Banker swaps pieces of eight for fun new life as a pirate

WHILE the public would happily see all his colleagues walk the plank, a banker has embarked on a novel career move by exchanging his pin-stripe suit for a knotted handkerchief to start a new life as a pirate.

The industry to which Gordon Dickson, from Renfrew, has devoted 40 years of his life may have brought dismay and depression to the British public, but the former bank manager has made plans to atone by bringing delight to children as a piratical children's entertainer.

The cut and thrust of the corporate world of HBOS has been abandoned for playful sword fights and children's parties.

He said: "To me it's like a hobby. And I know I'm doing some good. One woman came up to me and told me I had made her daughter laugh for the first time in months after she lost her grandfather and was struggling with it."