THERE is a treat in store for Abba fans later in the year.
The moment when the Swedish group won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 is celebrated in Super Troupers, an immersive exhibition at London's Southbank Centre, says The Guardian.
Producer Paul Denton commented: “It will be a different take on Abba we hope. In 1974 Britain economically was not doing that well … what was it about Abba that actually caught the imagination of the public?
“If you look at pop music across the decade, the huge shifts in musical tastes and the emergence of punk – if you look at the charts, Abba were a mainstay in the album and singles charts and there is something about that which is worth celebrating, and we will show what it was about them which captured hearts and minds.”
Abba: Super Troupers is at the Southbank Centre from December 14 to April 29 2018.
Some people have strange tastes...the Daily Mirror reports on 59 year old Vivien Bodycote from Hinckley, Leicestershire, who is obsessed with the Manchester United football manager Jose Mourinho. So much so that she has covered her body in 20 tattoos of his image.
She told the Mirror: “I rarely go into town and not come back with another Jose tattoo on my body, I must have 20 of just him. He's not just the special one, he's the only one. I would die if I saw him in the flesh and for Mourinho I would cheat.”
According to the Daily Express, a £2 million Heritage Lottery Fund has saved a chapel honouring “The Few” Battle Of Britain fighter pilots.
Government budget cuts saw the withdrawal of £50,000 annual funding for the St George’s RAF Chapel Of Remembrance at Biggin Hill, Kent.
The building was built in 1951 with the support of Winston Churchill next to the Spitfire station used to defend Britain and the names of air crew who died in the conflict are inscribed in the chapel.
The Daily Express highlights the 100th birthday celebrations of Eileen Normington, from Plymouth, who was one of Britain's first female police officers who signed up for duty as a volunteer on the day the Second World War broke out.
Eileen spent over 20 years with Devon and Cornwall Police after she became the first female in her home city of Plymouth to join at the age of 22.
She worked for the force throughout the Second World War and stayed in traffic and then CID for 15 years afterwards.
Eileen said: “I heard a message on the wireless which asked women to go to their nearest police station and help out.”
The Guardian tells us that the near-complete fossilised skeleton of a dinosaur, thought to have lived about 132 million years ago, has been found at a brick factory in Surrey.
Palaeontologists say they discovered the bones during a routine visit to the site of the Wienerberger quarry in February.
Jamie Jordan, founder of Fossils Galore, a website and museum, said: “I looked to the left and I saw a big black bone sticking out of a bit of rock that had been chipped off by the bulldozers.”
The dinosaur, dubbed Indie, is believed to be an Iguanodon: a plant-eating creature that reached about 10 metres in length and just under three metres in height.
Jordan added: “We haven’t found the skull just yet, but how the animal is lying, it is in one of the blocks from the dig site. We should come across it – we don’t think there is much missing at all.”
Reference list:
The Express (www.express.co.uk)
The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk)
Daily Mirror (www.mirror.co.uk)