I never knew that Tabs
My Sapph had an annoying miss on it very similar to this chaps and after I tried new plugs, leads, cap, arm and coil I got fed up and put in my spare dizzy with new phase sensor in it and at the same time replaced my crank sensor. Incidentally it cured it and about a week later it cut out and wouldnt start again. A bit of investigation discovered a lug had come off the crank pulley, my only guess is that it was possibly hanging off and losing its pickup a bit on the old sensor but the new one was better so made it run ok until the lug flew off???
Might be worth the lad checking his crank sensor out.