IF there is more prestige to be had in the school playground than bragging you have a dad who plays for Kidderminster Harriers, perhaps it is a dad who is a paramedic.

Ten year-old Tom Willetts and his sister Anna, five, of James Road, Kidderminster, can not only boast a dad in the profession so glamorised nowadays in TV programmes like Michael Buerk's 999 show, but one who has also appeared on screen.

Dave Willetts played a key role in the reconstructed rescue of a man from Stourport Canal on Esther Rantzen's Hearts of Gold feature.

But Dave, one of the team at Kidderminster Ambulance Station says it was not always like that.

When he first trained at the age of 27, being an ambulanceman had no more status than a low-grade council job.

It did not bother him because he had found four years as a TV repairer "unfulfilling", though after three years previously in the RAF as a camera fitter he knew he had a practical bent.

As a TV repairer he had a lot of contact with the elderly because so many rented old TV sets and he grew to enjoy their chat.

Liking old people is an important quality in his job. Although he took the extra training as a paramedic 12 years ago and has many dramatic tales to tell, the bulk of his time is still taken up ferrying old folk around and attending incidents involving strokes and heart attacks.

Once there were wardens around to rescue the frail if they slide to the ground and find they cannot get up again. Now it is an ambulance job. Mr Willetts says: "A lot of the training is driving old folk around. It's good because the people it doesn't suit soon give it up."

A kindly manner and an ability to jolly the elderly along combined with compassion and respect, he says, are essential qualifications.

"A man dying of cancer doesn't want gloom. He wants me to laugh and say he's going to prove the doctors are wrong."

He has much in common with wife Heather whom he met at Kidderminster Amazing Feet running club and married when he was 35. A nurse, she too has a soft spot for elderly patients. But there are sad times as well "like seeing some kid over-dosed on drugs or comforting relatives of someone whose life you could not save."

Then there are the dramatic times, harrowing, in the case of serious road accidents, and sometimes grisly, like suicides. Dave has a keen sense of humour and finds a funny side in many incidents. But it is "just a way of coping with the high expectations these days of the public and being accountable".

He would not change, however. "The joy to me is feeling needed and knowing that what I do makes a difference."