AN East Lancashire man will light a single candle in memory of a dead friend when America wakes up to the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks today.

Michael Baldwin, who lived in Rishton until moving to New York in 2000, believes this year's commemorations will be much more low key than the previous two years - but that does not mean people will ever forget.

On September 11, 2001, Michael, along with former Darwen woman Louise Demaine - was running a English fish and chip shop in the Greenwich Village area of New York.

Until that day, the community had quite literally lived in the shadow of the twin towers.

In the hours and days which followed, Michael and his colleagues in the A Salt And Battery chip shop worked around the clock providing meals for the overstretched staff at the nearby St Vincent's Hospital.

They later discovered that one of their regular customers, a policeman called James Leahy, was among the thousands who died when the World Trade Centre towers collapsed.

Immediately they set about raising money for their friend's family and using an upturned water cooler to collect cash they raised $5,000 within days.

Three years on and the memories are still vivid for Michael, who used to live in Somerset Drive. But he believes that, for the first time, this year's remembrance will be a more personal affair.

He said: "I think a lot of people will just be doing their own thing. This is the first time it will have fallen on a weekend, and I think that means a lot of people who were in Manhattan on September 11 won't be here for it.

"I will be just lighting a candle. It is something I have done every year since and I think most people will be doing something private.

"It's got to the point where people want to remember, but also to move on."

Michael now runs a second branch of the chip shop on Second Avenue, and believes that tourism is only now beginning to return to the levels the Big Apple enjoyed before pictures of the two planes changing the city's skyscape forever were beamed live around the world.

He said: "Ground Zero has become a tourist attraction in its own right, and everyone wants to go there.

"A couple of months ago I had relatives over and we want on a boat trip around the island and I was trying to explain just where the Twin Towers were.

"It's hard for people to comprehend just how big they were, but when you try to explain it, it's like it only happened yesterday."