'I was so Scottish when I first came to Lancashire, I had to change my accent'

For new Chorley mayor Alistair Morwood, the possibility of one day becoming the borough's first citizen never crossed his mind when he was initially elected as a district councillor 11 years ago.

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However, when the length of his service on the authority dictated that his time had come, he had no hesitation in accepting the honour.

“It never entered my head until it came up last year. Like most councillors, I was there to do the best I could for people and see that things were done right.

“But when [I was told about the mayoralty], I thought, ‘Why not?’ After all, what's not to like?”

His installation as mayor is also a far cry from his expectations for life in Lancashire when he first moved to the county, aged just nine, from his home city of Glasgow.

Arriving first in Burnley-where his father had got a job in the aerospace industry-a young Alistair found his Scottish roots posed a rather practical problem to settling in.

“Nobody could understand me-so, basically, I had to change my accent. We do talk very fast, [although] I didn't quite have the broadness of Billy Connolly,” he recalls, in what has become a barely discernible Scottish lilt after a lifetime living in the county.