Golf Central

John Wayne was born on this day in history and has some strange bedfellows. A volcanic tempered golfer, oleaginous sports presenter and rather attractive actress were also dragged kicking and screaming into the world – but in different years, of course. At the other end of the scale, a man who is immortalised by uncontrollable swearing popped his clogs.

American sports broadcaster Brent Musburger was born on this day in 1939 and, while he is best-known as a commentator for American football, he also did the Masters for several years. To UK ears he can sound over-enthusiastic and hyperbolic, with a touch too much arse-licking reverence but it was always worth watching the year’s first Major just to see how Brent would handle the awfully syrupy green jacket presentation in the Butler Cabin. The best years were those in which Hord Hardin was chairman because he always looked petrified and had a genius for asking mundane questions. One year, for example, he asked Bernhard Langer how he pronounced his name and on another memorable occasion he asked Seve how tall he was.

Stephen Robert (Steve) Pate, born on this day in 1961, was nicknamed ‘Volcano’ because of his legendary losses of temper on the golf course and he once managed to get himself fined in seven consecutive events for bad language on the course. While, naturally, thoroughly disapproving of such antics on the hallowed turf, we can’t help but admire a man who has stayed true to himself all these years.

In 1904 George Gilles de la Tourette, a French neurologist whose fame lives on because of the syndrome named after him, died. We can’t be too sorry, though, because he was a w***er.

In 1940 the Dunkirk evacuation to save the British Expeditionary Force trapped in the north of France by the advancing Germans began. An astonishing flotilla of small craft ferried 340,000 British, French and Belgian soldiers across the English Channel. Somehow, we have subsequently managed to convince ourselves that one of the greatest military debacles in our history was a stunning triumph.

In 1868 US President Andrew Johnson was acquitted, by one vote, of all charges in his impeachment trial. The decision has caused all subsequent US presidents to act with unfailing moral rectitude.

The Assyrians who can’t speak English say: ‘Eida D'moladukh Hawee Brikha!’, but those who can, say ‘Happy Birthday’ to posho thesp Helena Bonham Carter (42), common thesp Patsy Palmer (36) and a man who took the thesp art into real life with an embarassing conviction, John Wayne, who would have been the grand old age of 101 had he not slurred his way woodenly past Saint Peter in 1979.