A BOUNCER who worked on Bolton's club doors for 35 years says knife crime and binge drinking are no worse now than when he started.

John Turner knows more than most about the devastating impact knives can have when carried by drinkers.

He came face-to-face with knife-wielding thugs on a nightly basis when he and his team kept revellers safe in the town - and once captured a killer who knifed a colleague to death.

Mr Turner believes today's problems are nothing new. As the owner of JT Security, he and up to 40 employees manned the doors at clubs now closed, including Scamps, Maxims and The Cromwellian Club.

Now retired and living in Leigh, Mr Turner said knives were commonplace.

"If Bolton thinks it has a bad knife problem now, the town has forgotten a lot," he said.

"What has changed is that, if we found someone with a knife, we clobbered them and took their blade and they didn't come back again. We didn't get the police involved unless it was a matter of life and death.

"In the 1960s, there were a lot of people bringing knives back from Spain and places like that and a lot of people would bring them out with them. That never changed. There's just more made of it in the media now and it's the same with binge drinking.

"People had less time to get drunk when I was working and could hardly stand by 11pm."

Mr Turner, who was also a wrestler, once saw a man running away from a disturbance outside The Cromwellian Club in Bank Street in April, 1972.

He gave chase, even though the man had a knife, and managed to hold the thug until police came.

When he went back to the victim, he found it was friend and colleague Robert Warren who had been stabbed.

Mr Warren, aged 21, died in Mr Turner's arms and his killer, Martin Pattison, was jailed for four years for manslaughter.

Mr Turner was speaking following the death of 30-year-old knife victim Keith Platt in Farnworth last month.

Accident and emergency doctor Chris Moulton has branded Bolton a "violent town".

He said there had been a notable increase in the number of people being admitted to the Royal Bolton Hospital with knife injuries.

Mr Platt was the second stabbing victim to die in Bolton in four months. Rabid Amin, aged 25, was knifed 16 times in Bradshawgate last November.

In both cases, men have been arrested and have appeared in court.