This is a story about John Staple who was sadly killed in an air crash in Rhodesia (as was then). I was a grams.op at the time and we were working in TC1 doing the Kirov Ballet in “The Stone Flower”. John was the sound supervisor but all he had to do was look after the communication boom while I played all the music off tape. During rehearsal it was all going along swimmingly, the tape was running and John, as was his wont was conducting away furiously with the full orchestral score spread across the desk. As was also his wont he had unbuttoned his trousers to take some of the strain off his stomach. The phone rang, Dave Hedden answered it and said to John “Its for you”. Whereupon John sprang to his feet, his trousers fell about his ankles and he hobbled to the wall mounted phone. The look on the production secretary’s face as she saw John standing in his underpants talking on the phone was an absolute picture. It still remains one of my treasured memories of a real character.