Of manners, a national treasure, academia, fossil teeth, phallic bread, ingenious money-saving and Murder, He Says

RIP, Drusilla Beyfus, journalist and doyenne of etiquette writing, who has departed for Fabulon (to educate its denizens on using a fish knife and how to properly address Royalty, no doubt), a few days short of her 99th birthday.

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Icon news: "Auntie Beeb" is planning a series of programmes to mark the centenary in May 2026 of that most beloved of all national treasures Sir David Attenborough. No more than he deserves, I say!
• Academic milestone news: London’s first and largest university, University College London (UCL) has launched a year-long celebration for its 200th anniversary, including a landmark exhibition Two Centuries Here.

• Primeval grin news: Speaking of old fossils, a pebble that looks like a pair of horrific ancient false teeth, discovered by a beachcomber in Northumbria, turned out to be parts of a 350-million-year-old crinoid (a relative of modern sea urchins). So, not a Ken Dodd tribute, after all.
• Assessing the quality of phallic objects news: Six lucky Parisians are getting the chance - in a random ballot - to join the jury of the Grand Prix de la baguette 2026, the annual competition to award the prize of "best baguette in Paris" (and the winner gets to supply their produce to the Elysee Palace for the year)! I judged quite a few "baguettes" when I first went to Paris back in the 1990s, and none were found wanting...
• Beat the system news: In a clever move, a Ryanair passenger from Cardiff refused to stump up the airline's extortionate £30 fee for a second cabin bag on an internal flight from Bristol to Glasgow, so instead she packaged up a month's worth of clothing into a bag and used the InPost courier service, which collects from a locker and deposits it at another at the destination city, which cost her the grand total of £2.59! I imagine she spent the £27.41 she saved in a Glaswegian Wetherspoons, by way of a celebration. I would.
• And finally: Sharing the day with the likes of Fanny Cradock, Fats Domino, Sandie Shaw, Margaret Leighton, Johnny Cash, Erykah Badu, Tex Avery, Josephine Tewson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Max Martin, Emma Kirkby, Jackie Gleason, Tony Randall and Michael-bloody-Bolton, it would have been the 105th anniversary today of the birth of the magnificent Miss Betty Hutton! All hail.

Betty Hutton - Murder, He Says

And the weather? After yesterday's gloriously Spring-like sunny day, today has been grey and breezy - but there's more sun yet to come, according to the forecast...