Bob Hope and his wife Dolores: the veteran US entertainer is to receive an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth in recognition of his contribution to film and song
Show business legend Bob Hope (94), who wise-cracked his way through vaudeville, TV, movies and radio for seven decades, has finally been rendered speechless - by Queen Elizabeth.
She plans to confer an honorary knighthood on the Londonborn comic, who emigrated to the US as a boy.
"I'm speechless. After 70 years of ad-lib material, I'm speechless," Hope was quoted as saying by his spokesman. The honorary knighthood will be "in recognition of his contribution to film, to song and to the entertainment of troops in the past," the spokesman said.
Hope was born Leslie Hope in Eltham, on May 29th, 1903, the son of a stonemason. His father moved his family to Cleveland when Hope was three to work on a church. Hope first showed a flair for comedy when he won a Charlie Chaplin imitation contest at the age of 10.
The daughter of Arthur Scargill, former militant miners' leader, is to marry the man who helped close down the last pit in the National Union of Mineworkers' heartland. Dr Margaret Scargill has announced her plans to marry the former Grimethorpe colliery under-manager James Logan (42). Logan is now business manager at a medical centre in South Yorkshire, where Dr Scargill works as a GP.
Logan said yesterday how he first met his future mother-in-law, Anne Scargill, when she was involved in the Women Against Pit Closures protest.
He had arrived at the colliery to find he could not get into his office because someone had super-glued the door shut. He studied security video tapes and saw Anne Scargill sneaking along a corridor with a tube of glue in her hands.
Yesterday she said the first time she and Arthur met their future son-in-law was "quite embarrassing for us all".
Washington National Airport was renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport yesterday, just in time to mark the ailing former president's birth day.
"As our nation celebrates President Reagan's 87th birthday, we wish him and his family well," President Clinton said. The renaming of the airport has been a contentious issue, with many Democrats saying that it was already named after a glorious president - George Washington.