Â鶹ԼÅÄ

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, future Cabinet Minister Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, notorious among the locals, came as a blessed relief after the tensions of London's troubled Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms.

Alan Johnson had become a postman the previous year and, in order to support his growing family, took on every bit of overtime he could, often working twelve-hour shifts six days a week. It was hard work, but not without its compensations – the crafty fag snatched in a country lane, the farmer's wife offering a hearty breakfast and even the mysterious lady on Glebe Road who appeared daily, topless, at her window as the postman passed by.

Please, Mister Postman paints a vivid picture of England in the 1970s, where no celebration was complete without a Party Seven of Watney's Red Barrel, smoking was the norm rather than the exception, and Sunday lunchtime was about beer and bingo. But as Alan Johnson's life appears to be settling down and his career in the Union of Postal Workers begins to take off, his close-knit family is struck once again by tragedy.

Epsiode 5:
By 1982 Alan Johnson's union career is going from strength to strength with a position on the Executive beckoning. Work keeps him away from home and the Thatcher government at its height ensures life is tough for the union. But the biggest storm clouds transpire to be personal rather than political.

Read by Alan Johnson
Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4