ADA GIBSON, 86 on April 6, of Grange Street, Clayton-le- Moors, charity swimmer :

MY FIRST MEMORY: My dad was a bad 'un and used to hit my mother. I used to think 'Why was my dad like that and other dads weren't?' It's stayed with me all through my life.

KISS: A playground kiss with Arthur Johnson. We went to the same school.

LOVE: We used to watch the boys' brigade marching through the streets, with Eddie Taylor at the front, swinging the stick, and he was lovely. He lived in the same street as me, Peel Street, Haslingden. But it was my mate who married him.

DRINK: Half a bottle of ruby wine from a selling-out shop after my husband-to-be, Tommy Gibson, and his brother Alf had taken me and Alf's wife Josie to the Ambulance Drill Hall in Accrington. We were so poorly and I called Tommy all the names under the sun. I have never touched another drink of alcohol.

HERO: Frankie Vaughan. I loved his looks and his singing.

HOUSE: When we were married we lived in Nuttall Street, Accrington. It cost nine shillings a week. We had no money and only had a bed, two chairs we got from his mother and some pint pots. But we were so much in love it didn't make any difference.

PET: A dog called Jerry. He was lovely, a brown shepherd dog, not a big one.

JOB: When I left school at 14 I went to a mill at Spring Vale in Haslingden. But I detested weaving, and in my heart I wanted to sew. LIE: Gladys Johnson and I went to the dance hall on Sunnybank Street and got home a bit late, it was just after 9.30pm. I said I had been at her house and she told her mother she had been at my house.

EMBARRASSMENT:I arranged to meet a boy one Sunday and had to borrow a coin from him to fix my stocking back to the suspender. I had to lift my clothes up and asked him to turn the other way. He did -- I think he was as embarrassed as I was.

HOLIDAY: After I married Tommy we went to Southport. In those days you would get a jug of tea and some chocolate biscuits and sit on the sands, and we were happy.