DOES anyone remember Bob Lester, known as the richest rag-and-bone man in town? The question springs from a note forwarded by veteran reader Jack Pennington who also picks up on our on-running Cockney Bob theme.

Says Jack, of Malvern Road, Parr: "The two Bobs were both terrific local characters and although they slept rough they were always very clean and hard-working."

Cockney Bob, whose surname was Dudley, at one time worked alongside Jack at the old St Helens smelting works. This produced antimony, a toxic metallic element added to alloys to increase their strength and hardness.

But the working partnership was short-lived. "We only lasted a week," explains Jack, "as we found that the place was bad for our health.

And he adds: "Bob also took me into Grimshaw's lodging house." That was where Bob lived in his later years after toughing it out by sleeping in the kilns of a local brickworks. Bob, a son of St Helens who for some strange reason adopted a Cockney accent, introduced Jack to a resident gang of lodgers. "They were all sat round a big pot of soup dipping their bread into it," he recalls.

Bob had other ususpected talents, apart from earning his daily bread by collecting scrap metal in a tall, old-fashioned pram. "He'd once worked with a magician named Brody, and I've seen Bob performing tricks of his own," says Jack.

"Once, while in the Engine Hotel in Newton Road, Parr, he asked me to hand him a £1 note. After noting down its serial number, he began to burn the note (a lot of money in those long-gone days) in the pub fire, showing his audience the ashes."

Jack feared for his £1 loss, but Bob smilingly produced it again, as if from thin air.

And pint-sized Bob was no push-over, either! "I once saw him disarm a man who had a knife. He then threw him over a low wall near the Raven Hotel," recalls Jack.

Then, typical of this unforgettable little scrap-gatherer, Bob enquired if the knife-man was all right, before picking him up and sending him on his way.

Retired top cop Fred Taylor of Kings Moss also has forwarded some interesting memories about Cockney Bob and his poverty-stricken fellow strugglers and I shall be returning to the subject soon.

THEY certainly don't make colourful characters like little Bob any more!