The boy who taught his peers to spell

He'd learned to read when he was three and by 12 had landed the job of teaching his fellow pupils how to spell.

"The only thing I ever got accolades for was for spelling," said Thomas.

Teacher William Cocks would often disappear from the classroom, leaving young Thomas to do his stuff.

"It is something I am proud of being able to help my friends by telling them where they were going wrong," said Thomas.

But the same teacher would dismiss him as a slowcoach and send him to the back of the class during maths lessons.

"The spelling complemented me because I never understood long division," said Thomas, now 64.

Thomas was born in London in - five minutes before Christmas Day.

As the Second World War raged, the Webb family remained in London.

Their home was hit by bombs, but the family survived by taking refuge in a bunker in their back garden.

Thomas' mum, Daisy, had decided none of her xx children should be evacuted.

She told friends: 'If any of my family are going to go we will go together.'

Often they would emerge from their makeshift shelter to find a bomb stuck in the roof.

"If they didn't go off there was something wrong with them and that was a good thing," said Thomas.

One morning, the family emerged to find the other side of their street had been flattened.

"We could hear things happening and sometimes my father would leave the shelter in the middle of the night after hearing someone scream," said Thomas.

The shelters were uncomfortable, but the family adapted their's with a few mod-cons.

"We weren't supposed to, but we connected an electric cable from the house to the shelter so that we had light," said Thomas.

"We also had a radio."

Sometimes they swapped shelters with the family next door.

"It was so that we had different company from time to time," said Thomas.

"And it was a good way to catch up on things."

Not many children stayed in London during the war, but those who did suffered at school.

Thomas left school at - and began looking for work.

As a docker, his dad Arthur was never guaranteed a day's work.

He'd turn up at the docks in, hoping his bosses would single him out to work.

His family weren't well off.

But young Thomas found his own way of means of entertainment.

He and his pals would often sneak into the cinema through the fire exit.

"You just had to make sure you got in while the usherettes weren't looking," he said.

He dreamed of working for a newspaper, but his mum decided it didn't pay enough.

"Writing had always been a passion and I wanted a job as a journalist," said Thomas.

The Daily Telegraph offered him 35 shillings a week to start work as a copy boy.

"My mum said that wasn't enough and I could'nt take the job," said Thomas.

"We weren't well off, so it was important for me to bring the money in."

Instead he landed a job as a photographer for Unilever.

"My job was to take photos of girls with soap on their faces," said Thomas.

At 18, he was called up for his National Service.

For two years he worked as a clerk and then spent more than three working for the Royal Artillery, where he learned skills as a military storekeeper.

By he'd had enough and returned home.

Shortly after he met his wife-to-be, Doris Garvey, on an outing to the seaside.

"A friend and I had followed a couple of girls around Brighton," said Thomas.

"I spoke to one of them outside an antique shop and asked if she was going to buy what she was looking at?"

Doris couldn't afford the antique, but wrote her address in lipstick on a cigarette paper and gave it to Thomas.

They later wed in 1955 at .. and had their first child, Leslie, in ...

Their early years together were spent in a caravan next door to Shepperton Film Studios - an ideal location for film fan Thomas.

"I made it my business to go across and watch the filming," said Thomas.

"They would bring plastic trees to make the orchard look more like a forest."

But Thomas never lost his love of the military and joined the Territorial Army in

He worked in a bomb disposal unit for two years and then as a clerk.

The work moved Thomas, Doris and their two children around the country until they moved to Grove Park, Knutsford, in 1983 when Thomas got a job with NNC.

"I opened a page in Dalton's Weekly and asked Doris to stick a pin in the page and that's how we ended up in the north," said Thomas, of Grove Park.

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