MY old headmaster went ballistic when I told him I was planning a career in journalism rather than something "respectable" like architecture or the law.

"Don't believe that old saying that as a reporter you will meet everyone from dukes to dustmen," fumed The Beak. "You'll spend every evening listening to parish councils moaning about dogs fouling the footpaths."

Well, Les (as we boys called The Beak) you were only partially right.

Yes, indeed, I spent many youthful hours covering parish councils. But I have also met quite a few dukes - five, I think, at a rough count. However, on the binman front the pickings were distinctly thin until Mike Winspear, binman with a difference, walked into The Old White Bear at Cross Hills and shook my hand with bone-crunching firmness.

And if The Beak were still on this planet, I would tell him this: this binman has led a life one hell of a lot more interesting than many of those dukes!

Mike, 52, is not a binman as such. He doesn't empty them but cleans them - and as any wheelie bin owner knows, that is no easy job. He is, I believe, Craven's first ever wheelie bin entrepreneur.

How he got into this unique situation is a long and sometimes chilling story, which included dodging snipers' bullets in Londonderry or facing down Russian soldiers guarding the Berlin Wall in the bad old days of the Cold War.

Mike, you see, is an ex-squaddy, an old sweat who did 22 years in the infantry and is immensely proud of it.

"I loved every minute in the army and when it was time to come back into civvie street I was totally devastated for several months," says Mike, of Bungalow Road, Glusburn, who rose to become a colour sergeant in the Prince of Wales' Own Regiment of Yorkshire - one of the toughest ranks any NCO can hold.

But life was not always so structured. In his youth, Mike had a pretty undisciplined life. His father was an itinerant farm worker and the family moved constantly from farm to farm, losing their tied cottage homes as farming jobs were replaced by machines.

When Mike was 10, his dad landed a job at Skipton Auction Mart and the family finally settled down.

He went to Ings School in Broughton Road and then to Aireville but even then had little sense of direction. He worked in local foundries, as a driver and bricklayer's mate and got married to his long-suffering wife Shirley at the age of 17.

He was 22, and the father of two, when he tired of this somewhat aimless lifestyle and suggested, somewhat nervously, to Shirley that he should join up.

"To my surprise, she thought it was a great idea," he smiles now. "It was Shirley who sent off for the papers. They tried to put me in the Pay Corps but I stuck by my guns and got what I wanted: the Prince of Wales, one of Yorkshire's great infantry regiments."

Although he wouldn't admit it, he might have briefly regretted it six months later when he got his first posting: dodging bullets and bombs in Londonderry, which I know from personal experience can be a pretty scary place. "Of course you were scared at first, but then your training clicked in and you went into action mode without a second thought," he says. "I did five tours in Ulster and my unit only lost one man in that time. He died in hospital a week after he was shot - that was a bad time."

For a second, I thought the professional composure might break. But then he shrugged and smiled: "Of course, we had several mates hurt in bombings but, all in all, our record over there was something to be proud of."

Postings to various bases in Germany, including Berlin, interspersed Ulster tours and, meanwhile, loyal wife Shirley was bringing up three girls and a son in army married quarters.

As the girls grew older, moving home and school every couple of years - just as Mike had done in his youth - the couple came to an exceedingly difficult decision.

They bought their bungalow in Glusburn and Shirley returned to Craven with the kids.

Mike stayed on, living in the sergeants' mess where there was always a mate to share a pint and a game of snooker.

But army cutbacks were under way and in January 1994, he found himself back in civvie street. Unemployed.

"Those were pretty dreadful months," he recalls, slowly sipping his pint. "Shirley was working and I moped round the house all day. Sometimes, I was still in my dressing gown when Shirley came home. I knew I had to pull myself together ... or else."

He had a few jobs as a driver and, on a caravan holiday in Nottinghamshire he met a man who had gone into business cleaning out wheelie bins after they had been emptied.

Those bins had yet to be introduced by Craven District Council but they were causing problems elsewhere: cleanliness- conscious old age pensioners kept falling into them as they tried to scrub them out. This may sound funny but those old people had to be rescued by neighbours and often ended up in hospital.

So Mike bought a van, fitted it with a power water jet and an aromatic spray gun, and had learned to use them by the time the wheelies hit Craven.

Wheelie Clean, Mike's new company, was prepared and ready for action. It has taken him 30 months to overcome initial consumer resistance, for he charges £1.80 to clean a bin (£1.50 for pensioners) once a month. The Sheard family, I admit, rejected his services at first. Now, our bin smells as sweet as new-mown hay.

Good luck, Mike. You've earned it the hard way.

PS: If any duke happens to read this, please accept my apologies Your Grace. But your story is unlikely to be of as much interest as Mike Winspear's.