This week's paper comes out on Guy Fawkes Day, one of the few celebrations where we can still do vaguely dangerous stuff.

I suspect many of the people merrily lighting fireworks don't really know or care much about why they're doing it aside from the general pleasure in pyromania that we all share. It has simply become 'bonfire night”.
It's generally forgotten that Guy Fawkes (or Guido Fawkes as he called himself after fighting with the Spanish) was a crazy Catholic. He and a small group of similarly-minded religious fanatics planned in 1605 to blow up the King of England and the houses of parliament and replace Protestant James 1 with his (Catholic) daughter Elizabeth. The plan was not a success; the conspirators were betrayed captured and punished harshly.
How harshly? You may well ask.
After the inevitable guilty verdicts, the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke told the court that each of the condemned would be drawn backwards to his death, by a horse, his head near the ground. They were to be ‘put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both'. Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become ‘prey for the fowls of the air'.
Obviously the Sensible Sentencing Trust was a big influence even in the 17th century.
The tradition of lighting bonfires to celebrate the king's escape started right there, and later in the century – around 1650 – fireworks were added to the mix.
And the ‘guy' who gets burned in effigy on the bonfire?
Well, ironically, that came about because King James' heir, also called James, rather did the gunpowder plotters' work for them when in 1673 he announced his conversion to Catholicism, causing much general ire amongst the largely Protestant populace. They started burning effigies of the Pope. So the ‘guy' is actually the Pope (except in the UK during the 1980s when it was usually Margaret Thatcher).
Now, centuries later, we get to scare the bejesus out of the local wildlife and light the blue touch-paper all because of a bunch of religious terrorists.
So what else of interest happened on November 5?
Well, while you're swinging those sparklers, raise a glass to toast the birthday of Art Garfunkel, one half of the most famous singing duo of the 20th century and the purveyor of the world's most well-known song about rabbits. Artie was always a sweetie and up for a laugh as his appearance in the second series of Flight of the Conchords proved. Dunno about the rabbit song though, but at least it's better than the ballad Michael Jackson sang about a rat.
Actually, November 5 is a pretty good day to toast musicians' birthdays. Not only will Mr Garfunkel be turning 69, but there are celebrations for Canadian singer Bryan Adams, Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits and the inimitable Gram Parsons. (Quick note: a lot of the Gram Parsons and Flying Burrito Brothers stuff is now available really cheaply on CD. It is truly wonderful, and hearing him singing harmonies with Emmylou Harris is a transcendent experience.)
And if none of those folk pop your celebratory cork, November 5 is also the anniversary of the death in 2005 of one of my favourite guitarists, Link Wray, the huge part-Native American axe-slinger who was in a large way responsible for the invention of ‘fuzz' or distorted guitar. He was a helluva player, most famous still for his 1958 single ‘Rumble'. The song was so wild for its time that it was banned on several American radio stations on the grounds that it glorified juvenile delinquency. That may not seem too odd, until you consider the fact that ‘Rumble' was an instrumental.
And I have one absolutely useless piece of information that I'd like to pass on about Link Wray, something you can save for a game of Trivial Pursuit to amaze your friends.
Question: Who played the lead guitar on Terry Jacks' 1974 hit ‘Seasons In The Sun'?
Answer: Link Wray!
You'll thank me for it one day…