THE day that crooner Frank Ifield -- he of 'I Remember You' and the yodelling song fame -- came to town, proved a traffic-stopper. The Aussie heart-throb (if you can't recall him, ask your granny) was making a whistle-stop visit to the Rothery Radio record shop, St Helens.

And Ken Melling remembers it well. For he was caught up in all the excitement when a workmate shouted "Frank Ifield's across the road!"

Towering, 16-stone Ken and his equally hefty pals, then laying concrete foundations for a supermarket on the site of the fondly-remembered Scala Cinema, which stood opposite the record shop, shot over just as they were.

"We'd been working at the cement mixer, stripped to the waist on a red-summer day. And we were lathered in sweat".

Such was the attraction of the warbler from Down Under, back in 1962, that the lads had chucked down their spades, and walked straight up to Frank Ifield inside the store.

"He looked up at us, smiling", Ken, of Chancery Lane, Parr, recalls. Probably because they reminded him of the rough and ready bare-chested countrymen he'd left behind in his pursuit of showbiz fame and fortune.

After that close encounter, Ken and the gang resumed work on the supermarket foundations where the only reminder of the Scala was a little alcove which had yet to be flattened. It was the same side alcove where Ken, as a kid, had struggled in vain to see the full screen which, due to a serious design fault, was partially blocked off by a blank wall. Full of nostalgia, Ken had been sitting in the alcove swigging a pint cup of tea during a break from his labours.

He remembers his 'sixties workmates with fondness and amusement. "There were certainly some characters who passed through that job!" he declares.

The old Rope and Anchor was a popular watering hole for the gang, downing the life-giving Flastaff brew during the winter months.

One of the gangers, nicknamed Skipper, was one of the more colourful characters. He had 'ridden the rods' across Canada on freight trains and his party piece was the sentimental old ballad 'Springtime in the Rockies', played on his mouth-organ. With Falstaff swigged in copious amounts, Skipper would often apply for a pay 'sub' -- with Ken and pal, Alan, close on his heels. Once, the payment-maker behind the hatch asked Alan why he required a sub. He replied: "Because I'm getting married". Unimpressed, the keeper of the purse turned to Ken: "And I suppose you're his best man!"

He paid up grudgingly, shaking his head in despair. "But", says Ken, "little did he realise that it was, in fact, true!"

Other characters of fond memory included a building-site worker universally known as The Pieman. This because, during breaktimes he'd leg it to Burchalls shop in Westfield Street for a dozen pies which he'd wolf down with gusto.

Then there was the gaffer who manned the elevated wooden office on the Scala site, gazing down from a large window. With typical building-site humour he was promply nicknamed Eichmann, after the Nazi who faced his criminal trial behind bullet-proof glass, a sight still etched in the memories of the televiewing millions of that time.

The early 1960s was a time when workers could virtually pick and choose their jobs, with a free flow of ever-changing labour all around St Helens. But the times bred a particularly vigilant breed of foreman, often dubbed with war criminal nicknames.

The Sidac site at Sutton boasted a gaffer known as Tojo (but only behind his back). "He would suddenly spring up behind some unfortunate victim at 2pm on a Thursday afternoon and give them the instant sack", recalls Ken.

He and some of his mates were transferring to the Sidac site and they had wound-up one of their buddies so much that when he saw Tojo waiting for them to arrive in a lorry, he went into a hysterical screaming fit.

Predictably, the no-nonsense foreman, victim of the tirade, sacked him on the spot.

'Bullet-firing' Tojo didn't always win first time. "Those who hid from him at 2pm on a Thursday would survive for another week", recalls Ken, "but you could bet that he'd get you in the end".

THANKS, Ken, for that amusing, rough-and-tumble reminder of the 'sixties, when picks, shovels, lump hammers and trowels were as much in evidence as the now ubiquitous computer screen of our modern age.