The Royal Albert Hall organ is a magnificent beast. “It has 9,999 pipes, 147 stops, weighs 150 tons, and at its loudest sounds like a jet taking off. It is a quite magnificent beast that the Royal Albert Hall has just spent £1.7m restoring to all its Victorian majesty. Which is why there was a palpable air of embarrassment hanging over the hall yesterday, because on Saturday the damn thing wouldn’t work: not a squeak from one of its much-vaunted 9,999 pipes.”