Just A Minute

On 5 March 2016 at 06:36, simonbkelly@... [just-a-minute] <just-a-minute@...> wrote:

 

I decided the only way to settle this was to do a BMD (Birth, Marriages and Death) search for our Carol.

Her date of birth doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere online, but judging by the video I have of her from 1966 she looks like she's about 20ish. This would put her birth year at around 1946. To be on the safe side I searched for all births in England of girls called Carol with a surname of Binstead between 1930 and 1950... Nothing! There were three girls called Carole but I chose to ignore them as I haven't seen her name spelled that way anywhere.

Next I searched for Carol Binsted. There was ONE match! The birth of Carol G. Binsted (mother's maiden name Beving) was registered in Manchester, September 1943.

Step 2 - siblings. I searched for any other Binsted's born between 1930 and 1950 with a mother's maiden name of Beving. There was only one, Simon B. Binsted, born June 1946, so she has one younger brother.

Step 3 - marriages. Were there any marriages recorded for Carol Binsted since 1960? Again, only one match. Carol G. Binsted married Peter D. Thierry in Westminster, London, June 1967. As Carol was a minor celebrity at the time, surely there would have been some publicity for this. A quick Google search revealed this:

Peter Thierry marries Carol Binstead, 24th June 1967.

			Peter Thierry marries Carol Binstead, 24th June 1967. Peter Thierry marries Carol Binstead, 24th June 1967.
			View on www.gettyimages.co.uk	Preview by Yahoo

 

Okay, so now I'm really confused! She's listed in BMD as Binsted and when she got married it's recorded as Binsted in the register, but the press proclaim her marriage under the name Binstead!!!

Step 4 - is she still alive? A search for Carol Thierry brings up a report from Companies House showing that she became a director of 3 companies in 2014 and is still listed as the director of 6 active companies. It also lists her full name, Carol Gay Thierry.

So with a few minutes of research (it actually took longer to type out the process!) I have established that Carol is 72 years young and has gone under the names of Binsted, Binstead and Thierry.

The final decision rests with Dean as to whether to list her under her birth surname or her IMDb name. It's a tough call as Radio Times have used both spellings over the years. For the episode of JAM that she appeared in, though, she is actually listed as Binsted, but I guess either spelling would be acceptable...

Simon

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Audio instructions - http://b9fx.com/jamhelp.mp3

Mark