ALTHOUGH she probably wouldn’t have been recognised by many people in Bolton at the time, the moment she started to speak Dorina Brown would have been instantly familiar to thousands around the town.

In 1970 when this photo was taken, Dorina and her husband had recently moved to Dunscar as she was the new voice reading the lunchtime and teatime Northern news bulletins on BBC radio.

As she started her new radio role, she was also swapping her polished tones on the radio during the day for some real northern tones at night as she was appearing in the 200th production at Manchester’s Library Theatre, In Celebration, playing a nosy neighbour.

One of the reasons Dorina had moved to Dunscar was that she had room for her pet donkey Henrietta.

Clearly her spell as a regional radio announcer impressed her BBC bosses because later in her career Dorina would become a newsreader on Radio Four.

She also continued her career as an actress and had parts in the comedy series The Cuckoo Waltz, the daytime series Crown Court and even in the country’s favourite soap Coronation Street playing both a police officer and a coroner in different episodes.