Fred Dibnah

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a steeplejack. For the past twenty six years he's earned his living by helping to alter the industrial landscape of Northern England.

Presenter0:38

His work was made the subject of a series of celebrated television documentaries, in which, sometimes demolishing, sometimes restoring, and always philosophizing, he came to represent many of the values of industrial Lancashire.

Presenter0:52

Whether swinging from the chimney of a factory or wrestling behind the wheel of a steam engine, he brings alive the affection many still feel for the architecture and machinery of Britain's once great manufacturing empire. He is Fred Dibner. It's almost Fred as if you were born out of your time, really. I mean, would you have been happier being born in the 1890s than being around here in the 1990s?

Fred Dibnah1:14

Yeah, well, I used to think I would have been until I went in the Science Museum the other day and had a look round at how dentists did the job.

Fred Dibnah1:23

Horrible. Uh, but nevertheless, uh, you know, I think I could have put up with all of that. And, you know, the age of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and George Stevenson to me seemed much more exciting than than it does now, you know.

Presenter1:36

But what is it that you love about all that old heavy machinery and all the intricacy of it? Is that what attracts you?

Fred Dibnah1:42

Well, they were the th the really the things that them men did, and they hadn't got much to do it with. They they accomplished magnificent feats with uh not a lot, and now we've got everything and we can't even make the trains run on time, you know. It's it's bad news, isn't it?

Presenter1:56

But but the motor cars they make these days are that much better than the ones they made in these days.

Fred Dibnah1:59

No, it's very comfortable, yeah.

Presenter2:01

But you don't like'em.

Fred Dibnah2:01

The the no, no, no, no. I d I d I don't know. It's something that I do think I'm a reincarnation from the uh the great Victorian era.

Presenter2:05

By the way.

Presenter2:13

Do you

Presenter2:15

I mean, is there anything in your family? Is there anything in your root that you know of? Or are you just a a one-off

Fred Dibnah2:19

It's rather strange. The first time that we'd had anything to do with television and gained this small amount of notoriety.

Fred Dibnah2:29

Me me father's parents all came from Immingham, near all, on the east coast, and and uh and a chap sent over like the the the Dibnus family tree in a way, and it and it went back quite a long way to sixt sixteen odds, and apparently there's loads of'em uh in the plots uh, you know, in the churches of, you know, the outer lying districts of Immingham who were all blacksmiths and uh they were either fishermen or blacksmiths.

Presenter2:54

So it's in your bones, it's in your heart.

Fred Dibnah2:55

Yeah, I I think there must be something because I get quite a lot of visitors to my garden and and they say to look at my machinery and my you know, my workshop, as you might say, and they say, How did you learn all all about this engineering? You know, how did you learn how to work a lathe and all this? It's it's

Fred Dibnah3:13

Basically it's observation, the fact that you you went to mend a chimney and nearly every big mill had its own mechanic shop or a blacksmith's shop and if it were raining, you know, it was somewhere to go and have a little skive, you know, and watch'em doing a bit sort of thing.

Presenter3:28

So you're tau you're entirely self-taught. You've never had any formal training.

Fred Dibnah3:29

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah3:31

No, no, not not for engineering, you know. I mean, my sort of engineering really is a bit crude, but it's quite impressive to anybody who has never been able or never ever done any uh iron work, as you might say.

Presenter3:46

So what's the first record you put on your grammar phone on this desert island we're sending you to?

Fred Dibnah3:49

Well, I'm I'm I'm a great

Fred Dibnah3:52

fan of uh mister Strauss's and I think I would rather like the Blue Danube, you know. Um in fact all of his music is quite pleasant to me.

Presenter4:02

Right, so you might waltz around on the beach to the Blue Danube.

Fred Dibnah4:05

Well, no, I'm not much of a dancer, you know.

Presenter5:04

Johann Strauss's Blue Danube, played by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Vily Boskovsky.

Presenter5:10

It's a bit of an irony for you, though, isn't it, Fred, that that you know you love all of this traditional workmanship, but you've spent quite a bit of your life knocking it down.

Fred Dibnah5:18

Yeah, it's very sad really. I don't really like knocking chimneys down, but the thing is that, you know, nobody wants em no more and there's one or two with preservation orders on'em, uh but the majority are just a liability f to the people who own them.

Presenter5:33

But when they send for you and ask you for a quote to knock it down, do you ever try to dissuade them?

Fred Dibnah5:37

Oh, yeah, I've saved lots of chimneys, yeah, lots and lots of uh chimneys have still stood up through me, but only just in a way, you know, i if if anything.

Fred Dibnah5:47

So you what you've got to do is justify the the price, you see. They're only interested in money, you know, accountants, and if it's cheaper to leave it up and and just do a little bit on it, they will leave it up instead of flattening the thing, you know.

Presenter6:01

And is there a thrill to it, d demolishing a chimney?

Fred Dibnah6:03

Monishing a j

Fred Dibnah6:04

Yeah, sometimes when you go to survey the thing.

Fred Dibnah6:10

And you arrive on the site like and it's leaning the wrong way from the way you want to make it fall down. See, you go to things like power stations and uh you know, built in nineteen fifties, thirties period, forties period, and they're over-engineered and they're nearly always dead straight and it's a foregone conclusion that the thing is going to go right even if you blow it up or chop the bottom out like I do. But when you go to a chimney that were built in maybe eighteen forty and it's all cracked and rotten and it's full of iron bands and and so it's a bit sort of uh gets the adrenaline going a bit.

Presenter6:45

So so if if the modern demolition men went into one of those chimneys with with the dynamite, it could go wrong.

Fred Dibnah6:49

With the d

Fred Dibnah6:51

Oh yeah, and and it frequently does, yeah. There were there's quite a few uh disasters happen up our road, you know. Um once somebody pinched one off me not very long ago and it and it and it went sideways and did fifty two thousand pounds worth of damage.

Presenter7:06

So what's your technique? How do you do it properly? You say you chop the bottom out?

Fred Dibnah7:09

Yeah, basically it's a bit like chopping a tree down. You you you remove half of the brickwork from the base of the chimney. Following the removal of the brickwork, you you fill it in with pit props and uh wooden wedges, you see, so the whole thing eventually becomes supported on the wood, and then you set fire to the wood, you see.

Presenter7:31

What you like a bonfire?

Fred Dibnah7:31

But like a bonfire. Yeah, a big bonfire at the bottom. But the nerve-wracking bit is, is waiting for the wood to burn away.

Fred Dibnah7:38

If you go to blow something up, it's like.

Fred Dibnah7:43

perfectly safe until you go like five, four, three, two, one, bang, and down it comes. Once you've lit the fire, it's actually out of your hands. It's in the hands of the good Lord and the wind.

Presenter7:56

But your engineering is behind it as well.

Fred Dibnah7:58

Yeah, the the thing is I I I can honestly say that I've been doing this for the best part of coming up to nearly thirty years, and I have never had one claim on the insurance.

Fred Dibnah8:09

On the insurance policy. I've had a few for things falling off the tops of chimneys that I've been repairing.

Presenter8:15

And hitting people.

Fred Dibnah8:16

Oh, no, and I've never killed anybody yet. No, no, no.

Presenter8:19

That that you damage.

Fred Dibnah8:19

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah8:22

Record number

Presenter8:23

2.

Fred Dibnah8:24

No, then, as a s small boy, I you know, I were born next door to the engine sheds in Bolton on a on a very large railway siding and the

Fred Dibnah8:35

You know, all through the night, you know, you get people complaining now about noise, noise in factories, and all through the night you could hear these monstrous steam engines roaring along with fifty waggons on the bike full of coal, you know, and like I used to watch through the bedroom window for the engines going by with the firehole door open and a big shaft of light going up into the sky, you know, pouring down with rain, thundering through the night, a magnificent sight, all gone.

Presenter9:42

The sound of a locomotive steam engine. I think it just went by, didn't it?

Speaker 49:44

Uh

Fred Dibnah9:44

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:46

So you were born in Bolton, nineteen thirty eight. What did your dad do?

Fred Dibnah9:50

He my father, he he I don't really know, he he he works in a bleach works and he worked this unbelievable machine. Like if you examine a piece of cloth, the the fibres of its construction aren't round the flat. And the modern way of flattening them out is to put the cloth through copper mangles full of steam with great pressure. But there were there were another way in the olden days and they used to like hammer it flat and this creation where they

Fred Dibnah10:19

Sort of creation of the devil.

Fred Dibnah10:22

It was sort of you know you know a a floatlining machine called the goo bank has a a magnificent like you have in bottom of your Uber in a way, a magnificent spirally shaped roller or a brush. Well, you can imagine a thing like that, about twenty foot long, made of cast iron with all these instead of bristles sticking out of it, knobs, and then a great row of barks of timber about eight inches square, about twenty five feet long, and then a slanting line of pegs sticking out of them, and this roller revolving and lifting these sticks up and they went were quite

Fred Dibnah10:59

musical in a way like all on the cloth as it passed below over a wooden beam, and it literally hammered the the stuff flat, and the noise were unbelievable, and the whole thing was driven by a a station a little steam engine at the end. Just like you've got an electric motor on on end of a end end of a modern machine, no.

Presenter11:21

So you used to go to the

Fred Dibnah11:22

Yeah, when well, on on the uh, you know, summer holidays from school, uh I used to go and climb over the fence, you know, and he used sort of show me round this madhouse of industry.

Presenter11:33

So were you different from the other boys? I mean, you lived near the football club, didn't you? Yeah, yeah.

Fred Dibnah11:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Father worked there, brother adored him. I never went near him.

Presenter11:42

Really? So you were much more you were much more of a a kind of steeplejack groupie than you were a football group.

Fred Dibnah11:43

No.

Fred Dibnah11:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only time I um

Fred Dibnah11:52

Never had a lot do with'em where if if some blows off the roof or they lose all the balls in practice, they're all in the gutters up top. I have to go and rescue'em, you see.

Fred Dibnah12:02

I know Nat Lofthouse personally, he's a good lad, but he's from another era, you know.

Presenter12:06

But how did you then amuse yourself as lads when you did play with the lads? I mean, there weren't too many toys and games and bikes around. What did you do?

Fred Dibnah12:12

Very close by to where I lived, there were the most magnificent tip that you've ever seen. You could

Fred Dibnah12:20

They were the most unbelievable household items that arrived there, and the thing to fight hardest for were one of them silver cross prams with the bigger wheels.

Fred Dibnah12:30

'Cause you you could make bogies that went very much faster, you see, and bigger wheels. Yeah, trolleys, yeah, yeah.

Presenter12:34

Maybe on bigger wheels. Yeah, trolleys, yeah, yeah. Yeah, record number three.

Fred Dibnah12:38

The Colin Albert Barry is s some friends of ours, like folk singers who who who we we know recorded this some time ago. I don't quite know when, but it it's about

Fred Dibnah12:50

a man and his and his battle with the you know, down the pit, you know, just one man and and the coal dust and what what happened to you in the end, you know, by the time you were sixty five. You can keep winning till about then, you know, I suppose a similar thing will happen to me, you know, but they call it industrial disease or something like that, don't they? You know, the end of the road, like

Fred Dibnah13:10

I'd sooner die that way with my boots on, though, than to all the road.

Speaker 413:17

To the corn walked Albert Berry, Drill of iron in his hand After fight another battle For the people of this land Send the coal to Albert Berry For forty years you've been a man You've took away the best part of me Today I'll kill you if I can Alberto kiss Drill of iron

Fred Dibnah13:39

Ten the call

Speaker 414:05

And he drilled in salvo for forty years, you tried to kill me.

Presenter14:14

The Cole and Albert Berry sung by Gary and Vera Aspie.

Presenter14:18

It's a dangerous job, being a a steeplejack, Fred Dibno. I mean, it it gives us all the willies to see you standing on top of a steeple cross as you do. No ropes nor nothing to hold you on, quite often, I've seen you.

Fred Dibnah14:29

Yeah.

Presenter14:30

Have you got no nerves, or are you just mad?

Fred Dibnah14:33

Do you

Fred Dibnah14:34

No, no, the the the thing is, there's no brave men, you know. I mean, I get to the jitters many a time, you know, and think, you know, mind what you're doing, or you might end up with half a day out with the Undertaker, you know, you're finished.

Presenter14:44

They move, don't they, chimneys?

Fred Dibnah14:46

Yeah, yeah. Beautiful story about when I when I first met Susie, my new missus, the the media characters chased us about for a day or two in the you know, in you know, these reporter men from newspapers. And one day they caught up with us, you see, and and this guy wi white Mac on at big lapels at Belt Round, you know, like someone out of an American gangster film. He says

Fred Dibnah15:08

What we want to do, he said, is take a photograph of you and Susie, a new lady friend. So Sue said, Yeah, I'll have my photograph taken on top of a factory chimney with Fred, you see, and and no more ado. He said, Well, wonderful idea, he said, brilliant idea, that magic but he never consulted the poor fellow stood in the corner with the camera, you see.

Fred Dibnah15:29

This were going to be not the photograph from the floor, a climbed up photograph. So Susy went and put her jeans on and her obnail boots, set off up the chimney,

Presenter15:38

She doesn't mind doing that.

Fred Dibnah15:39

Oh, she's pretty good, yeah. She's quite gamut, things like that. Steamroller.

Presenter15:41

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah15:44

Driving.

Presenter15:45

You wouldn't have married her otherwise, wouldn't you?

Fred Dibnah15:47

I don't know really. The thing is that

Fred Dibnah15:49

She got to the top, and a platform round the top of the chimney.

Fred Dibnah15:53

I climbed up, got on the platform. The guy with the camera's at the bottom and he he's definitely having a very worrying period in his life. And he's there adjusting his camera and messing about and eventually he's got a bit of composure and he approached the ladder at the bottom and he set off. And he sort of by the time he's halfway up, we're about 150 feet up, you see, on this little platform made of wood round the top of the chimney. The guy's halfway up and he's come to practically a snail's pace of progress. So I said, I'll nip down the ladder and give him a pep talk. You know, get you can get by people on vertical ladders if you know what you're doing.

Presenter16:30

You know what you're doing?

Fred Dibnah16:31

And I got by him and I got underneath him, like you said, I'll be all right now and he booked up a bit and eventually we got him to the staging at the top. I mean, there's only one word for it, he was prostrate, there were no way this guy were going to stand up, you know, no way.

Presenter16:45

Let alone take a photograph.

Fred Dibnah16:46

Yeah. So I said to him, Look, do you want me to get you down? You know, I you know, we've we've made a terrible mistake.

Fred Dibnah16:55

He says, No, he said, Hang on, he said, I'll be all right, he said, in in a minute or two. Just just give us just give us a minute or two, you see. And he stood up and he were like visibly shaking and the camera's pointing up in the sky. He could have took just as good a fought a down off ground with a dirty bed sheet hanging down the back, and he and he's just about got all the composure that he's ever gonna get. And Susie says to him, Can you feel it swaying in the wind?

Fred Dibnah17:22

It's like a general

Fred Dibnah17:25

And he all the blood drained out of him again, you know, and you

Presenter17:28

Mm-hmm.

Presenter17:30

So he never got his pig

Fred Dibnah17:31

It did, but they were no good. They never used it. We had to borrow some that we'd we'd taken with a with a brownie camera a couple of days before.

Presenter17:33

It was unusable.

Fred Dibnah17:41

More music.

Fred Dibnah17:42

Ah, no, then Neil Diamond, uh um who my new wife introduced me to, is quite nice really, Neil Diamond. So I think we'll have him singing Hello Again, which were he were he were well into when I first met Susie.

Fred Dibnah17:58

Uh

Speaker 417:58

Hello my friend, hello.

Fred Dibnah17:58

Hill.

Speaker 418:06

Just called to let you know.

Speaker 418:14

I think you've bought you well.

Speaker 418:22

But I'm here alone

Speaker 418:26

And you're there at home.

Presenter18:28

Neil Diamond singing hello again. There's obviously um a large dollop of romance in you, Fred.

Fred Dibnah18:34

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I met Sue when it were you know, sh and she really introduced me to um Neil Diamond. I'd heard of him, of course, before. Me mum my mum were quite musical. She played the piano. And and

Fred Dibnah18:46

That is really one thing which I wish I'd have learned. I think I could have become quite proficient at playing the piano.

Presenter18:53

Because there is something of the artist in you, isn't there? You went to art?

Fred Dibnah18:55

Art schooling. Yeah, that's a fact. Yeah, yeah.

Fred Dibnah18:59

To t when I when I went to junior school, you see, I would always, you know, when they come to the art lesson, I I always did quite well, you know, always L mine up in front of the class, you see.

Fred Dibnah19:10

At the end, you'd got to do the inevitable. I wasn't very good on the three R's, so they they said.

Fred Dibnah19:16

You know, we'll put you in for the art scholarship, you see, and you've got to draw the usual bunch of flowers and a few bananas sticking out and apples and things. Then a perspective thing, like an house with real windows in, and then a subject of your own choice, which, believe it or not, even at the tender age, I'll be about maybe 10 or 11 at this time, a traction engine.

Presenter19:43

Surprise, surprise.

Fred Dibnah19:44

Yeah, yeah. And I drew this traction engine and uh from memory which which um

Fred Dibnah19:50

As Daddy must have thought it were quite impressive, because I passed the scholarship to the Art School.

Presenter19:57

Anyway, you didn't become an artist for your living, you didn't become an undertaker, which you nearly did.

Fred Dibnah20:01

Oh, the coffins pulled me off.

Presenter20:01

Not the coffins

Presenter20:03

You didn't become any kind of cabinet maker, which you trained to be. You didn't become a cook, which you did in in your national service, did you?

Fred Dibnah20:09

Yeah, yeah, a lot of money wasted there by the government, you know. In fact, I I d I did very well when I did my national service. I thought there's no way they're going to keep me in this kook house for two years. And I I talked my way out of it within a month. What, you poisoned them? Yeah, well, no, no. The the thing is that I was sort of attached to the 14 twentieth King's Azars Cavalry Regiment.

Presenter20:23

What your poison

Presenter20:25

Oh no

Speaker 420:25

Uh

Fred Dibnah20:32

Which is a Manchester-based lot like, you know, North of England, man. And they

Fred Dibnah20:38

They'd just arrived in Germany and th they sort of purchased this run-down farm, which no doubt you've been on the continent and seen all rooftops are like belonged to a church, very steep, you see, and the roof were full of holes, and they couldn't find anybody brave enough to climb on the damn thing to mend it. So I like volunteered with a guarantee that they would get me out of the kookhouse, which they did. So I spent the best part of the two years on this farm with an hole in the fence and a pub across the road, which were quite magnificent.

Presenter21:11

Some more music.

Fred Dibnah21:13

Ah, yeah. Uh, Mr Rachmaninoff's piano concerto, number two, reminds me uh of my late friend Ken Devine, who in lots of ways were a frustrated steeplejack. His wife didn't like him bothering with me because of the danger involved. He should have been playing his violin in the in the front row of the alley orchestra, which, you know, that that is the one of the last concerts that that Susie and I went to, which he he played in at at the Free Trade Hall at Manchester. And that one of his

Speaker 321:46

Uh

Fred Dibnah21:47

Troubles with his messes were

Fred Dibnah21:49

We were up this two hundred foot chimney and and I were sort of three quarters of the way up and Kenneth was stood on the top, you see, and he took this photograph of me coming up the ladder, but he got his boots in the bottom of the frame of the film, you see the picture, and his wife found the picture and recognised the boots,'cause he'd always said to her, I don't climb up chimneys, I only go watch

Presenter22:13

You were a bad influence on him, obviously.

Fred Dibnah22:15

Yeah.

Presenter22:16

But this piece of music reminds you of him.

Fred Dibnah22:18

It does indeed, yeah.

Presenter23:14

Part of the first movement of Raghmaninoff's piano concerto number two in C minor, Op. 18, played by Vladimir Ashkenazi with the concert gabar orchestra conducted by Bernard Heitink. So you came out of the army, out of doing your national service, and you set about becoming a steeplejack. As we said, no training, but you set yourself up in business.

Fred Dibnah23:32

We said no train.

Fred Dibnah23:33

But

Presenter23:36

Is it possible to say, though, why? Obviously it's, as we've heard, a theme that had run throughout your childhood, but what was it you dreamt of? Did you want to work at that great height? Or did you want the freedom? Or did you love the idea of the work? What was it?

Fred Dibnah23:47

The free

Fred Dibnah23:51

I thought it would

Fred Dibnah23:53

s somehow or other heroic for a start, you know, and and and also exciting and romantic in a way, you know. And also I could

Fred Dibnah24:02

make some sort of name for myself, you say, which, God forbid, I never ever dreamed that I would end up like making an Academy Award winning film. That was furthest from my mind from ever. I actually thought when I mended the town hall clock in Bolton that that wa would be my one and only claim to fame.

Presenter24:24

And and has the fact that you've become quite famous because the television found you and obviously identified you as somebody who people would be interested to know about, identified you.

Fred Dibnah24:33

Identify.

Presenter24:34

If you like, as a kind of

Presenter24:37

dare I say, one of the classic British eccentrics.

Fred Dibnah24:40

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter24:41

D do you mind the wor?

Fred Dibnah24:43

No, no, it doesn't bother me at all. In fact, it's it's quite a compliment, really.

Presenter24:47

But has the fact that they did that to you, that that's happened to you, has it disturbed your life in a way, do you think? Has it altered it?

Fred Dibnah24:53

Not a lot. I I it's never overbothered me. I I do have some

Fred Dibnah24:59

D de depressing moments when this after-dinner speaking's a weird business, you know, you you sort of um

Fred Dibnah25:07

If a person has been sort of advertised

Fred Dibnah25:11

Like, you know, so much a ticket. The the the people who come to actually listen to you talking uh have come because they want to.

Fred Dibnah25:20

At a dinner there's a lot of people there just come for the bloody feed, haven't they? You know, they and they don't give a wally who's gonna do the talking.

Presenter25:27

And and do you feel a bit a bit daft doing that? Do you feel as if it's always not?

Fred Dibnah25:31

Not always. No, I've I I used to like break out in a cold sweat once, but I don't no more because what I weigh up is you look round the audience and there's always somebody.

Fred Dibnah25:41

or some party who is interested in what you're talking about, so I just talk to him instead.

Fred Dibnah25:48

It justifies you getting your money at the end of the day, see?

Presenter25:52

Record number six.

Fred Dibnah25:53

Yeah, James Galway playing his uh flute. Um

Fred Dibnah25:58

Is is our sort of theme tune for for the um documentaries.

Presenter27:05

James Gorway playing Pricaldi's Carnival of Venice with the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Charles Gerhardt.

Presenter27:12

Your fame, Fred, has also meant that your divorce when it came, after, what, seventeen or eighteen years of marriage, was quite a public business. Your your wife, Alison, Upton oft, and took the three daughters with her. That must have been very difficult.

Fred Dibnah27:20

Uh Yeah.

Fred Dibnah27:26

It it we were at the time. I've got over it now, like, but you know, I'm one of the few men who had his divorce filmed.

Presenter27:30

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah27:34

which I can laugh now, but I didn't then not tell you.

Presenter27:36

Do you think perhaps the filming was partly responsible for it?

Fred Dibnah27:40

Well, yeah, and then I think she got another bloke. That's well the main reason

Fred Dibnah27:45

That she's

Presenter27:45

But she said that she was going'cause you were married to your steam engines and and your chimneys and not to her.

Fred Dibnah27:50

Yeah, but that that was a trifle contradictory really because a few films back it were why have we bought the tractor and we've bought it for our old age, you know, it it's um not got a very good memory, you see. Um

Presenter28:03

But was there was there a kind of conflict of values, I suppose?'Cause she wanted uh didn't she she wanted a modern motor car and you wanted like the steam engine or she wanted to go on a sunshine holiday. Yeah, yeah, that's that.

Fred Dibnah28:10

You would like the steam engine or she wanted

Fred Dibnah28:13

Yeah, yeah, that's that is basically it, really. Wrong type of people, you know, um, for each other. Uh.

Presenter28:20

But did it was that very hurtful that that um your family f you know

Fred Dibnah28:24

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah28:26

Yeah.

Presenter28:26

were bored, I suppose, by the things that you feel so passionate?

Fred Dibnah28:28

Are the things that

Fred Dibnah28:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it were, it were, it did hurt. In fact, it, you know, went grey really and uh aged me a hell of a lot, you know.

Fred Dibnah28:39

Quite young looking before all that for me age.

Presenter28:43

Have you seen her since? It's five years ago you were divorced three seconds.

Fred Dibnah28:45

Moms in a pub.

Fred Dibnah28:47

Yeah, with a new husband.

Presenter28:49

And you've got a new wife?

Fred Dibnah28:50

Oh yeah, yeah, which, um, best thing that ever happened to me actually, um

Presenter28:54

The two new children.

Fred Dibnah28:55

Yeah, yeah, you know.

Presenter28:56

How old are they?

Fred Dibnah28:57

Um well Jack's four and and the Little Un's f five month old is.

Presenter29:03

You actually knocked a chimney down on your honeymoon, didn't you?

Fred Dibnah29:06

Yeah, we did, yeah, yeah, that were uh uh one in Bolton. Um we didn't have very far to go, like a sort of a celebratory thing afterwards.

Presenter29:15

So Susie Susie likes it all. She likes the chimneys as well.

Fred Dibnah29:17

Well, yes, she's very strange for a lady, she's quite into the mechanics and all that.

Presenter29:23

And were you surprised to find that you could find happiness again? Did you think you were going to spend the rest of your life on your own?

Fred Dibnah29:28

Yeah, yeah, we're a bit hard for a month or two doing my own shopping, you know, going to the supermarket especially. It was a nauseating business every Friday with another divorcee gent shoving the old trolleys round and everybody's there ya.

Fred Dibnah29:43

It was awful that, you know, I don't think I could have stoked much more of that.

Presenter29:48

Next record.

Fred Dibnah29:50

Yeah, no, the The Power of Love by Jennifer Rodgers.

Fred Dibnah29:54

comes in here again when I first met Susie, you know, we're in the top ten I think. And the lads at the pub which we were sort of when I were doing my courting, they used to bang it on, you know, when we'd had about five pints each.

Fred Dibnah30:07

But they knew you were

Presenter30:07

But they knew you were in love, did they?

Fred Dibnah30:09

Well, more or less, yeah, they were tucking the Mickey in a way, I think, but it works. It it it's uh worked very well.

Presenter30:15

Did you feel stupid?

Fred Dibnah30:19

No, not really. I felt a bit embarrassed at first, especially about the age difference,'cause Sue's like twenty hours younger than me, and yet it didn't bother me now.

Speaker 430:30

Cause I am your lady

Presenter30:56

Jennifer Rush and the Power of Love. You're fifty three, Fred Evaner. Is being a steeplejack a young man's job, or can you go on doing it till you drop?

Fred Dibnah31:00

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah31:05

It depends if I've had an excessive night on the hill, you know.

Fred Dibnah31:09

Often it gets harder, uh, you know, if you've been out somewhere to um attack a two hundred foot pile of ladders in a morning.

Presenter31:17

Can you describe the feeling to me? I mean the wonderful feeling, as you're kind of pulling yourself up in your boatswain's chair, and it's a beautiful summer's day in Bolton.

Speaker 431:27

Yeah.

Fred Dibnah31:27

Mm. Yeah.

Presenter31:27

And you're halfway up and you pause and you wan lean against the wall for a little pause sometimes to do.

Fred Dibnah31:32

Oh yeah, yeah. It's quite magnificent really, hanging off the top of a great building, especially as you just said, on a beautiful summer's day, and everybody down below sweating away, you know, and sort of you're as free as a bird in a way, and you can sort of turn round and put your back against the wall and sort of look out as though you're sort of static.

Presenter31:54

Quite close to heaven, is it?

Fred Dibnah31:56

Well, in some ways, yeah, I am nearer to him than most.

Presenter32:00

Do do you ever think I mean, I know you said that you you do still have some fear do you sometimes think that that's perhaps how you'll meet your Maker one of these days, you've dropped from a great height?

Fred Dibnah32:08

No, you know, i it's it's never ever entered my head that that that I would I would kill myself doing, you know, being a staple jack. Um

Fred Dibnah32:20

You know, I I don't think me me or the wife, you say that you've got some divine protector somewhere who sort of helps you out when things are going a bit wrong, you know, there's half a factory chimney coming towards you and you're running in the other direction.

Presenter32:34

Last record.

Fred Dibnah32:36

Ah no then. Um

Fred Dibnah32:39

Memory.

Fred Dibnah32:41

with Elaine Page singing it, which I think is quite wonderful.

Speaker 432:46

Memory all alone in my mood.

Speaker 432:53

I can smile at the old days

Speaker 432:57

I was beautiful there.

Speaker 433:03

I remember the time I knew what handlingness was.

Speaker 433:11

Let the memory.

Speaker 433:16

Let's

Presenter33:17

Again.

Presenter33:19

Memory sung by Elaine Page. Well, now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Fred, which one would it be?

Fred Dibnah33:25

Hmm. That was a bit difficult, that.

Fred Dibnah33:27

Um I think the Jennifer Rush one.

Presenter33:31

The power of love.

Fred Dibnah33:32

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter33:33

Right. And um a book. You've got the Bible on the beach waiting, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare waiting.

Fred Dibnah33:37

Schwaiting

Fred Dibnah33:39

Well, I don't think I'll be bothering Wi Will here too much at all. I have a magnificent collection of um

Fred Dibnah33:49

Bound

Fred Dibnah33:50

Volumes of The Engineer, you know, which of course is still produced to this very day, uh, a magazine for engineers. But they

Fred Dibnah34:00

eighteen ninety eight about eighteen seventy to eighteen ninety odd and and it's magnificent, you know, like when we actually led the world in engineering technology. Um it I can read it forever and the print's so small, you know, just one magazine lasts you about three days.

Fred Dibnah34:18

It's not been good for years with her. It's about four inches thick.

Presenter34:22

And a luxury.

Fred Dibnah34:23

Well, I think I'd take my steamroller and just park it up and give it a shine every now and again. It won't be much use for anything, would it?

Presenter34:30

Give you a lot of pleasure, though.

Fred Dibnah34:31

Yeah, it would indeed. Ah, just looking at it.

Presenter34:34

Fred Dibner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Fred Dibnah34:38

Thank you very much.

Speaker 334:47

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio forward.