Checks on the bemedalled sitter suggested she was Mary Seacole.Helen Rappaport, who has been researching Seacole for the past three years, confirmed that the painting matched existing images of the nurse, such as a bust from 1871 and a photograph. She promptly bought the painting and yesterday she presented it on long-term loan for display at the National Portrait Gallery.The Jamaican-born nurse set up her own nursing and supplies business in the Crimea after being rejected for formal duties by the British War Office, almost certainly because of her race.Ms Rappaport said she was delighted that the portrait would be on public view. “As an admirer of Mary Seacole’s courage and humanitarianism, I am extremely happy that she can at last take her rightful place in British history as an important female personality of the Crimean War,” she said.The portrait was painted in 1869 by Albert Charles Challen, who died aged 34, only a few months after Seacole died in 1881 at the age of 76. It shows a dignified figure, proudly bearing the red neckerchief of her Jamaican Creole origins as well as the three medals she was awarded for her service: the British Crimean medal, the Turkish Medjidie and the French Legion of Honour.”I find it amazing that, unknowingly, [Challen] has painted a defining image of one of the most important black women in British history,” Ms Rappaport said.At some point, however, the painting was turned face in to back another print, a move that saved it from damage, although it could easily have led to its destruction.Ms Rappaport said: “By a miracle it survived. Finding something like this you could define as every writer/researcher/historian’s wildest dream …

I knew who the sitter was as soon as I opened the jpeg [computer image]. It was a serendipitous moment, I almost fell off my chair.”Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1805, to a Scottish soldier father and a mother of mixed race who ran a boarding house for invalid soldiers.When war with Russia broke out in 1854, the patriotic nurse sailed to England to volunteer for the contingent of nurses being recruited by Florence Nightingale The War Office refused to interview her. Undeterred, she made her own way to the Crimea.When Florence Nightingale also personally refused to accept her offer of services, Seacole opened the British Hotel outside Balaclava. There she combined the role of sutler, or the provider of supplies including alcohol to the troops, with cooking and nursing. Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, the loyalist regarded as one of the most serious threats to the peace in Northern Ireland, was released from prison yesterday and flown to England.
The erratic loyalist was taken from Maghaberry prison near Belfast and flown by military helicopter to Manchester. Her herbal remedies, particularly for dysentery, were much in demand and her reputation spread through British newspaper columns.Last year, Seacole received further belated recognition for her work when she topped a poll of the nation’s 100 Greatest Black Britons compiled by the website Every Generation.. The Comedy Store was a way of meeting other performers and TV producers.

I hosted on the first night of the club and it felt like it was going to change British comedy.” Best joke: (Referring to a gong that is struck when the audience at the Comedy Store is bored with an act) “I would tell the audience that if they gonged off the performers, they would all have to go home early.”JO BRAND First performed: End of 1987.What the Comedy Store means to her: “It was a big deal Everyone was terrified of doing the Friday night late show. Twenty five years ago, a new midnight show opened above a topless bar in Soho that would change the face of British stand-up comedy.
The club owner, Don Ward, christened it the Comedy Store, and it was based on a concept he had seen in Los Angeles. Comedians vied for the much coveted, if feared, Friday night slots. During the 1980s, it became the meeting place for alternative comedians including Ben Elton, Jeremy Hardy, Jo Brand and Paul Merton.Mr Ward advertised for acts in magazines for builders and grocers. “It began as a six-month experiment that was a success from the start. I was flooded with applications after I put adverts into magazines for grocers and builders saying ‘are you the funniest person doing the wrong job?’,” he said.To mark its 25th anniversary, a documentary will be screened on BBC1 tonight. Paul Merton, who wrote and directed the programme, will trace the rise of the club that revolutionised stand-up comedy, and features Lee Evans, Clive Anderson, Jack Dee, Jenny ?lair and Alexei Sayle.

Merton said of the Store: “I’d always wanted to be a comedian and the Comedy Store gave me a chance to get up on stage and prove whether I was funny or not.”ALEXEI SAYLEFirst performed: Hosted the first-ever show in May 1979. What the Comedy Store means to him: “It was the springboard of my whole career. Until then, it seemed that in the entertainment business, unless you were from Oxford or Cambridge, it was like a fortress. It’s just what the corporate market needs.” .

“There’s sometimes the older man who’ll deliberately try to catch me out. It’s like he’s thinking, ‘Who’s this young girl, what does she think she’s doing?’ I remember one, he was like, ‘So, tell me, does the EU regulate the amount of cocoa there is in chocolate in England?’ Which, of course, was a question I could answer.” Her solution to difficult customers? “Give all these stiff public school boys and city types a bit of champagne and get them making chocolate. In that atmosphere, people found it easy to talk to people they didn’t know that, and quite a few new working partnerships came out of it.”Julian Anthony, the head of audit at Gulf International Bank, has been surprised at how much he has enjoyed the more creative workshops that have been organised by his company.”I don’t normally get the chance to do anything practical in the course of a normal working day,” he says “Something creative is pretty interactive. Everyone mucks in and you do really get very messy together, which breaks down quite a few barriers.