STEEPLEJACK Fred Dibnah was called in to demolish the 146-foot chimney belonging to door and shutter makers Bolton Brady Ltd in 1986 and set the workforce a challenge in the process.

They had to guess the total number of bricks in the chimney with the person coming closest winning a flying lesson.

Quality assurance supervisor Dick Thomasson came within 250 of the actual total guessing there were 138,642 bricks - the actual number was 138,896. Quite how this was arrived at isn’t clear.

Mr Thomasson (in the white coat) is pictured with Fred Dibnah at the Turton Street factory with Brady’s managing director Stan Heginbotham and Peter Woodburn, chairman of the industrial and buildings products division of Tarmac.