John Ayldon

[2] When Adams left the company in 1969, Ayldon took over as Deadeye, Pirate King, Colonel Calverley in Patience, Mountararat, Arac in Princess Ida, the Mikado, Sir Roderic Murgatroyd in Ruddigore, and Sergeant Meryll in The Yeomen of the Guard.

His obituary in The Telegraph commented, "Blessed with a wide schoolboy grin and a spark of mischief, Ayldon tended towards roles which demonstrated a degree of villainy.

"[2] For the 1975 D'Oyly Carte Centenary Celebration, Ayldon played all his principal bass-baritone roles as well as Phantis in Utopia Limited and the Prince of Monte Carlo in The Grand Duke (in concert).

As part of the 1975 centennial season, before the first of the four performances of Trial by Jury, a specially-written curtain raiser by William Douglas-Home, called Dramatic Licence, was played by Peter Pratt as Richard D'Oyly Carte, Kenneth Sandford as Gilbert and Ayldon as Sullivan, in which Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte plan the premiere of Trial in 1875.

[8] Ayldon continued to play his regular roles through the remaining years of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, except that in 1977 (at his request) he swapped Florian for Arac in Princess Ida.

[5] Ayldon toured North America frequently with Kenneth Sandford, Geoffrey Shovelton, Lorraine Daniels, and others in the 1990s with a concert programme of G&S favourites called "The Best of Gilbert & Sullivan" or "G&S à la Carte", often conducted by John Owen Edwards.

In the late 1990s and early years of the 2000s, he performed and spoke at the annual International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival[5] and appeared regularly at Gawsworth Old Hall in Cheshire.

[3] He enjoyed cooking and was knowledgeable about "theatre, film and opera – especially Verdi and Donizetti" and cultivated acquaintances with Joan Sutherland and Leontyne Price, with whom he corresponded.