HIS name was Turner, Eric Turner - and today the pensioner has revealed secrets of the double life he led after working in a nuclear bunker during the height of the Cold War.

Latter-day "spy" Mr Turner worked for nearly 30 years in the Royal Observer Corp (ROC) at the bunker on Breeze Hill Road, Atherton.

The bunker, which was bought by a mystery buyer last month, housed up to ten members of the corps recruited by the British Government to help protect the country from the threat of nuclear attack.

Mr Turner began working at the bunker in 1963, just two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis - the closest the world came to a nuclear war.

He was responsible for monitoring aircraft activity over the skies of Bolton, along with a crew of three members of the ROC, who would always be on duty.

The bunker contained battery operated equipment which monitored levels of radioactive fallout in the atmosphere.

He was even issued with a special James Bond style fountain pen which recorded the level of radiation he had been exposed to while working in the bunker.

Mr Turner worked part-time as chief observer, juggling his day job as a driver until September 1991, when the bunker was permanently shut down.

Now aged 76, Mr Turner, from Atherton Road, Hindley, said: "We felt a great deal of responsibility and we would have been on duty if their had been a nuclear war.

"In the morning we would always have a meeting about what was going on and in the evenings held exercises. We would put the hatch down on the bunker just to see what it would have been like."

The bunker had been empty up until last year when it was bought by two Atherton businessmen and recently resold for £12,500 at an auction at Manchester Airport.

The concrete-built underground bunker is accessible through a 2ft-square metal hatch and a 15ft laddered shaft leads to two rooms. The larger room measures 15ft by 7ft6in.