When Bob gets up to sing

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They were singing Christmas Carols down at the old folks’ drop-in centre in Tooting on Wednesday afternoon. Quality variable. Then Bob, 81, who’d just been mumbling along until that point, steps up and offers to sing a solo. Oh, gawd. This will be awkward. But he opens his mouth and out comes a beautiful music hall ballad, sung in a powerful tenor. The room was in tears. “You’ve done a bit of singing then?” I say to him afterwards. “Yes,” he says. “1965. The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.”