I first met Professor Lee at a party given by his secretary Pearl Townsend in 1972. I was blonde then, wearing knee high white boots and suede hot pants which were very fashionable and I was slimmer! As I’d done a lot of office temping, Pearl asked me to work for three weeks. Oh dear! Was I scared and me at the University! The department was in the ‘Clinical Sciences’ building by St Mary’s hospital and the staff included Michael Flindt, Keir Howard, Philip Mills, Steven Huzzard, Fritz Cinkotai, Michael Tereshchuk, Edward Moss, David Hiett, Janet Scott andDavid Franklin, supported by three secretaries. One of them said I could have her job as she wasn’t staying there any longer! I assured her they wouldn’t give me the job but a couple of weeks later Pearl said Professor Lee wanted me to take the job permanently. I was shocked; the salary was £1,000 a year which was more than my father or husband earned. I couldn’t refuse so I started on 10 April 1972. As well as research, we ran courses for the Diploma in Industrial Health (DIH), examined by the Society of Apothecaries or the English Conjoint Board. Someone wrote asking about the Diploma in Industrial Medicine course and Professor Lee wrote back that he wouldn’t like those initials after his name! We had cockroaches and mice but they weren’t part of the research or teaching, they just came for fun. Professor Lee worked on electric shock, Michael Flindt worked on biological washing powder, both he and Keir Howard researched lead poisoning. Many a morning I’d be asked how I felt; OK which arm do you want today? I looked like a junkie with all the needle marks up my arms where they had taken blood. Judy Archibald worked on the effects of lead on peripheral nerve conduction with a special machine that gave electric shocks which she calibrated on me (where there’s no sense there’s no feeling!). Professor Lee wasn’t happy when it was his turn on the machine but felt he had to volunteer if he wanted others to. Fritz was always out in mills collecting dust for his researching into byssinosis; Mr Moss was working on mule spinners’ cancer. David Chinn was recruited from Scotland to work on respiratory function and Pearl said he could stay with her until he found accommodation. The evening he arrived Pearl was unable to meet him and asked if I would go. He got off the bus in Chorlton Street Bus Station, a place renowned for prostitutes in those days, when along comes this woman with a small boy in tow asking him if he was ‘waiting to be picked up’! The look on his face was a picture—he was horrified, he heard about Manchester and was about to turn and run when I realized what I said. David Kilshaw was recruited as technician so now we had 4 Davids. One day Professor Lee was reading a dissertation and called down the corridor ‘David so and so—you’ve got hanging participles.’ The place was in uproar as we couldn’t stop laughing. He had split infinitives too—I didn’t even know what they were! The medics and students attended the clinic, along with George Fletcher and Jim Jolley and I always knew when the clinic was over because Jim would come back to the department whistling. Poor Michael Flindt had, and I quote from one of his personal letters to me, ‘a deaf secretary who couldn’t spell’. In those days we used typewriters and rather than retype whole documents would cut and paste. Although we had dictating machines Michael would slit envelopes open and write on these. Sometimes half way through he’d decide to add something and would then go round and round the envelope probably three or four times so you constantly had to turn it. The department grew as more academic staff, researchers, laboratory technicians and students arrived so the move to the Medical School in the Stopford Building in 1973 was a huge undertaking. When Professor Lee retired in 1987 the numbers declined again and only a few of us remained including Fritz, Roseanne McNamee, Ailsa Donnelly, Ann Carlisle, Michael Tereshchuk and myself. Ailsa continued to run the Distance Learning Course with no disruption, to our knowledge, for the students despite this radical shrinkage. We got great support from our Professor, Ian Leck, (we were now in the Department of Community Medicine) despite ‘no visible, academic Occupational Medicine 2005;55:335–336 doi:10.1093/occmed/kqi115