Your Memories
15.02.2008 : Amy Lewin wrote
My dad was a big fan of Fred and I grew up watching his programmes. Will always be sadly missed.
29.04.2008 : Ellie Peach wrote
Remembering watching Fred's TV documentaries with my family brings back lots of happy childhood memories.
I remember gripping the side of the sofa in fear as he scaled enormous old chimneys apparently held by just a piece of rope.
It was always fun watching all the local people come out when Fred was ready to detonate the explosives and bring an old tower crashing to the ground.
I also loved watching him drive one of his beloved steam engines - which he'd painstakingly restored - to a country rally, often with a few of his children clambering excitedly around.
But my mum and I sympathised with his long-suffering wife - and cheered when one programme showed him finally taking her and the kids to Blackpool for a holiday.
He had such an enthralling and engaging way of putting across his passion for history and tradition, for Victorian steam engines and great buildings of the past.
He was truly a unique character.
05.07.2008 : Alison Mollett wrote
Our whole family loved watching him and we much preferred him to Blaster Bates (not that there's anything wrong with Blaster Bates.
Not just in the early documentaries showing him at work, but in his later documentaries about castles etc, his huge enthusiasm and passion just shone.
13.07.2008 : Dave " Bilbo" Hardy wrote
I have just finished reading Fred's biography and it has left me with a large void inside. From the moment I picked up the book I felt compelled to read on, it was the fastest book I have ever read. I have now loned it out to a friend and like me, he cant put it down. I went to see Fred in one of his talks at a church in St Annes, Blackpool a few years ago. I caught sight of him once at a steam rally. What a rich (not money) and interesting man, a mans man. The world for sure is poorer for Fred not being here. Born too late, Fred would have been even more famous if as he should have been, born in the Victorian era. Though some might argue, he was not of this time. I feel strongly that many of his views are needed today, along with a true grit determination. Which may have caused concerns for some, would nevertheless be a beacon to some of the youth of today.
God bless you Fred
09.08.2008 : john ward wrote
It was fred that got me involved in steam i now work on the foot plate at the talyllyn railway as a hobby i have all his dvd's he was a great down to earth man and sadly missed
Unlikely celebrity and spellbinding raconteur
Fred Dibnah, who died on 6 November, 2004 aged 66, became an overnight television success when he was already into his forties.
Born in Bolton, Lancashire, he was a boy who grew up with a passion for Victorian engineering - a boy who spent hours peering out of his bedroom window watching steam trains. A joiner by trade he shunned what he called 'new fangled tools and modern methods'.
He didn't blow up chimneys - he felled them. He never used dynamite, preferring to cut a mouth out at the bottom of the chimney, propping it open with telegraph poles and chocks of wood, then setting a fire which burned the wood away causing the chimney to fall to earth. Allied to his fascinating story - telling it made him a star.
Fred Dibnah was born in Bolton on 28 April, 1938.
It was a two-minute item on a local news programme that shot him to a wider audience and fame. The news clip showed Mr Dibnah swinging himself across chimney tops with ease on a rope and a small wooden platform, felling chimneys or attaching ladders to them and repairing the town hall clock in Bolton, 250 feet above the ground.
A TV producer involved Fred in eight, 30-minute documentaries; a new career and a new star was born.
The public instantly took to the bespectacled, burly, cloth capped and engaging character - and even began to understand some of his Lancastrian twang!
But though it was as a steeplejack that he caught television's eye, it was Betsy that took over.
Betsy was a steam roller and became the non-speaking star of Fred's television career.
But his love of Victorian engineers and their work paid a heavy price on his personal life. He was married three times. His first wife, Alison, mother of his three daughters, left him saying 'he is married to his engines'.
In the late 1990s Anthea Turner made a television programme with Mr Dibnah in which he argued that steam engines had been the backbone of the British Empire and its trade routes. It helped make him a popular pundit on industrial history.
Setting aside his love of machinery Fred Dibnah was a tireless charity worker and, latterly, a popular after dinner speaker.
He became ill making what was to be his last television series as he once more toured Britain for a 12- part BBC series with his steam traction engine. He abandoned chemotherapy treatment for his kidney cancer and instead took to an 'orange and Guinness diet'.
He received an MBE for his services to heritage and broadcasting, heading for his Buckingham Palace moment aboard his green, black and gold eight ton Betsy steam engine. But he didn't attempt to drive it through the palace gates - obligingly he left it at the nearby barracks.
Survived by his six children he died in a Bolton hospice surrounded by friends and family.
Catherine Hall, production manager on his final shoot described him as 'a great bloke and unique character who will be sorely missed'.
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