Please see the below update from Phil Jones of the Magnificent AK’s who performed a charity fundraising concert in aid of the PF Trust during the height of storm Claudia in November 2025.
Despite the severe weather interruptions the band managed to raise an incredible £1,600!
Please follow this link to view some of the evening’s performance: The Magnificent AKs PF Trust Footage
The song performed in this clip was written by John Willoughby, who sadly passed away after living with pulmonary fibrosis. The singing begins at 5:40 in this clip, however please do stay and listen to John’s story, and how the band came to support the PF Trust.
For more information on the band please see here: The Magnificent AKs website
“The Magnificent AKs” Charity Fundraising Concert. Malmesbury, Wiltshire. 14 November 2025. By Phil Jones.
I can’t call this “A Night To Remember” because somebody took that strapline for a “Titanic” movie – a vaguely similar disaster but of, admittedly, greater proportion. We had no icebergs to contend with but we did have nearly as much cold water, or so it felt. Fortunately, Malmesbury is a hill town (by undulating, local standards) but the rain was so intense that, Well, explaining the theatre’s Fire precautions seemed a little inappropriate, shall we say.
Planning for the gig and ticket sales were all going …. swimmingly(?) …. until the preceding Wednesday’s weather forecast started forewarning the UK about some Traitorous storm called “Claudia”. Wiltshire was supposed to be on Claudia’s fringe but, as you will recognise from “Strictly”, Claudia’s fringe is something special to behold. Lo, it came to pass that H2O in utterly Biblical amounts came down upon the great and the good and The Magnificent AKs, who would claim to be neither.
Ticket sales stalled and an (unlikely) 3/4 full theatre loomed :-(. We’d realistically expected 90% full, at least, based on usual trends. The next hint of impending disaster came from a chum of mine who backed out due to living in Malvern. He was high and dry but it was the expanse of water between him and the venue that wasn’t passable. Midafternoon came another call, warning me I wouldn’t get through the mere six miles of main road I had to drive!
Well, that instant hollow-stomach feeling put me right off my late afternoon pizza, I can tell you! I rapidly moved my concert stuff (and my Wife!) from our little car into our 4×4 and launched forth. (Correct choice of verb there!). The local main road was well and truly flooded, particularly at a sunken stretch beneath a level railway bridge. (Ruddy Brunel….!). A few heroes had tried driving through it just that bit too late, and their stranded, extremely dead vehicles were a testament to man’s foolishness and the problem. Fortuitously, I found a route in via lanes and higher ground and advised the other guys which roads to take.
Unfortunately ….
All the chaps who had not bailed out on the day made it into town. All, that is, apart from our absolutely irreplaceable Musical Director, Master of Ceremonies, Lead Humorist and Conductor Mr Chris Samuels. I shall only say that he now needs to replace his car engine, which has shuffled off its coil after becoming stranded in deep water, along the second alternative route he had been forced to follow. Exacerbating matters was all the other road carnage, which had isolated his area completely, so we couldn’t even rescue him. And there was no way whatsoever that a tight – but amateur – chorale could perform without its Leader, was there? 17 or 18 years this group has been performing. They did once try a short set without Chris in their first couple of years – but that rapidly became an even shorter set, when the guys realised they truly hadn’t the skills to manage. At least, back then.
You would have been amazed at what followed. We had an undemocratic but effective conflab between our “Gig Meister” (who has been around the concert block a bit), our chap who was busy preparing the bar (‘coz he’d at least waggled his hands in a couple of warm-ups over the years!) and me, as the (by now defecating) “impresario” for the night. We couldn’t let the Pulmonary Fibrosis Trust down, could we? What about our adoring, if underrepresented, audience? Who would speak to them? Anyway, we made the decision to have an extended sound check, delay kick-off by fifteen minutes (which helped the wading crowds battle their way in, actually) and our little “Junta” put the notion of attempting what would doubtless be a “unique experience” to the rest of the chorale. Everyone’s reaction was the same: “We’re doomed…… We’ll never do it …… It’s impossible…… We can’t ……. but let’s give it a go”.
Our set lists were rapidly amended to exclude the Georgian and Ukrainian songs which really do require “His Masters Voice” and our signature “antidote from our land-locked County to all the Sea Shanties that we meet on tour”, entitled “The Ashton Keynes LAND Shanty” – well, that had to be binned as Chris sings all the verses. Various other soloists changed because of absences, with which, we practised the starts to each of our remaining tunes; worked out the pitches that each “part” needed – well, nearly. Yours truly became de-facto “Master of Ceremonies” come Air Hostess (evacuation routes and life jackets etc). It was “interesting”, trying to get an audience onside, when it included quite a few “regular fans” – who would probably notice that our line up was missing its most fundamental element! At the crack of fifteen minutes late, our nervous Stand-in Leader took to the stage with his equally nervous singers, each resigned to imminent humiliation.
BUT what an amazingly brilliant, wonderful, uplifting, rewarding and fabulous evening everyone who was there enjoyed! Audience and singers alike.
The only known still photograph which I have so far obtained is below but I hope to supply something better, should you wish. I am the guy with the grey hair …… Ah, that doesn’t help much, does it?
Some aficionados later said that they couldn’t tell much difference from a full complement gig (ah, how sweet!) – but where was our “Chervona Kalyna” and “Shen Xar”? We started to explain to them politely about the intricate, intimate polyphonic singing that is Georgian song (… wake up, dear reader, dammit!). Our performance actually discovered one chord which has probably never been heard by human ears before – but only the one and, regrettably, we had to restart the encore after three bars (I’m certain that the pitch pipe must have been out of key or something 😉 ) but, given the extreme circumstances, everybody understood, laughed with us rather than at us – and, of course, we nailed it, second go. By the end, applause which might have started off as sympathy or an expression of hope over expectation, had developed into the familiar wave of warm, appreciative sound. God bless that audience! So generous. There is no doubt that those of us who sang will benefit massively from the Malmesbury experience, even if we would all prefer to never repeat it. Coping with so much adversity must be great for our “bonding”, as well as for our musicality – Strewth, how hard we all listened to each other and worked to blend with other parts and to get the timing right (which was, inevitably, slightly different under a bloke who was trying to conduct in four parts whilst desperately working out just how the following line went). Rarely will your charity have had quite this sort of effort expended to raise funds on its behalf. We didn’t run for miles – most of us can’t any more. Summit Kilimanjaro? Well, we climbed mountains in our own minds! We rose to a challenge that none of us could have foreseen that morning and made ourselves proud for doing so.
To the important bit from the PFT point of view. We could never overcome the fundamental fact that our audience was decimated. It was worse than one in ten, actually. Only about 50% made it to the theatre because of the appalling weather. However, nobody has contacted me seeking a refund. Which is good because I can be incredibly rude when it’s appropriate.
After just a modicum of rounding up, we have managed to raise £1600.00 for the Trust. I confess that that is short of my hoped-for target but, given the challenges – actually, that’s marketing speak and I am out of that – given ” the size and the sheer number of the uncontrollable problems which confounded us”, I’ll take that from such a massively depleted audience. Individuals were incredibly generous and I shall be sincere in thanking them via the local free magazine. Additionally, we blokes drank quite a lot of creatively priced beer, which always helps! We needed it after that gig. Thank you, PFT, for your innocent role in the experience of my blood pressure reaching heights it would never, ever have visited without Friday.
With warmest regards,
Phil Jones
Basso profundo.
Concert co-ordinator.
The Magnificent AKs.
A huge thank you to Phil and the Magnificent AKs for their humongous efforts to over come all odds and make the evening a sucess!
You can follow the band on Facebook by clicking this link: MAKS Facebook