Yesterday Nige posed the second Round Blogworld Quiz question, namely:
Can you link a theologian and a political philosopher with a singer called Harry, a poetically named DCI, and Updike’s doughty legumes?
And the answer is…. Comic strips!. Well done to Adelephant, Worm and anyone else who got some or all of them but was too shy to post a comment (you musn’t be, you know)!
The theologian and the political philosopher are John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, hence Calvin and Hobbes. Indeed, the cartoonist Bill Watterson named his characters after the famous thinkers.
The singer called Harry is, sneakily, female: Debbie Harry, aka Blondie. The Blondie comic strip was born in 1930 and is still running today.
Debbie Harry is still running today too. Here she is with the song I rate as Blondie’s greatest (amongst a good number of great songs)…
Continuing the theme of pneumatic blondes, in Prime Suspect Helen Mirren played the ‘poetically named’ Jane Tennison [sic].
Jane was a naughty comic strip in the Daily Mirror, running from 1932 to 1959, but at its peak as a morale-boosting bit of sauce for the troops in the Second World War. Attempts were made to introduce the series into the US market in 1945, but Jane’s continual wardrobe malfunctions proved too racy for American tastes.
The model for Jane was one Chrystabel Leighton-Porter, whom Churchill described as ‘Britain’s secret weapon’.
Finally, in The Coup, John Updike describes the groundnut as ‘the doughty legume’ ( once read, never forgotten, says Nige). Groundnuts are also known as… Peanuts.
This would have been my second guess, though I still maintain that ‘John Nettles’ was also a correct answer.
Stan, I think just plain “John” would also have been a correct answer, but then it often is.
Very true and yet more proof that I’m not destined to win Nige’s Golden Cravat for arriving at the correct answer.
Quizzer’s rules of thumb: The answer to
– all history questions is either ‘Napoleon’ or ‘Henry VIII’
– all maths questions is either ‘one’ or ‘zero’
– all music questions is ‘John Lennon’ or ‘Mozart’
– all geography questions is ‘Lima’
I was not so much shy as totally foxed (and stuck in limbo somewhere between Harry Nilsson and the Black Eyed Peas..) Well done Adelephant and Nige. I remain awe.