EACH Monday, Angela Kelly interviews the people who make Bolton tick. This week, she speaks to someone with quite a story to tell....

FOR someone who started his life dumped as a baby on the steps of a Barnardo’s children home Dave Bagley has come a long way.

He is the 52-year-old chief executive of Urban Outreach – the Christian charity that does so much for the disadvantaged and disaffected of Bolton. Dave not only founded the organisation 27 years ago but has spearheaded and developed the major projects for which it has become nationally known.

He would be horrified to be called a “do-gooder”, though, and admits to “being a bit naughty” when younger “with the word ‘anarchy’ written right through me.”

Adopted when young and with an adopted brother, Dave spent much of his childhood in the Seychelles where his father was working. When the family returned to the UK, they settled in Billericay in Essex.

When his father’s job took him once more abroad, to Nigeria, the boys went to a small boarding school in Colchester where Dave developed an interest in cooking and was allowed to help the chef.

This became his career calling, but his spiritual calling crystallised around the age of 19 when he became a Christian.

He completed his chef’s training and had a series of “brilliant” jobs in the City of London and elsewhere. He started his own catering business but had a dream of working in a gentlemen’s club – “you know, the type frequented by James Bond,” he explained.

When he was actually offered a good job at the famous Athenaeum Club “well, that was probably the end of my chefing,” he recalled. “I felt I’d achieved everything I wanted so I said to God ‘I’m all yours now.’

While training with British Youth for Christ, he was sent to Bolton – “I’d never heard of the town and didn’t know where it was.”

But, as well as settling happily here, he also met Christine, a fellow Christian and a teacher at Crowthorne School in Edgworth. They fell in love and married in 1990.

Christine shared Dave’s strong practical social concern and together they set up Urban Outreach. They have a son, Samuel, now 26 and married to Laura, and all four of them work for the charity.

Urban Outreach’s aim initially was to provide short-term care for troubled young people.

This grew to helping many of Bolton’s most vulnerable people generally.

Today, this includes the homeless, the young, sex workers, ex-offenders of both sexes and hungry children. More recently, it has developed its work in health and complex needs, troubled families and food poverty.

Last year, it provided food for 65,500 local people of all ages. It is supported by more than 250 volunteers and has won the support of dozens of businesses. Its board of dedicated and experienced trustees comes from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors.

Dave himself is not a holier than anybody kind of person. He’s funny and chatty and loves fast cars.

He is passionate about supporting Bolton and its people and says he is “surrounded by incredibly generous people here.”

He believes that the recession offered local people a unique opportunity to help others, and they took it.

He added: “They didn’t even think about it, they just did it,”

Dave tells anyone who will listen that, if you’re down on your luck and need help, “there is no better place than Bolton to be in”.

He is constantly astonished by the kindness of individuals and groups right across the town’s cultural map.

Perhaps not unusually for a trained chef, he feels that Bolton’s cultural diversity hinges on one element: food.

“You can see it everywhere but most of all at the annual Food and Drink Festival,” he enthused.

“You can eat all kinds of food, see it cooked. This town’s own food culture is unique and it cuts across everything and brings people together.”

Just a few days after we chatted, Dave was flying out to Uganda with Tear Fund, the Christian charity dedicated to ending poverty. He was going to see how previously aid-dependant communities had become independent and sustainable - getting a Third World lesson in turning poverty around.

With his usual enthusiasm, Dave was greatly looking forward to going, to meeting people and learning from their experiences.

He admits that he loves meeting new people and talking about their lives.

So, looking to the, hopefully distant, future, how would he like people to remember him? What would he like written on his headstone?

“I’d be annoyed if it was anything about being ‘a good and faithful servant’,” he said. “Perhaps just ‘Dave – he was my friend.’

“Then, for absolutely anyone who read it, they might feel I was just that, a friend.”