MUSEUM volunteer Ken Gollop is appealing for information on the bowler-hatted binmen of Lyme Regis.

The dustmen’s sartorial elegance handed them unexpected fame at home and abroad back in the 1950s and 1960s.

Mr Gollop wants to hear from people with pictures and stories of the famous workers for a new exhibition at Lyme Regis Museum.

The landslip at Lyme Regis earlier this year revealed the town’s old rubbish dump at the top of the cliffs.

The discovery has renewed local interest in the binmen, who went about their duties dressed in top hats, bowler hats and frock coats.

Mr Gollop, whose father Tom was one of the celebrated dustmen, said the workers appeared on television, radio and in newspapers here and overseas.

He said: “Someone was throwing out all these hats and coats and they gave them to the binmen to get rid of.

“But they just put them on and starting wearing them. It was my father’s idea, no doubt about it, it was just the type of thing he did.

“They managed to take what wasn’t a very good job and turn it into something a bit more fun.

“They did it for years and somehow it got into the press and it just spread. They were everywhere.”

Mr Gollop, 72, has two photographs of the Lyme Regis dustmen, including one published in Tit-Bits men’s magazine back in October 1966.

“We’re after any more pictures, cuttings, stories or information,” he said. “Hopefully this will jog people’s memories.

“My father is pictured in the photograph along with Charlie Chapman and Tom Parker, we think, but we don’t know who the man with the pipe is.

“The problem is these pictures are around 40 years old. But that chap is related to somebody and someone out there somewhere might know him.”

Mr Gollop, of View Road, Lyme Regis, said museum staff are hoping to stage the exhibition over the Christmas period until Easter.

He added: “We thought we’d do an exhibition on rubbish and rubbish collecting in the town, just to be different.

“We’ve already got lots of pictures of the rubbish dump itself. As soon as we get some more stuff on the dustmen we can get going.”

Can you help? If so, contact Lyme Regis Museum or Mr Gollop on 01297 443678.