John Headford, a very private man who touched the lives of hundreds of people, has died aged 94. Born in Bristol in 1926, John’s youth included a grammar school education and national service in the Royal Engineers, a Regiment of which he was very proud. In Bristol he was a member of the Cathedral Players and the Shakespeare Society and he produced the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance in the Colston Hall. John’s university life, studying maths and music, was cruelly cut short by a year in a sanatorium with tuberculosis. A career in insurance brought him to Bournemouth as Manager of the London and Edinburgh in 1959. He and his new wife, Maureen, joined the Bournemouth Little Theatre Club and took an active part in productions at the Club’s own Palace Court Theatre in the centre of Bournemouth. They were also involved in staging Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” on Brownsea Island, the pre-cursor of the group now established as the Brownsea Open Air Theatre.