Well Sandway, much as I love you, your spectacles are extremely rosy. In fact Orient had the lion’s share of that Iranmed and I was out on site and witnessed the state of poor old Staggie.
He had formed Dave Stagg Associates and taken on Phil Dowrick as his sidekick. We had been especially helpful to him but he had selected Promotor to do his freight which greatly surprised us.
He then organised the Tunisia exhibition and went out there with Marchien. On his return she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died shortly afterwards and Dave was indeed a broken man.
For old times sake we employed him at Orient but he was in another world and had to abandon an exhibition he was organising in southern Africa at which point he left our employ.
He drifted for several years, sold his house and bought a houseboat in Yalding. He became involved with some charitable work in the Gambia and we shipped out some charity cargo for him.
We were absolutely devastated when we learnt that he had been found dead in a London hotel room. I attended his funeral in Southampton but don’t think anyone from Promotor was there although George Fardell made it as did the exhibitions man from Hawker Siddeley (whose name I can’t remember).