CAREERING down a mountain road with no brakes, having a gun pointed at your head and losing a company director to love!

They are just some of the hair-raising experiences that local business man Mr Harry Johnston has experienced while working to help others over the years - and raising thousands and thousands of pounds in the process.

Mr Johnston, of R&G Construction in Prestwich, has helped to raise huge amounts for groups such as Heathlands, Brookvale, Booth Hall and the Children's Hospitals Appeal, of which he was a trustee for more than ten years.

The father-of-three has also shipped 2,000 tones of aid across Europe for the Romanian Orphan's Appeal Trust - completing three of the journeys himself - and on one occasion he even lost one of his directors, Bill Taylor, who decided to marry a Romanian girl!

He said: "I have always done fund-raising, I am a great believer in putting something back into the community. I have spent most of my adult life around the Jewish community which is very, very good at doing just that. This has helped me to become a better Christian. I have a very strong allegiance with children's charities and I believe, as a society, we have lost our way with kids. When I was a kid, everybody loved everybody else's kids.

"But now if you give a kid a cuddle when they are crying, you get some funny looks." Harry continued: "I was extremely heavily involved with the Children's Hospitals Appeal and I was on the executive committee for Booth Hall, Pendlebury and St Mary's hospitals.

"I then had to curtail what I did as charity work is something that is done in the evening and I decided to target a specific charity each year."

Successes have included fully equipping an ambulance with emergency paediatric equipment worth £8,500 - having raised the money in less than a month.

He also collected aid for Romania and travelled to the country three times in the early 1990s, once with his son, Darren.

"I found it emotionally draining and physically tiring. The country was in a bad state and I came across things that were completely off the wall; the infrastructure of the country was in ruins.

"We tried to put in aid that would make an impact. Nobody enjoys living off charity; it is demoralising having to sit there and put your hand out. We tried to allow them to get their self-respect back and build up on what little they had."

On one trip to Romania the air brakes on his truck failed - while driving down a mountain - while he has also been shouted at by officials for taking a plug off an iron to put on to a children's scanner.

In another incident, he had a gun pulled on him by a border guard who had frightened himself by accidentally setting off a party popper in one of his aid shipments.

This year Mr Johnston (52) has pledged to raise money for the Breast Cancer Care Appeal and is urging individuals and businesses to make a donation.

He added: "Cheques are arriving from all over the place and I have had some very nice testimonials; it makes me feel very, very humble.

"I hope people never need to make a return on their donation but if they do they will have got the biggest return possible. This money could help to fund research which finds a cure for breast cancer. If you ever need that treatment it would be a great return."

Anyone who would like to make a donation should make cheques payable to Breast Cancer Care and send them to Mr Johnston, Phoenix Buildings, Heywood Road, Prestwich, Manchester, M25 1FN.

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