SOMETIMES people ask where were you then, for example, when President Kennedy was shot, or Princess Diana died. I know where I was for both, but my most vivid "I remember" is when Alma Cogan died.

I was eighteen and it was October 1966. I was working at Peel Bank Engraving Co in Church as a trainee impressioner. A man called Jimmy Crow came into the engraving room and broke the news. All my schooldays Alma had been my favourite star. You could have heard a pin drop.

I came home from work and told my mother and father who agreed she was a lovely star and it was such a shame.

During my schooldays in the 1950s she had been very popular. Alma dwarfed everyone else around her with songs like "Never do a tango with an eskimo".

Female stars of today are just young girls with no character at all. There was only ever one Alma Cogan.

ADRIAN GRADY, Lemonius Street, Accrington.