Flavour of the month: December – luna graffiti, Sinatra’s pockets and the voice of golf

This month’s timely trivia includes a canny England footballer, an endangered Lady Astor and a confused Nicholas Parsons. Oh, and we learn how many cups of coffee Steven Spielberg has drunk in his life …

1 December 1919 – Lady Astor becomes the first female MP to take her seat in the House of Commons. One of the regular visitors to her country house Cliveden was Baroness Trumpington, whose young son enjoyed sledging in the snow there. ‘Adam’s other main entertainment,’ wrote Trumpington in her memoirs, ‘was travelling up and down in the lift. He also, to my shame, headbutted Lady Astor.’
2 December 1697 – St Paul’s Cathedral is consecrated. One of the radio commentators at the 1981 wedding of Charles and Diana was Test Match Special’s Brian Johnston, who informed listeners that Earl Spencer and his daughter were about to ‘go up the steps of the pavilion… I mean St Paul’s’.
4 December 1971 – a fire during a Frank Zappa concert at the Montreux casino destroys the venue, inspiring Deep Purple to write Smoke on the Water.
5 December 2020 – death of the BBC’s ‘voice of golf’, Peter Alliss. At his birth in 1931, he weighed 14lb 11oz, which was believed to be a European record.
7 December 1972 – launch of Apollo 17, the last time that mankind travelled to the Moon. While on the lunar surface, astronaut Gene Cernan wrote his daughter’s initials in the dust. Because there is no wind on the Moon, they are still there now.
8 December 1980 – John Lennon is murdered. The next night David Bowie took to the stage at New York’s Booth Theatre for another performance in his run as John Merrick in The Elephant Man. There were three empty seats in the front row. Two had been for Lennon and Yoko Ono. The third was for Lennon’s killer, Mark Chapman.
10 December 2005 – Richard Pryor dies. Nicholas Parsons was once chatting to Ross Noble at a party and asked him who his favourite comedian was. Noble replied that it was Richard Pryor, going on to add the incredible details of the American’s life – his mother was a prostitute, he was raised in a brothel, he’d served time in prison, become addicted to drink and drugs, and had even set himself on fire while freebasing crack cocaine. Later on, talking to another guest at the party, Parsons said: ‘Have you heard what’s happened to Richard Briers?’
12 December 1915 – Frank Sinatra is born. He always carried a roll of ten dimes in his pocket, after the 1963 kidnapping of his son Frank Jr. During a call with the kidnappers, Sinatra ran out of coins with which to feed the payphone. The call was cut off, and for a while the star feared that he might have caused the kidnappers to harm or even kill his son. In the end, Frank Jr. was released without injury, but his father never wanted to find himself in that situation again. His roll of dimes became such an emblem for him that he was buried with one in his pocket.
14 December 1903 – the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, make their first attempt to fly their plane at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina (they succeeded three days later). Keith Harris’s duck Orville – famously unable to fly – was named after the younger brother.
15 December 1906 – opening of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway, the earliest section of what we now know as the Piccadilly Line. The modern line has seven consecutive stations whose names begin with the same letter. Which seven? (Answer below)
18 December 1946 – Steven Spielberg is born. To this day he has never drunk coffee. ‘I have a natural adrenaline rush when I wake up and realise it’s a whole new day… I’m naturally caffeinated!’
24 December 1948 – Stan Bowles is born. In 1974 the footballer was being paid £200 by Gola each time he wore their boots for an England match. Then Adidas offered him £250. ‘Christmas has come early, thinks me,’ thinks Stan. He wore one boot from each company, pocketing £450. ‘Nobody knew what I had done until a few days later, but it obviously didn’t go down too well when they found out.’