HAVE you heard the story about the gas chargehand who went looking for leaks – with a lighted match?

But the expert lived to tell the tale and in 1955 Thomas Haworth celebrated his golden wedding anniversary with his wife Harriet.

And when the Northern Daily Telegraph talked to him at his home in Addison Street, Blackburn, the 71-year-old reflected on the good old days.

“One of my biggest explosions was at Darwen Street bridge in the 1930s,” he recalled.

“It smelled like a gas chamber, but we couldn’t find the leak.

“Try with this said one of the bosses – and he handed me a piece of blazing tar rope...

“I hadn’t walked 10 yards when BANG – women screamed, windows crashed and a horse that was near, was blown clear out of his harness and shafts and bolted up the street.

“I was stupefied, my face was black and was sure the bridge had gone ...”

He added: “ That was the last of the naked light system – it’s all done with meters now!”

Mr Haworth’s 39 years as an outside chargehand with the Gas Department was studded with what he called ‘near dos’.

He recalled the day an old friend was killed outright by gas and he had himself been overcome on three occasions.

Gas was not the only menace in his life, though and electricity had smiled on him on their occasional encounters.

For Mr Haworth once confounded the electricity experts by happily living on when, in theory, he should have been dead, or at least badly wounded.

“That incident was in George Street, I was sawing away at what I thought was a pipe when there was a sudden fountain of sparks.

“I dropped the saw quick and jumped back – what I had been sawing was high tension cable!”

Mr Haworth also described the ‘fireworks’ he had encountered during the Second World war.

“Supply pipes were always going and we worked day and night to restore supply – I remember one week being paid for 144 hours work.”

He had seen bigger blitzes though, in the First World War, while serving in Belgium, France and Selonika.

Finally, in 1949, his doctor told him to lay down his pick and shovel for good.

Thomas and Harriet had two daughters, Sally and Elizabeth, who lived in Blackburn and a son George, who ran a pub in Huddersfield, as well as six grandchildren.