There’s that great story of Phil Seamen. He was doing sessions of course, and he was playing in a club at night, late night, and he was working the pit in the orchestra. So he’d take naps, obviously. I think the show was the King and I, and he fell asleep but he heard a cue, and his cue was to bang the big gong. Well, he heard what he thought was his cue, woke up, smashed the gong, and of course it was totally the wrong place; whereupon he turned to the audience, bowed, and said, dinner is served, and sat down.

Well he lived in that square mile of Soho and they had a gig in Stratford Place, which was just by Marble Arch; and they got up there in the cab and he looked around and said, “oh, sod this; let’s get back to town”. They were enormous characters.