TERRY and Lyndsay Walker were just 11 years old when they first met at a school open day.

Now, almost 40 years on from that brief encounter at Sharples School, they are married with three children, running a multi-million pound business and with starring roles in TV’s Scrappers.

Friday night saw the final episode in the six-part series which charted the ups and downs of their scrap metal empire Metro Salvage in Waterloo Street, Bolton.

Just after the first show aired, they flew out to spend three weeks soaking up the sun at their townhouse in Murcia, Spain.

On their return, they were surprised to discover their new-found fame meant the weekly shop at Asda took more than three hours thanks to people wanting to stop and chat.

Mrs Walker said: “I’m really surprised about the response — we’re just ordinary people in everyday life.

“It’s part of our life, it’s normal to us. It’s quite a good reaction on Twitter. There’s only me that’s been slated.

"People saying, has she no class, drinking red wine with ice, calling my hats and saying she’s a gold digger — yeah right.

“I’m not bothered, I know myself.”

The pair, both aged 49, have been together for 35 years and will celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary in October, after tying the knot at St James Church in Breightmet.

Mr Walker said: “When I went to that open day at Sharples High School, there were two people that stuck in my mind as we were driving away — one of them was Lyndsay and the other was Keith Wells.

“Keith ended up working for me and I ended up marrying Lyndsay.

“I was at school for 12 months and then I got whisked away, I ended up in a children’s home.

“But, to be honest, I was thankful for that.

“When they came to pick me up, I was relieved.

“I wasn’t getting any attention. I was doing things wrong but my parents weren’t putting me in my place.

“So I was doing things again and again. It ended up where I didn’t go to school and was getting in trouble.”

After two years at a children’s home in Blackburn, Mr Walker returned to school in year nine before leaving at the age of 14 to work in his dad's scrap yard.

He asked for a pay rise when Mrs Walker became pregnant with daughter Jemma, now aged 29 and who works in the accounts department of Metro Salvage, but was refused.

At the time, they were living with Mr Walker’s grandmother in Snow Hill Road, Darcy Lever, and the father-to-be bought himself a van and set up on his own.

They saved the money to put down a deposit on their first house in Bristol Avenue, Tonge Park, while Mr Walker rented yards in Farnworth and Radcliffe before raising £250,000 to buy the current site in 1992.

He founded the business along with pal Mr Wells, a father-of-two, from Halliwell, who died of a heart attack in 2009 at the age of 44.

Mrs Walker: “He was a character.

“It’s a shame he’s not here because he would’ve been the star of the show.”

It was thanks to funny videos that Mr Walker posted on YouTube, such as one of the lads being rolled around inside a tyre, that a production company asked them to appear in Scrappers.

Mrs Walker added: “Terry said it was a bit of advertising, we didn’t get paid. It was really hard work.

“It was intense, especially not getting paid for it and they were stopping us from earning money.

“It cost us money to have them here.

“There’s a lot of people coming in wanting to see us.

“The TV people were talking about doing a second one.

“A lot of people are asking about it.”

The pair also have son Jon, aged 23, who is car sales manager at Metro Salvage, and daughter Cathy, a mobile hairdresser, aged 26, born at 24 weeks, weighing just over 1lb and who doctors said would not survive.

Mrs Walker said: “We never felt that she wouldn’t.

“She was in hospital for three months, in the Princess Anne special baby unit. Terry always calls her our miracle child.”

It is thanks to their hard graft that the couple can now enjoy a luxurious lifestyle at their five-bedroom detached house in Radcliffe when they are not putting long shifts in.

Asked if he ever thought he would one day be the boss of the north west’s biggest scrap metal yard, employing more than 30 staff, Mr Walker said: “I always knew, I’m only being truthful.

"I was well-liked and well-known all over the north west. I get on with everybody. Being the boss, it has it’s ups and downs.

“I love the job, when the job’s good, it’s brilliant. The weather is against us sometimes so it gets you a little bit down.

Sometimes things don’t run just as you’d like them to but that’s just because the kids in here are still learning.

"Hopefully, one day, they’ll get what’s going on and how I work and once they adhere to that the job will be right.”

Mr Walker has a gift for making money from scrap cars but often spends the profit buying even more.

Mrs Walker thinks he is addicted to car auctions and it is the cause of many heated arguments which viewers have watched throughout the series. But the couple always made up.

The final episode, is repeated on BBC One tomorrow at 11.05pm, sees him hatch a plan to get his workers to strip off for a semi-naked calendar.