Duncan Weldon was indeed “star-struck from the outset”. He seemed to be larger than life even when a mere year ahead of me at the local grammar school in Southport: shortly after we had left, he asked if I would direct a series of performances of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance.
My total experience of G&S as a second bass in the chorus for amateur performances at a local church hardly equipped me for the role and I declined it. Instead I got involved in Liberal politics. How different life might have been!