A loved bugler from Falmouth still has far to go before his last post as he marks 60 years of Remembrance Day services this November.

Bill Bishop, 73, has sounded the call every year since 1956, and this weekend he will be in Falmouth and Truro for the annual services to remember soldiers killed in conflict.

He has become a firm fixture in the area since he moved to Cornwall in 1988, performing at several acts of Remembrance each November for the British Legion as well as funerals, and services for the army, Royal Navy and RAF, the merchant navy, territorial army, Normandy Veterans, coastal forces and the Parachute Regiment.

Bill was first given a bugle when he was ten years old, by a taxi driver who was looking to start a drum and bugle band with local children in his part of Birmingham, and said he was the only child who could make a sound.

"I was ten," he said with a laugh, "and I've never stopped playing it since."

At age 13 he was sounding his first notes at a Remembrance service at Erdington Parish Church, alongside his Army Cadets bandmaster. After the cadets he joined the Territorial Army, serving with units including the Royal Artillery, and the Royal Army Service Corps, where he was a member of the corps of drums.

He said: "We had a new colonel, called MacLean, who was a Scotsman. He wanted to change to a pipe and drums corps... you weren't going to catch me in a kilt, so I left and went to the Signals."

Of his time in Birmingham, he said: "Once they knew I was a bugler, that was it. I had the job every Remembrance Day in Sparkhill [the area of Birmingham where his barracks was based].

He added: "I've always played for the British Legion. I played all over Birmingham for the British Legion."

He moved down to Falmouth in December 1988, and almost immediately transferred to the Falmouth branch of the legion.

He said: "I went down, I think it was on Christmas Eve, and the chap on the door was a bugle major, Johnny Travers... they reckon he was the best bugler in the county. We got on like a house on fire, we talked the same language."

After a couple of weeks in town Bill was approached to perform in the parish church, at the funeral of a Falmouth Docks manager who had served in the Royal Navy.

He said: "It was absolutely packed. I made a lot of friends that day, I went back to the British Legion and everybody was talking to me. I had just got down here and didn't know anybody."

At Falmouth Town Council recently, it was noted that Bill had had his bugle stolen and was currently having to play a "battered" practice instrument instead.

He told the Packet that although this was true, it had happened about four or five years ago, and he doesn't understand why it is only being talked about now.

The bugle he is currently using, he said, is "a really good bugle," but looks battered after a man he met in Birmingham tried to chrome him for it to make it look like a silver one, and "made a right mess of it."

He said: "It's a really good bugle. The other one was a silver one... but that disappeared from the British Legion in Falmouth."

At first he thought it had been stolen as a prank, but when it didn't reappear he called the police, and it has never been found.

Along with the instrument he lost the mouthpiece and shank which connects it, and which he said helps produce a higher tone, "my tone." But speaking with Falmouth Marine Band one day, one of the members, asked what he needed, before going away and having a new piece of brass made to fit.

"Whoever stole it," he added, "probably doesn't know what to do with it anyway."

Asked what has kept him playing for so long - he also has a trumpet but does not play that outside of his own home - he said he "I just really, really enjoy doing it."

He gives the example of a service in Truro when a veteran who "must have been in his nineties" approached him after the service.

"This old boy came up to me, and he called me a b..... I said really and he said 'yes'. I said, 'why's that', and he said, 'you made me cry.' And then he just walked away.

"I've seen that quite a few times actually, but I do enjoy doing it."

Bill is now affiliated to the Truro branch of the British Legion, and will be sounding the bugle in the city on November 11, then in Falmouth on Sunday morning before heading to Truro again in the afternoon, where he will perform in the cathedral.