Chris Taylor left school at 18 and went to work in the paint shop at the Vauxhall car plant in Luton. He was there for three years, becoming a shop steward for the Transport & General Workers Union, and loved every second.

"This was the late 1970s when everything was going wrong," he says. "It was a fascinating time to be there, observing the tail-end of British manufacturing; the decline of Britain."