WHEN Ken and Hilda Danby married they promised to be together; for better for worse, for richer for poorer and in sickness and in health.

And they stuck by those vows for the next 42 years.

But there was one promise that Hilda could not keep when her husband was about to undergo a lifesaving operation - to stop smoking. It cost her her life.

Mr Danby, aged 67, said: "When I was lying ill in that hospital bed, my wife promised me that she would stop smoking. It was the only promise in 42 years of marriage that she didn't keep and she died because of it."

Hilda, a grandmother of six, died 18 months ago of lung cancer, aged 60. She had smoked up to 40 cigarettes a day for 40 years.

Hilda was hooked up to oxygen for 24 hours a day, seven days a week for months. She died in the Royal Bolton Hospital two years after being diagnosed with lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulminary disease, a common smoker's disease.

Auxilary nurse Hilda had promised Ken she would give up smoking when he developed a blood clot in his leg in July 1984. He underwent an operation to implant a new aorta, the main blood vessel to the heart, and was told to give up smoking immediately.

Mr Danby, of Derwent Road, Farnworth, said: "I was smoking 80 roll-ups a day and quit there and then. The doctor said if I didn't stop I would lose my leg so it was quite easy to quit after he said that.

"But it was Hilda not stopping that killed her. She already had asthma but when she started to become ill, she never wanted to know what was wrong with her and we never told her.

"She suffered so much, but told so few. She was one a million, but died far too early."

Mr Danby is backing the Bolton Evening News Stub It Out campaign to ban smoking in enclosed public places.

He said: "People have got to stop smoking. I would back this campaign all the way because I should have had another 20 years of being married to Hilda if it was not for smoking. The sooner it is banned in public places, the better."

But Mr Danby has one last challenge. His daughter Lindsey Horan, aged 29, smokes 10 cigarettes a day.

He said: "I have to get her to stop. She nursed her mother through the bad times, bathed her and fed her and she still smokes.

"I'm doing my best to get her to stop."

Mrs Horan said: "I have tried to quit once, with patches but gave up. It does frighten me and I don't want my kids to have to nurse me in the future."