This story goes back to one night when we were holding Chorley Capers at Parklands High School.
The set-up there was where we had some wooden blocks at the rear of the hall giving a raised area for the sound and lighting guys.

It was the final show of the run, Saturday night and our very good friend Janice Mason had brought her video camera along to record the show. She set up at the back of the hall next to our guys and needed a mains socket to power her camera. Luckily, in the array of adaptors we had, we had just one spare socket available which we offered to Janice and all was well……

Then, 10 minutes before curtain-up, I got a call from Stig who was driving the sound desk that year asking if I’d come and have a look at something……. I did and it turned out that he had opened his pre-show refreshment bottle of dandelion and burdock and it had fizzed up all over the mixing desk and was dripping through all the sliders. This had then caused problems internally as all the indicator lights were lit up like a Christmas tree. Oh dear….

So, armed with many pozidrive screwdrivers, the whole team (after unplugging the desk) started to unscrew the million or so screws that held the top to the wooden case. We lifted it off and sure enough it was awash with D&B. We quickly mopped up what we could and then managed to find a desk fan that we could rig to blow air through the underside of the desk to try and dry it out.
But, we didn’t have any spare sockets left to plug it in and sadly, with only seconds to go before the show was due to start, we had to repossess our final socket from Janice Mason’s video camera which we did reluctantly.

Thankfully the shop went ahead without fault, the mixing desk lasted all the way through and after that, we banned all drinks from anywhere near the electrical equipment

Pete Sturgess