Urban Myth: Has Kanye West crowned himself the new King of Pop?
In late June, when Michael Jackson fans had barely begun to grieve, they heard some news that made them weep and wail even more. The 32-year-old Grammy-winning rapper Kanye West had reportedly taken Jackson's crown in a private ceremony. 'It's so sad to see Michael gone, but it makes a path for a new King of Pop and I'm willing to take that on,' West was reported as saying. 'There's nobody who can match me in sales and in respect, so it only makes sense for me to take over Michael's crown and become the new King.' West was said to have accepted the title unilaterally after failing to receive official permission from Jackson's family. However, after complaints flooded the internet, it was pointed out that the source of the supposed West interview was a 'humour' website called Scrape TV. Then West issued a denial in bright-blue capital letters, saying: 'It makes me feel bad that obviously I made people feel that I would be corny enough to say something so whack after the passing of an idol, a legend and more than that a human being with feelings and family.' Rumours that West was making an epic 14-minute music video about zombies were also wide of the mark.
Unsung Hero: The spy who paid the price for revealing Nazi secrets
Fritz Kolbe risked his life and defied his own country to help the allies win the second world war. A German diplomat who regularly travelled to Switzerland from 1943, Kolbe despised Nazism and began passing hundreds of top-secret documents to the United States. These included details of the V-1 and V-2 rocket programmes, and German intelligence on the D-Day landings. The secret agent, whom the Americans code-named "George Wood", later said his aim had been "to shorten the war for my unfortunate countrymen and to help concentration-camp inmates avoid further suffering".
But Kolbe, who took no payment for his brave deeds, was still regarded as a traitor in Germany after the war, and even had difficulty finding work in the US. In 1971 he died of cancer, aged 70.
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Under Cover: The breakfast companion who became Holly Golightly
In the 1950s, Truman Capote would socialise with a fellow New Yorker called Carol Grace (bottom), whom he had known since their teenage years. They would meet early in the morning, and around 7am would head for Tiffany's jewellery shop, outside which they would enjoy doughnuts and coffee from a cart on Fifth Avenue. One day, Capote mentioned a girl he had known, "almost a hooker", from one of the Southern states. He would create a character, he said, by blending this girl's life with Carol's. That character became Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. In his original 1958 novella, Capote has the young Holly "living with some mean, no-count" foster parents; and Carol once recalled she was sent to "bleak" foster homes during the Depression. The young Carol was obsessed with movie magazines, which are blamed in the story for leading Holly astray.
Carol later married the writer William Saroyan, whom Holly says she once met at a party. Carol credited the 1939 film Wuthering Heights as introducing her to the idea of passionate love, and Holly says she has seen the film 10 times and "cried buckets" over it. They both dined at "21", the famous restaurant in West 52nd Street, and both loved horse-riding. A famous scene in the 1961 movie sees Holly, played by Audrey Hepburn (above), singing Moon River by a window. In a memoir three decades later, Carol (by now Carol Matthau, having married Walter Matthau) revealed she met Capote the first time when he saw her through a window and declared: "Your skin is made of moonbeams… You are directly from the moon." Carole Matthau died in 2003. Anna Friel is set to step into Holly's shoes this week on the London stage.