I WAS watching the National Teachers' Awards on Sunday.

To see the cream of staff winning the equivalent of the film industry Oscars brought back many fond memories of my grammar school teachers in the sixties.

Education has changed massively since then, but many of the mainly female staff were totally dedicated to their calling.

Some stand out more than others for their ability to communicate their subject.

I lived in fear of geography teacher, the late Miss Olive Norminton, who at the time I thought of as a buxom harridan. But what a teacher. No one spoke in her class, you listened and learned, or else!

Miss Dorothy Bannister was a maths whizz who moved at the speed of light, and was thus nicknamed Roger after the first sub four minute miler. She had the blackboard covered with formulae before the lesson even started. She's now in her eighties and still attends the old girls' get togethers.

Mrs Avis Freeman was a fantastic science teacher who took me to the top of the form.

The tall, elegant Miss A G de C Smale (English) always swept into class in her black robe and drummed the language into us. Funnily enough I was always best at reported speech. Every single one in her class passed their GCE.

They're the ones who come back most to mind and have no doubt helped to produce some of the country's better older teachers still in the classrooms today.

I thank them all for the strict education they gave me. Where would I have been without them?

I could have done better, like some of my later reports said, but ambition was not always one of my great desires.

I could have gone further in the newspaper industry if I'd have wished to, but I have always been happy here in Leigh. Just think I might have been another Anne Robinson, God forbid.