Tom Nelson and his life on the front line

In another of his wonderful series of 'Jimmy Geoghegan meets...' interviews, our man sat down with the Navan character Tom Nelson for a wide ranging chat which appears in the paper out later today but we had to share this anecdote from the former firefighter and how things don't always go to plan.

"In the 1960s and '70s it was a time when you could be called for anything, so one day we got a call that there was a cat up a telegraph pole. It belonged to an elderly lady, the animal was her family, she and her cat lived in the house. So we went down, got the cat and she couldn't thank us enough, she was so pleased. She asked us in for a cup of tea which we did. 

"When we came out, we started the fire engine and began to move and then we heard it; the squeal of the cat. Unfortunately the cat was no more."

If that was a measure of what can go wrong, Tom's heroics serving in the fire service are far more notable of what wet right, even at life-threatening danger to himself. 

His full story is in the paper out later today.