This week, with TOM SHARRATT, county councillor for South Ribble (East)

MEMORY: The day my father was promoted to inspector in the Blackburn borough police force. I was sitting on the kerb outside our house in Markham Street (now Markham Road) in Blackburn playing with a little Hornby train which I still have. My father came round the corner, I looked up and he waved -- he was wearing his inspector's uniform.

HOLIDAY: We always used to go to Blackpool so I cannot remember any specific holiday -- after all these years they blur together! But I remember one year my father was called back because of the war before the week was over and I remember I cried when the train went past the Pleasure Beach.

HOUSE: In Kentmere Drive, Cherry Tree, when I got married. We moved in during 1962 and moved to my present address in Coupe Green, Hoghton, in 1971.

JOB: I was a reporter on the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. I had always wanted to be a journalist and I can remember printing my first newspaper on a John Bull printing set and selling it to my mother for a penny. I have published The Idle Toad for 20 years -- it started off as a single sheet newsletter and has grown into16 pages with a circulation of nearly 9,000.

SCOOP: I can't remember my first scoop, but the first story I ever wrote for the Evening Telegraph was about a cow killed by lightning at Tockholes.

CAR: Unusually, I didn't learn to drive until I was 27. I had a Renault, I can't remember which model.

AMBITION: To speak Spanish. I went to QEGS in Blackburn where I was taught by Leo Collier, the finest teacher I have ever known. I took a degree in modern languages, French and Spanish, at Oxford 40 years ago and at the moment I am brushing up on my Spanish on a course in Darwen.

ELECTION VICTORY: I went to a Labour Party selection meeting for the county council elections in 1981 and the man who was supposed to be chosen as candidate didn't turn up. One of the lads said "you could do that" and I was duly selected and elected.