I left school at 15 and got a job in a small shop called Eve Abramson. It was situated on Bond Street just along from Marshall and Snelgrove, a department store. If you shopped there you had made it. Eve Abramson’s made and sold bras and had small factories in Chapeltown and Manchester.

After a year or so, I wanted to rise up in the world, so I went to work at Scofield’s department store on the Headrow. Again, I opted for the corsetry department. By this time, I was getting older and sillier. We used to have a lot of laughs, and this was one of them.

One day on the department the telephone rang in the stockroom. I went to answer it and put on my best Schofield’s voice.
‘Good morning, corsetry department.’

Customer, very irate, ‘Yesterday two men came to fit me, and it wasn’t broadloom it was tufted I wanted.’

Trying my hardest not to shriek with laughter and to calm the customer down as she wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways, I explained that the telephonist had mis-heard the customer and put her through to corsetry instead of carpets. I seem to remember the lady laughing and we parted friends.