Birthdays and corrections | Female anatomy | Rare praise for government | Chart travesties
From left . Warren Cann, Midge Ure, Chris Cross and Billy Currie of the pop group Ultravox. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
From left . Warren Cann, Midge Ure, Chris Cross and Billy Currie of the pop group Ultravox. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Letters
Thu 3 Jun 2021 13.32 EDT
Last modified on Thu 3 Jun 2021 13.55 EDT
I was once contacted by the Guardian Birthdays column (Letters, 1 June), asking for my date of birth. This was in the days when actresses were advised never to reveal their age. I thanked them and wrote: â14/1/ha ha ha.â I never appeared in the column. But I have appeared in the obituary pages: I was thrown to see my photo there one day, illustrating another actressâs death. Next, I appeared in the corrections column.
SIR - It s now 40 years since the greatest travesty in rock history. Vienna by Ultravox was stopped from getting to UK Number1 by Joe Dolce s Shaddap You Face. This was the most significant face-off in music history, forget Oasis and Blur. Vienna was a grandiose masterpiece of pop and video. But the self deprecating irony of Midge Ure s line This means nothing to me was lost on a generation of hand-clapping bingo-goers who were happy to be at a Butlins variety show. And thought new romantic was the latest Mills and Boon novel. However, later in 1981 the Specials classic Ghost Town did get to Number 1. We also had a novel by Dean Koontz, The Eyes of Darkness, which in some ways were both prophetic.