Hoodwinked, Nottingham Says

Errol Flynn and Sean Connery played him on the silver screen, while a generation of TV viewers doted on the exploits of someone brash enough to rob from the rich and give to the poor. But now the city of Nottingham, where Robin Hood purportedly staged his adventures, is saying the wily bandit is more fiction than fact. A glossy tourist brochure released by the central England city argues that Robin Hood was a highwayman who robbed travelers and was in business strictly for himself. As for his legendary philanthropy, that was “the fashionable academic interpretation of the 1950s,” says historian Graham Black. The brochure also robs Robin of Maid Marian, saying she was a figure in a 13th-Century French poem, and that Friar Tuck is probably an amalgam of two characters from different parts of England. But fans of the famed Hood aren’t going down without a few swats from the quarterstaff. “The city fathers have done a disservice to their own city,” said Malcolm Barker of the Robin Hood Society. “If Mickey Mouse can bring a fortune into Florida, why shouldn’t Robin Hood bring a fortune to Nottingham?”

--Two dogs trained to sniff out drugs have done their job so well that the Texas underworld has put the canines on their hit list. “We work informants, and we were told that among the organized drug smugglers the word was out there was a $30,000 contract to kill the dogs,” said Jerry Hicks of the U.S. Border Patrol in McAllen, Tex. The two dogs, rare Belgian malinois, “are very good at their job,” Hicks said. “Since last April, when they came on duty here, their total credit for seizures is $130-million worth of illegal drugs.” Rocky and Barco, as the two were named in very un-Belgian fashion, are trained to sniff out four odors: human beings (to find illegal aliens), marijuana, cocaine and heroin. News of the death threat has prompted some additional precautions, Hicks says, but “we were already taking real good care of the dogs. They’re worth $6,000 each, plus they are wonderful animals.”

--Reports of Nancy Reagan’s role as adviser to the President are greatly exaggerated, says President Reagan in an interview with German television. Reagan acknowledged sharing his troubles with his wife, but says “she’s very embarrassed about the press stories” that say she is the primary adviser leading him to moderation in domestic policy and on arms control. Rather, Reagan said: “. . . I’m surrounded by people that I have appointed to the Cabinet positions and all, and I have made it very plain from the first that I want to hear from them their views on these problems.”