Dennis Stoll, son of Sir Oswald Stoll, had pretensions to be a conductor and had persuaded his father to let him put on this "Televariety" - TV was just then starting - a show with rather highbrow leanings, He insisted on a full symphony orchestra and most of the players were from the College or the Academy. The first oboe was Edwin [sic] Selwyn (later first oboe of the BBC Symphony Orchestra) and the second bassoon, Vernon Elliott, was contra-bassoon at Covent Garden after the war, but the first bassoon, who rejoiced in the wonderful name of Zizzolfo, was quite dreadful and made the most terrifying noise, as many bassoons did in those days, no one can imagine what it was like. We got £7 10s a week which was very good money. The music used to accompany the acts would be taken from works like Holst's "Beni Mora" suite or Chabrier's "España" and we had a grand ballet to the first movement of the Tschaikowsky Piano Concerto with Cyril Smith - or his wife, Phyllis Sellick - as the soloist on the stage and Leon Goossen's [sic] wife as the principal dancer. ... Then there were the Bee-Bee-Hee Arabs, a trapeze and tumbling act and a French comic; of course they all brought their little signature tunes with them which we had to play. In particular there was a terrible American so-called comic whose act included an imitation of a clarinet tuning up in what he called the "ortch-tch-tchestra". I was given a little piece of paper with a phrase I had to play, he would imitate it, I would play it backwards and he would make some crack. After about a week I got very bored and tried to improve on it by playing an extended variation; to my surprise he was completely thrown off balance and "dried". I was sent for by the Management and nearly lost the job. << less