegie Hall, Walter Damrosch and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted a concert.

1920 - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested, accused of robbery and murder.

1941 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia returned to Addis Ababa following an exile occasioned by Italy's 1936 invasion; the event is remembered as Liberation Day.

1944 - Mahatma Gandhi was released from prison, where he (along with the leaders of the Congress Party) had been serving time for his part in the Quit India movement.

1945 - Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria was liberated by the 11th Armored Division of the US Army.

1950 - Bhumibol Adulyadej was crowned King Rama IX of Thailand, having ascended to the throne in June 1946 following the mysterious death of his brother Ananda Mahidol.

1954 - Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay at the head of a junta.

1981 - Bobby Sands died in HM Prison Maze as a result of a 66-day hunger strike.

2005 - Tony Blair became the first Labour leader in British history to secure a third consecutive term for his government.
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What's The Occasion? Star Wars Day

MAY THE 4TH BE WITH YOU!*
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Now Showing: "Spitting Image"

Here we see Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher conferring with her neighbour 'Herr von Wilcox' who is often found tending the roof garden at Number 9 Downing Street - offering us something of a glimpse into the formation of her policies.

The clip is from 1984, and references the strike by coal miners in 1984-5 which did irreparable damage to the trades union movement in Britain.
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Pop History Moment: Thatcher Sweeps To Power

On this day in 1979 Margaret Thatcher became the first woman elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. Her twelve years in power were marked by the callousness of her policies - this is a woman who once labelled compassion as 'patronising', after all - and the usual social activism which ought, in a healthy society, to accompany the rise of a tyrant.

Yet, as much as it pains me to say it, it seems to have taken such a scold and a harridan to reunite the Great with Britain after years of slide into recession and apathy brought on by the loss of the British Empire. Thanks to shows like Spitting Image, the Prime Minister and her cabinet not only rapidly became the most recognized in modern times but were held to a degree of accountability which her predecessors would have found unconscionable.

Which counts for something, I guess...
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POPnews - May 4th

[It's always interested me how, from the vast number of pictures taken, some of them - like John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winner of 14 year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio keening over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller moments after he was shot and killed while protesting the US invasion of Cambodia - end up becoming iconic. Certainly the award helps, since it guarantees a wider distribution, but three other students - Allison Beth Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder - were also killed that terrible day in 1970 at Kent State, and it seems no similar photos exist of their tragic deaths under such ugly circumstances.]
1415 - Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance; initially called by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund to try and solve the Western Schism (caused by there being three popes simultaneously, which is almost too many to fit in a Volkswagen, or its 15th Century equivalent anyway) the Council also ruled on issues of national sovereignty versus papal authority, the rights of pagans, and what constituted a just war. The chief result of the Council, though, was a book entitled Ars moriendi, or The Art of Dying.

1471 - During the Wars of the Roses, Edward IV defeated a Lancastrian army at the Battle of Tewkesbury and killed Edward of Westminster - son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou - making him the only Prince of Wales to ever die in battle. His widow, Anne Neville, later married the man who became Richard III.

1493 - Pope Alexander VI divided the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Demarcation Line in the papal bull Inter Caetera.

1626 - Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (now better known as Manhattan) aboard the See Meeuw to take up his post as third director-general of the Dutch West India Company.

1814 - The former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte came ashore at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile, having arrived in the middle of the night before.

1859 - The Cornwall Railway was opened by Albert, Prince Consort, linking Plymouth in Devon with Falmouth in Cornwall across the Royal Albert Bridge (which he'd also opened, two days earlier) .

1869 - The Naval Battle of Hakodate took place off the coast of Hokkaidō, between whatever boats the crumbling Tokugawa shogunate could muster and the Imperial Japanese Navy; an imperial victory hastened the demise of the already waning Boshin War and greatly strengthened the position and prestige of Emperor Meiji.

1886 - At the Haymarket Square Riot a bomb was thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, killing constable Mathias J. Degan; in retaliation the police fired into the crowd, themselves killing ten and wounding as many as 60, although many of the injured may have succumbed to friendly fire.

1904 - The United States began construction on the Panama Canal; the canal was an initiative of President Theodore Roosevelt, who later appointed John Frank Stevens as Chief Engineer on the project.

1910 - The Royal Canadian Navy was created under the leadership of Rear-Admiral Charles Kingsmill.

1924 - The 1924 Summer Olympics opened in Paris; it would be the last Olympiad organized by Pierre de Coubertin.

1932 - Mobster Al Capone began serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta; while there he played the bigshot, which resulted in his transfer to Alcatraz in August 1934.

1949 - The entire Torino F. C. (except for one player who did not take the trip due to an injury) were killed in a plane crash near the Basilica of Superga on the outskirts of Torino, in Italy.

1953 - Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Old Man and the Sea.

1961 - During the American Civil Rights Movement the Freedom Riders began a series of bus trips through the South - from Washington, DC, to New Orleans - in order to test a Supreme Court decision known as Boynton v. Virginia. Along the way the riders were harassed, attacked, and arrested. By September more than 450 riders had participated in at least one of 60 rides, and succeeded in embarrassing the Kennedy Administration, which had previously been lax in its attempts to end racial segregation.

1970 - The Ohio National Guard - sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building there was burnt down by protesters opposed to the Vietnam War - specifically the US invasion of Cambodia - opened fire on unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine others.

1980 - President-for-Life Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia forfeited his title at the age of 87.

1982 - The British destroyer HMS Sheffield was hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War, killing 20; after the ship was struck the surviving crew, waiting to be rescued, sang Always Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python's Life of Brian to keep their spirits up. While not destroyed in the attack, the ship foundered six days later in high seas while being towed back to England by HMS Yarmouth for repairs.

2000 - Ken Livingstone became the first Mayor of London; re-elected once, he was denied a third term by Boris Johnson in 2008.
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"Tainted Love" by Soft Cell

Birthday wishes go out today to David Ball, a man with the perennial bad luck to be best known as 'the other bloke out of Soft Cell'...  Ball and bandmate Marc Almond first met at Leeds Polytechnic, and in 1979 formed their pioneering synthpop duo.  Despite a string of Top Forty hits in the UK, they are best known worldwide for Tainted Love, which was the second single off their 1981 album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret*.

Soft Cell weren't the first to record the song** - that honour belongs to Gloria Jones, who did it in 1964; nor would they be the last, as Marilyn Manson would put his own unique spin on it in 2001 for inclusion on the soundtrack to Not Another Teen Movie.  And then, of course, there's Rihanna - whose producer J. R. Rotem extensively sampled it for her 2006 single SOS, from her second studio album A Girl like Me.

Ball has also been a member of The Grid, produced for The Virgin Prunes, done remixes for The Pet Shop Boys and David Bowie, and recorded music for film; he and Almond even reunited Soft Cell, in 2001.

*Given the massive success of Tainted Love it's more than a little strange that the album's first single, Memorabilia, did not even chart.
**Which was written by Ed Cobb, formerly of The Four Preps.
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"Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" by Christopher Cross

Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) earned birthday boy Christopher Cross an Academy Award in 1981, which he shared with co-composers Burt Bacharach, Carole Bayer Sager and Peter Allen; not only does the song form the emotional core of the film Arthur (starring Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, and Sir John Gielgud), but it also serves a similar purpose in the stage musical The Boy From Oz, in which it is sung as a duet by Allen and Minnelli (who were once married).
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Gratuitous Brunette: Rob Brydon

My first pop culture encounter with Rob Brydon was in the third series of Little Britain, in which he plays Roman DeVere - a tiny man torn between two very large women*. Then, as will happen, I took my piqued curiosity straight to YouTube and the rest, as they say, is hours of wasted time justified as 'research' - which some would call 'procrastination' and still others would call 'the tail wagging the dog'**.  Not to mention the fact that my Welsh accent bears a striking resemblance to his - although not in any way that might be considered actionable...

Born on this day in 1965 in Swansea, Brydon has earned a following so large that it would have Bubbles and Desiree seething with jealousy, thanks in part to regular appearances in sitcoms like Marion and Geoff, I'm Alan Partridge, and Gavin and Stacey and guest shots on quiz shows like QI, Have I Got News for You, and of course the quiz show spoof sitcom that is Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive.

*Actually, one large and one normal-sized man each in an oddly disturbing rubber lady suit - but you get the point.
**In other words, am I doing the research for the blog, or did I start the blog to justify the thousands of squandered hours I've spent absorbing this crap?
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