A TRIED and tested exponent of the dubbers and cut-throat razor, who first excelled in short-back-and-sides 75 years ago, has snipped his way to an extra-special birthday.

Bright-as-a-button Bill Ratcliffe, of Windle, notched up his 90th milestone with a rafter-raising party at Greenalls club -- his favourite watering hole -- when glasses were raised to a gentleman enjoying legend status.

Dapper and of military bearing, as befits a former bombardier Desert Rat, who parades a chestful of medals on Remembrance Day, St Andrew's Church worshipper Bill is father of Joan and David and a great-grandfather.

Born-and-bred in Queen Street, he attended Windle school and was a boy soprano and Sunday school teacher at St Mark's Church, from where he wooed and wed his beloved Sally, who died in 1986.

Bill left school at 14 and had designs on being a glass-cutter at Pilks. "But my arms weren't long enough!," he chortled.

However, he had worked part-time from the age of eight, starting as a bread lad, before having his first 'brush'as a lather boy with Myatt's in George Street.

Adamant he is a hairdresser and NOT a barber, Bill's first weekly wage was 7s 6d when serving a seven-year apprenticeship in the tonsorial arts, and he later hoisted the trademark red-and-white pole at salons in Market Street and Westfield Street. Looking back on those halcyon days of Brylcreem and brilliantine, raconteur Ratcliffe has a fund of stories of the times when hordes of customers submitted daily to the tender mercies of his trusty blade, in particular spruced-up 'town hall types.'

Later a lecturer in hairdressing at St Helens Technical College, fit-as-a-fiddle bantam-built Bill only recently gave up driving, still trundles a mean wood on Greenalls green, and likes nothing better than a hand of dominos with fellow bonesmen Jack Orrell, Fred Austin and Louis Jones. And he regularly drops tic-tac-toe on the bandit, and can whisk around the dance floor with the aplomb of Fred Astaire.

Add a penchant for a wee dram and the pen-picture of 'Puffin' Billy' Ratcliffe is complete, save for the all-pervading aroma of his nightly King Edward, which carries a Government health warning and has fellow tipplers standing to windward!