Leslie H Gibson has done many things in his 91 years, but once a ship's radio operator, always a wireless man.

So out of all the memorabilia he has accumulated down the years, one item remains closest to his heart.

It could hardly be more utilitarian - just a wireless key, used for tapping out messages in Morse code.

The key was presented to Mr Gibson, from Eastwood, when he retired as an instructor at the British School of Telegraphy in 1943. While there, he was known, thanks to his speed and accuracy, as "the man with the golden fist".

It was a measure of the respect in which he was held that they presented him with this, out of all souvenirs.

Mr Gibson's keepsake was the device on which two of radio telegraphy's greatest legends learnt their trade.

Pictures of these men, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, hung at the school's training centre in Stockwell, south London. The pair had been fellow students there in 1910.

Bride and Phillips were the two radio operators on board the Titanic when the great ship went down on the night of April 15, 1912. The pair were heroes by any standard, since they stuck to their station, beyond the call of duty, knowing the ship was sinking fast. It was thanks to their efforts that anybody survived at all.

Their desperate messages for assistance finally reached the Carpathia, 58 miles away.

She steamed at breakneck speed to pick up survivors from the lifeboats, one of whom was Bride.

Phillips, though, did not survive. He was hauled from the water, but died soon afterwards from hypothermia.

The Titanic's bows were already underwater when Captain Smith paid his final visit to the wireless room, to tell the operators they had done their duty.

"It's now every man for himself, boys," he said. Even then, Phillips remained at his post, until the ship's power failed and the radio signals wavered and faded with it.

"This," says Mr Gibson, of his cherished memento, "is the type of key that was used in the Titanic's wireless room."

Phillips and Bride began their radio careers by sending messages across a room rather than an ocean.

Students would practice by signalling to their classmates.

But the equipment they used was fully professional and, for the time, state-of-the-art.

At the telegraphy school, Mr Gibson was told by the chief instructor, with some awe: "You're handling the key the Titanic operators used when they were sending Morse to each other."

The pair had been among Mr Gibson's heroes almost as far back as he can remember.

He recalls: "When I was a boy, I used to play at sending out SOS messages. I had an old morse key, I'd stick an aerial out of my bedroom window, and I'd spend all my time playing at being a radio operator.

"My mum would call up, send out a message that it's time for your tea'.

"I'd come down and tell her I've saved three ships today, mum'."

Mr Gibson lived out his dreams when he qualified as a radio operator in 1935.

He went to sea with the New Zealand Shipping Com- pany.

He welcomes visitors with a Maori greeting, and says: "I can still speak Maori."

In 1937, he was the operator aboard the SS Huntingdon, off West Africa, when he fell ill with tuberculosis and wet pleurisy.

He was invalided ashore to Darfur, then finally shipped back to England. It was the end of his career at sea.

Years later, he came across the Huntingdon in London's Victoria Docks. The skipper almost reeled when he saw him. "I thought you'd died in Africa," he had said.

Mr Gibson's medical record meant he was unable to find another job at sea.

Instead, he found work as an instructor at his old college and eventually left with one of its treasures.

*THE LAST MESSAGES SENT FROM THE TITANIC: 12.15am: Titanic sends first distress signal 12.25am: Titanic said: "Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD OM (it's a distress situation, old man) Position 41.46 N. 50.14 W. Require immediate assistance.

We have collision with iceberg. Sinking. Can hear nothing for noise of steam."

1.10am: Titanic (to Olympic), "We are in collision with berg. Sinking Head down. 41.46 N. 50.14 W. Come soon as possible."

1.27am: Titanic says, "We are putting the women off in the boats."

1.30am: Titanic tells Olympic, "We are putting passengers off in small boats."

1.45am: Last understandable message heard by Carpathia: "Engine room full up to boilers."

*LENS CAP NEARLY SPOILT TV'S BIG NIGHT Leslie Gibson moved on from radio operation to television engineering - officially as a programme officer.

Now at last it can be told - the tale of how the first night of Britain's second TV channel nearly began life on screen as a black rectangle.

For the first 19 years of British television, the BBC had the medium all to itself.

Associated-Redifusion, its first rival, launched on air on September 22, 1955.

Mr Gibson was in the control room on that memorable night.

The planned shot intended to set British commercial television rolling, involved an exterior view of the Guildhall.

Just seconds before the champagne corks popped, producer, Cyril Francis, found a blank screen in front of him. "The shock almost killed him," says Mr Gibson.

"We cut away to other cameras while we tried to find the problem."

It didn't take long. The crack technicians identified the reason - someone had left the lens cap on the camera.

*HENRY COOPER IS RELATED There is another reason why that radio key holds a special significance for Leslie Gibson.

It isn't his only connection with the Titanic.

Two of his late wife Betty's great-uncles, Thomas Henry Cooper and George Cooper, were in the crew of the Titanic.

"We're confident they went down with the ship," Mr Gibson said.

The boxer, Sir Henry Cooper, is a descendent.

Mr Gibson spent just two years at sea, over 70 years ago. Since then, he has done many things in a richly packed life.

Yet as he said: "Once you've been to sea, it always stays with you."

When his wife died last year, he erected a small shrine to her, and it was a seaman's shrine - a little lighthouse that shines out of the window of his house at night time, through the dark for Betty to see. Leslie Gibson is still signalling.