Alright. My name is Cyril David Bayliffe, and the Cyril came from my father's name, and it's been a lifelong problem to me. I was always intended to be called David.

I was born in Oldham in 1937, 10th of March, in Oldham Royal infirmary and there was a raging blizzard outside.

Next notable thing happened to me was when I was teething, I was poisoned by mercury. It was in the teething powders. And I spent six months in Manchester skin hospital.

First aircraft I ever sat in was an angel bomber, because Avro aircraft factory was near, on the edge of Oldham. And any aircraft that'd been shot down were brought into the tram shed overnight before being taken to the Avro aircraft factory. And my father worked on the trams at that time.

The first naval craft I was on was a U-boat but that's because one was captured and it was in Salford docks, and there was a mile long queue to visit it.

In 1957, I was lucky enough to be the Craft Apprentice of the Year in the power station industry in the northwest of Merseyside. Part of my reward was to go on a coal ship from Bankside Power Station in London to Blyth in Northumberland... but they wouldn't accept visitors on the boat, so I had to sign on in the merchant navy for a fortnight.

I was one of the last national servicemen, did my service in the Royal Engineers, and I'd been deferred, so it was 1960 when I went to do my national service. And the regiment I was in was what they called, one of the spearpoint regiments. When the Russians built the Berlin Wall, we were rushed across in tank landing ships, so the first time I set foot abroad was not with a passport but with a rifle in my hand.

I returned to the power station after my national service, and quite a lot of episodes happened then. It was in a time of power shortages and, unfortunately, one of the engineers in the control room made a mistake which blacked out the whole of Manchester. We'd two hundred local substations fed from that power station, so a great area of Manchester was blacked out. And we had dozens of telephones ring in. One of my abiding memories is the man in charge, after answering one of them, said, 'that was a Chief Constable in Manchester and he's had to call out every off-duty policeman in the city.' And then he said, 'I don't think we're going to be able to keep this quiet.'

I was a shift worker for 38 years, and I became an engineer in charge of the operation shift. 

My first wife, we were married in 1965. We'd come to Leeds because I got promoted in the power station industry. My first wife and I had 15 cruises, but unfortunately, she died when she was only 53. We had two daughters, 14 and 18 at the time. The eldest was an occupational therapist, and the youngest became a scientist.

I remarried in 2000. My second wife is now in a care home with Alzheimer's. And I had two heart attacks that year, and I've just had a stroke. So, I'm recovering from that.

But we never regretted coming to Leeds. Compared to Oldham, it was paradise. That's my story.