A CHANCE response to a job advert in the Star has led to an appearance for one St Helens man in a BBC documentary which follows the trials and tribulations of a team of water workers.

Ian Clydesdale is one of the army of employees at United Utilities featured in the series Watermen: A Dirty Business which is running on Tuesdays.

The 45-year-old had a dramatic career change which has seen him swap Cheshire Police for United Utilities, which he joined in 2011.

He is part of a team that recoups debt owed to United Utilities from commercial businesses.

Originally from Sherwood in Nottingham the dad of four explained: “Professionally I work with genuinely nice people, who care about what they do and how they get on together. Something I’ve not seen since leaving the forces.”

Meanwhile, Chris Broughton from Haydock is a 41-year-old engineer who criss-crosses Blackpool maintaining pumping stations which aren’t working properly.

He said: “My job is belting. I love fixing things and like the challenge of getting a list of what is not working properly and either repairing it, or replacing it before it becomes a real problem and causes flooding.”

The father-of-two, who played amateur rugby league as a second row for Haydock and Bamber Bridge, recalled his most tricky ‘day at the office’.

He said: “A dyke was flowing into a pumping station and there was a risk a street could be flooded with sewer water.

“So I put a winch on and waded into a ditch full of freezing water to put a bung in the overflow to stop it getting to the pumping station. That’s the coldest water I’ve ever been in.”