To the manor born
Life's a gas for Anthoney Marchetti who joined Central Middlesex Hospital as a 17-year-old apprentice fitter.
It was something of a homecoming for the Harlesden teenager who was born in the hospital in 1968 and recently celebrated 40 years on the job.
Anthony said: “I left school at 16 and went to the Job Centre which had a big whiteboard with all the local vacancies at places like McVitie's and Heinz. I had no idea what an apprentice mechanical fitter was but saw the hospital's name and thought why not?”
Anthony, 58, is one of a handful of staff who also worked on the current hospital's sprawling predecessor.
“It was a huge site and my job was helping look after all the pipework. There was miles of it and I'd often get sent into the undercroft - the lowest level of the hospital - were I would end up crawling around on my hands and knees doing repair and maintenance work. It wasn't the place to work if you were claustrophobic. A lot of the site dated back to the 1920s so all the pipe was cast iron.
“I remember once having to strip to my underpants and swim along a flooded duct to reach a valve I had to turn off. Health and safety wasn't like it is nowadays.
"My least favourite job was having to crawl inside the boilers and clean them as part of their annual maintenance. That was a proper dirty job.
“There was a great social life in those days where everyone came together in the hospital's social club and we had our own sports pitches and tennis courts. The time has flown by and I never felt the need to work anywhere else."
Today, most of the hospital's building maintenance is managed by external contractor Equans and Anthony is primarily responsible for the maintenance of medical gas although he has an enviable list of maintenance qualifications he has gathered over the years.
“Things are a lot more straightforward in a modern building, but I still like to get my hands mucky when the opportunity arises.”