Tales of the 'wrong' piano being burned are pretty common!
It certainly happened at Valley when some Lightning mates on MPC were responsible for such villainy.
At RAF Brawdy, the mess piano had a notice affixed which read something like 'If you feel that your squadron tradition requires that this piano should be burned, then please feel free to do so once you have agreed to replace it at its current value of £(insert figure) hundred pounds'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it survived!
'Mongo', the ex-RAFG Wg Wpns Nav Rad on my Vulcan crew, decided that we would have a piano burning session at RAF Scampton one Friday Happy Hour. Several 'burners' were duly assembled in front of the OM and with the aid of ripped up BINA red books and the night end of day/night flares, were soon blazing merrily. Some idiot decided that he would drive his car through one pyre and received the day end of a flare through the window - turning the interior of his car (a tatty old 1100) and him bright orange. 'Mongo' hadn't info'd the fire people, so a huge fire wagon soon turned up and drenched everything and everyone. Game over and smouldering wreckage soon removed.
But the last 'burning' I witnessed was rather pathetic. Not only was there no spontaneity, but the burning team had to prepare a suitable area and summon the fire people before the event began. It all seemed rather pointless and somewhat embarrassing...
WB627 - Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were about as amusing as diarrhoea. I once saw Peter Cook totally demolished on some TV show by Bernard Manning, with his oafish quick wit. Brilliant!