This and the following couple of pictures give some idea of the sorry state of the radio as received. This one shows some of the cabinet damage (including a missing control knob and broken dial glass), and the generally beaten-up woodwork. 'Tired' is probably too weak a word for this one!

To give a bit of background on the manufacturer, the HMV brand was owned by EMI, who had a huge factory complex at Hayes in Middlesex. HMV was EMI's 'prestige' brand, with prices to match, and I always think of HMV as upper-middle-class radios. Marconiphone was another EMI brand, but sets under the Marconiphone label were regarded (and sold as) slightly less prestigious (and of course cheaper) tthan HMV. However, what the public wasn't told was that Marconiphone sets often had exactly the same innards as HMV sets but in slightly differently styled cabinets. This set, for instance, is an HMV 456, but exactly the same chassis, made on exactly the same production line with exactly the same components, can be found in the cheaper Marconiphone 571. It's a wicked world.