Under the “Meet Jimmy Mac” banner Jimmy McIlroy launched a “This is your life” series by interviewing Dick Ellerton, a former boxer now approaching 90 years of age. A well known character in the Burnley Wood area and a regular, albeit very moderate drinker, at the Burnley Wood Conservative Club, Dick is still amazingly fit. He was a hard punching little Army lightweight boxer, and became known as the Kowloon Killer and Bengal Tiger. Like many of his generation he started working in a weaving mill at the age of 14 as a reacher in for a loomer, but a couple of years later he went “down t’pit”. At one time he worked at Deerplay Pit walking the three miles all uphill, every morning, often arriving soaked before descending into the bowels of the earth and crawling half a mile to spend the day pushing tubs. “There weren’t any buses,” he said, “and usually I set off with only a drink of water and a slice of bread”. Lunch was more bread and butter or sometimes a bowl of stew. At 18 he joined the East Lancashire Regiment and then moved to the Cheshire Regiment, where he developed a keen interest in boxing. Two years in Ireland preceded five in India and it was in the Far East that he collected his nicknames. Fighting in places like Delhi, the North West Frontier, Lahore, Bombay, Darjeeling and Kowloon and obviously winning, often by knockout, led to the Bengal Tiger and Kowloon Killer nicknames. “I could punch a bit and I was fast and after them like a mongrel, never giving them time to settle. Occasionally against a nasty sort I’d get rid of him with the help of an elbow that the ref didn’t spot.” He loved Army life but reluctantly came back to civvy life because of his mother’s ill health. It was back down the pit and also time spent as a fairground booth fighter beginning at Blackpool. “I fought about seven times a day at every town we moved to,” he said. Two Americans tried to coax him to go to the States to fight, but he stayed and married Annie and had three children. Annie died 20 years ago and, serious for once, he said he thinks about her every day. He regularly walks to Sabden to visit his daughter. He recently had a shock walking on Bacup Road when a car pulled up and out stepped one of his boxing booth colleagues he hadn’t seen since those days. Dick also opened a body building club and this stands him in good stead physically today. Although he has spent much of his life fighting, he has never been involved in an argument, let alone a brawl, outside the ring