This is your life for diamond couple

11:48am Tuesday 25th December 2007

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A COUPLE were retold the story of their married life in a special ceremony top mark their 60th anniversary.

A This is Your Life style book was created for Jack and Alice Hesketh - and they were even given replicas of their wedding bouquet and button holes - featuring white and pink chrysanthemums.

Daughter Lorraine O'Brien, 54, raided her parents attic in Coupe Green, Hoghton, to find pictures of them as children and as a married couple over the last 60 years.

Whilst Jack and Alice, both aged 79, celebrated their wedding anniversary on a month long holiday in Benidorm, Lorraine, from Hoghton, put together a book, videos and a presentation for the This Is Your Married Life tea party in Swallow Trafalgar Hotel, Preston New Road, Samlesbury.

Lorraine took inspiration from This Is Your Life television programme where the host would surprise a celebrity or public figure, occasionally an ordinary citizen and read their biography from the red book that was put together about them.

Their grandson Ross O'Brien, a police officer in Chester, recorded a short video which was played on during the presentation because he had to work Lorraine said: "My parents weren't expecting anything like that.

"The idea came from nowhere at the time but i've had some wonderful comments.

"I wanted to do something special for them.

"I found an announcement of their marriage in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph and I've included that in too.

"They were speechless."

The couple met when they were 16 years old at a ballroom dance in the King George's Hall in 1944.

Alice, who was working as a weaver at the time, said: "I was with a friend and I said to her 'I don't know who that man is in the grey suit but he keeps coming and asking me to dance' and that was it."

The pair married in 1947 when Jack had joined the army. They spent their honeymoon in Morecambe. "The west coast was the place to go in those days," said Alice. "We didn't go abroad until we were in our 50s and we went to Majorca. We thought it was a million miles away."

She added: "When Lorraine was born Jack said that was his lot - he had everything he needed, even if he was in a house full of women!"

Alice, went onto become head of accounts in Newmans Footwear, Garden Street, Blackburn, Jack started working life as a butcher before going on the buses, working at a confectioners and then taking a job as despatch manager at Newmans.

Alice added: "I don't know where my daughter got the idea for the book from but it was unbelievable. I feel like the queen.

Jack added: "I haven't come down to earth yet."