William Barrington-Coupe

In 1958 he found financial backing from an entrepreneur, Wilfred Alonzo Banks (1913-83), who valued music primarily as a means to turn a fast buck.

He did not pretend to know how to run a record label and evidently did not trust Cassini’s business acumen either, so by March 1958 he was employing Barrington-Coupe as his executive producer.

At this time, orchestral recording in Britain was subject to strict union rules that made it prohibitively expensive for independent labels.

Saga sent the pianists Sergio Fiorentino and Barrington-Coupe's newly-wed wife, Joyce Hatto, and sent its own engineer, James Lock, to the sessions.

Recordings of classical works issued on his Delta label were believed to have been copied from radio broadcasts from behind the Iron Curtain, mixed to disguise the sources.

He also made up artists' names: "Wilhelm Havagesse" was the falsely-named conductor of the "Zurich Municipal Orchestra" in a recording of Scheherazade released on Barrington-Coupe's Fidelio label in 1962 (ATL 4006).

The venture with Meek was followed by Dial Records, a label set up by 24 year old London-based David Gooch with the intent to promote undiscovered British talent.

Desperate to make ends meet, he began importing radios from Hong Kong, which he sold in London markets and by mail order, but became the subject of legal action when he failed to pay purchase tax.

[17] On 17 May 1966, after what was then the longest-running and most expensive trial at the Old Bailey, costing the British taxpayer £150,000, Barrington-Coupe and four other defendants were found guilty of failing to pay £84,000 in purchase tax (over £1 million in 2007 currency).

Bahr immediately shared the contents of the letter with Gramophone magazine, telling journalist Jessica Duchen afterwards that he "had given a lot of thought" to suing Barrington-Coupe for damages, but was inclined not to do so, on the assumption that the hoax recordings were "a desperate attempt to build a shrine to a dying wife".