A DENTAL laboratory boss who prospered in the United States has not forgotten his Bolton roots.

Bob Pollitt returned home this week to chew over old times with the man who set him on the road to Stateside success.

Peter W Smith trained a young Mr Pollitt at his laboratory in Darcy Lever in the 1960s.

The young apprentice went on to found three successful dental laboratories after emigrating to the US.

Mr Pollitt, aged 57, was reunited with his former mentor this week when he returned to Britain with four American colleagues to look at some UK labs.

They visited Liverpool, London and Birmingham -- but first went to Little Lever.

Their destination was Precision Acodent Ltd, in Stopes Road -- a business with 140 employees, which Mr Smith, aged 69, founded in September 1991.

Mr Pollitt was brought up in Tonge Fold, and remembers delivering the Bolton Evening News for Stanley's newsagent, in Bury Road.

In the early 1960s, he trained at Mr Smith's PWS dental laboratory, and worked in Darcy Lever until 1968.

After a spell in Birmingham, he left for America in 1974 and opened a dental laboratory in Richmond, Virginia.

Ten years later he founded another in Roanoak, Virginia, where he still lives after retiring in 1988 to develop a restaurant business. In 2000 he went back into his original field to launch Pepper's Dental Lab.

But Mr Pollitt has not forgotten where he started.

He said: "Peter Smith is a legend.

"Always at the front of pioneering technology for dental labs, and a master of management and growth for the industry, he nonetheless gets his greatest enjoyment from teaching others his skills and craft."

Mr Pollitt added: "I am the technician that I am today because of his influence and teaching, and I enjoyed meeting him once again."