My best Les story. It would have been around 1981 or 82 I think .... we were both working for Burnham Signs in Sydenham. Being responsible for tight deadlines for exports to the USA, we would often have to pull late-night sessions before shipping the stuff to Heathrow. This particular night, four or five of us were busy, probably polishing some stupid bits of stainless steel (we did that a lot), listening as we always did, to Capital Radio. Agony Aunt Anna Raeburn was presenting her weekly phone-in problem show, and us lads always had a good laugh when she came on. One of her first callers was a woman who instantly launched into a merciless tirade of abuse against men. They were all deceptive bastards, couldn't be relied on, that kind of thing. We were all wondering what must have happened to her to deserve such a vitriolic attack. It really was pure acid coming through the speaker. We hurled good-natured abuse back at the radio, trying to defend our species. All except Les, who had gone strangely quiet. The more she banged on about how men will always let you down, the louder we threw abuse back. Except Les who had his head down, concentrating unusually closely on his bit of metal. Strange, we thought. The woman was now even angier and Anna Raeburn was trying to calm her down, before switching to another caller. Our attention was now on Les at the far end of the room, who seemed to have paled a bit. 'You all right mate?' one of us asked. 'Not really' he replied. It turns out that the mystery caller was his wife that he had walked out on earlier that week. We had no idea. From the sounds of it, we all thought he'd probably done the right thing ... history proved us all right!