Coope Boyes and Simpson conducted a musical tour of the battlefield for one of the Passchendaele Peace Concerts. It had started to rain as we boarded the open-top double-decker brought over from Rotherham specially for the occasion. "The 226 for Thurnscoe!" called out Barry.

And, as Ray Hearne reminded us in his moving tribute at Barry Coope's funeral yesterday, Barry rehearsed the Thurnscoe Harmonic Male Voice Choir - containing many former miners - to perform his arrangement of “Trench Raid”, a song written by Sean Cooney for Radio 2’s Ballad of the Great War 1917.