DORIS Thompson was already in her 80s when she retired from riding roller coasters.

But she would have been first on board for the Big One's 85mph maiden voyage if she had had her way.

At 93, she is just seven years younger than Blackpool Pleasure Beach and is looking forward to a tour of this season's new-look Noah's Ark - a mere 70 years after her first ride on it. She said: "Dark rides are not my favourite actually, I find a fast ride the perfect way to relax!

"On the Big Dipper, if you hold yourself too tightly it makes it seem much worse. Sitting back and enjoying it - that's the way to do it.

"When I was three, my favourite ride was the helter skelter. In those days, I could ride on anything I wanted.

"I remember climbing over the wall and actually paying to go on a figure-eight ride owned by a company next door - where The Star is now. I used to get into trouble for that."

One gets the impression Mrs T would relish the idea of getting into trouble now, if she was even ten or so years younger.

But she has thoroughly enjoyed a life filled with the thrills, spills and excitement of watching an attraction expand year after year, to one which now draws seven million visitors annually to Blackpool.

She admits she is quite content nowadays to sit back and watch other people do the work. But she is often to be seen heading through the Park in her wheelchair, armed with a mobile phone, "keeping an eye on the details" while her son, Geoffrey, takes care of the business. She said: "Those cleaning machines don't seem to get into the corners - such details are important, but when you are running such a big operation it is hard to keep in touch with every little thing."

Mrs Thompson may have taken a small step back in recent years. But she is very much an active participant in the decisions which have seen Blackpool Pleasure Beach survive two world wars, several recessions and the death of her husband, Leonard, in 1976. It was Leonard who ran the family empire to the very end but Geoffrey, who had been a director for 13 years, has followed very much in his footsteps as the new managing director.

Doris, until then not so prominent in the business, became its chairman and rose to the challenge of joining Geoffrey to take it in new and fresh directions.

She laughed: "Geoffrey will have to wait until I'm dead! Until then, I try to keep him in check.

"He probably uses business as an excuse to go anywhere he wants to go, but I can't watch him all the time. At least I try!"

She will be glad to see the Wonderful World Building, painted pink for the theme park's centenary year, back to its original white as the architect intended back in 1913.

Her son's piece de rM-Nsistance, the Pepsi Max Big One, is, she says, "absolutely lovely", but was "a bit alarming" when it was on the drawing board in 1993.

She said: "It was a lot of money. One always wonders whether one has hit on the right thing, but rides like that are very popular and it has created great interest all over the world.

"I hoped it would happen, and it did."

Geoffrey, she said, has had the Pleasure Beach in his blood from an early age and although he was thrown into it, it was what he had always wanted.

But she is grateful it was strong desire, as well as family duty, which has kept her son eating, sleeping and breathing the Pleasure Beach ever since. "He always knew he wanted to run it, from being a little boy," she smiled. "He is very energetic and he can grab a 40-wink refresher on a plane anytime."

She will attend this season's Hot Ice show several times, although "it is getting harder to find OAPs to go with." She has not missed a show since 1926.

Hard of hearing, - "not deaf, just hard of hearing" - she finds the theatre increasingly difficult to follow.

But her wheelchair gives her an insight into the difficulties of the disabled and she makes sure facilities at the Pleasure Beach are as good as they can be.

As Blackpool, indeed the whole country, eagerly awaits what is in store for the vacant site of the Fun House, Doris Thompson is in on the secret - but she's certainly not telling.

The Thompson family shields "mother" from the spotlight but as the feisty Doris so rightly points out - "mother can take care of herself."

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