THE recent photograph of the Bolton Reform Club in June, 1955, brought back happy memories for Brian Tyas Cooper of Breckland Drive, Heaton - a former chairman of the Bolton Liberal party.

He tells me that his offices in Bolton - Cooper & Cooper - were also in Bowkers Row and he regularly crossed the road for lunch and a game of snooker.

"The young handsome fellow seated on the right of the photograph, then 32 years old, was yours truly," he writes.

Others on the photograph included CP Turner of Tillotsons; Jack Kershaw, who was "well-known in operatic circles"; David Barlow, an accountant with Wragge & Lee; Bob McNaught, architect and senior partner with Bradshaw Gass & Hope; and - Brian thinks - John Thomas, manager of Woolworths at the time.

He remembers the panel in the club's dining room with the names of the presidents, but he does not know what happened to it after the closure in 1961.

Brian adds: "I would agree with the view that the Bolton Reform Club was "the most comfortable club in town", although I doubt whether my friends at the Bolton Constitutional Club in Mawdsley Street - also long since gone - would have agreed with me!"