Prospero

There have been calls in recent years for Gill's 1930s work - which depicts Prospero and Ariel from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest - to be removed from the BBC's Broadcasting House.

The Prospero and Ariel statue has been on display at the BBC since 1933.

As Weaver's Prospero declaimed "Come forth, I say," Hayley sprang from her seat and rushed the stage with Richard Weir, a 60-year-old mechanical engineer from Tyneside.

In Act 4, Prospero, the former Duke of Milan who has been exiled to a desert island with daughter Miranda, and his magic book, interrupts his revenge scheme to conjure a supernatural theatrical pageant in honor of the engagement of Miranda and Ferdinand, the son of the king of Naples.

But Prospero is jolted into an awareness that Caliban and his confederates are plotting “a foul conspiracy” against his life, and he abruptly ends the show.