Geoff Knupfer

He died when I was just a teenager, and I guess I got...

little bit disillusioned by all this and i had a friend who joined the police and listened to some of the stories he was telling me and i got interested in it and really on a whim became a police officer and thought that i would probably be a constable you know or a guard equivalent yeah for the rest of my career and to my astonishment things worked out okay so where did you grow up

In Manchester, I don't know whether you're aware of it, the town next door to Manchester, the city next door to Manchester is Salford.

That was my hometown, very much Northern England.

Yeah.

And what was that area like?

Well, it was a heavily industrialized area.

There were very few green spaces.

I can always remember my dad was involved in scouting.

He was a commissioner in the scout movement and

I can remember going out with him because he was an elderly man by that time.

I think I was very much an afterthought.

You know, sitting there around a campfire, having mugs of tea with him and thinking, God, this is what green looks like, you know.

But as the years went by, you realise there's more to it than that.

How did you go on and school then, Geoff?

Didn't do great.

Didn't like school particularly.

But when I joined the police, I...

I went on a course and I was granted a scholarship to go to university.

So that's really how things changed for me.