FORMER Preston joiner Peter Frost holds an ace card in his one-man campaign to win the hearts and minds of schoolchildren in the battle against smoking.
He suffered four heart attacks as a result of a lifetime of heavy smoking and eight years ago this week he underwent a heart transplant operation at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester.
Now, aged 65 and back to full health, Peter has become a stop smoking 'evangelist' who uses shock tactics of his own experience to warn youngsters about the health risks of cigarettes.
"I tell them if they smoke they run the risk of ending up like I did, with a zip fastener in their chests. It makes them sit up and think," he said.
"The results can be very gratifying. I recently had a letter from a ten year-old boy at Moss Side school, Leyland, who said he would 'never, never, never' smoke again after seeing what happened to me." But he fears that some children - such as one 14 year-old girl who said nothing would persuade her to stop smoking 25 cigarettes a day - are beyond help. Since his transplant, Peter, who now lives at Clifton Place, Freckleton, has worked for Heartbeat, taking his campaign to schools.
He said: "Some of these children only have a concentration span of a few minutes but when I start off by telling them I have got the youngest heart in the classroom, they sit up and listen."
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