I’m just back from a wine tasting evening organised for Help the Aged as a fundraising thing.

If you have a copy of today’s Sunday Times, then do the following:

1. Find the supplement called ‘Culture’.
2. Turn to page 29, where you will find a half-page photo of the opera Mazeppa above the headline ‘An audacious act of defiance’.
3. Look closely at the photo, and identify the two executioners. They’re not difficult to spot as they’re the two men holding up severed heads.
4. Look at the executioner on the left, who is holding up a severed head by the hair. Between his body and the body of his victim there is a head in the background. The person is wearing a fur hat and their face is all in shadow apart from a highlight on their nose.

That person is my dad, who was an extra for Peter Stein’s production of Tchaikovsky’s opera at the Festival Theatre.