Opera critic make-up gaffe

And other stories from the stranger side of life

Royal Opera House
(Image credit: Daniel Thistlethwaite/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images)

An opera critic has described an 81-year-old actress's make-up as "frightful" – only to discover she wasn't wearing any. Richard Fairman, critic for the Financial Times, was reviewing the opening night of Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House, of Erda, when he said Rose Knox-Peebles was "made up to look quite a fright". In a letter to the newspaper, Knox-Peebles wrote: "This is not so. I wore no make-up – the 'fright' look is all naturally mine."

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  Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.