THE SWINDON Disease, mesothelioma, was no respecter of talent otherwise it would never have killed Gordon Talbot.

Gordon worked for 44 years at Swindon's railway works as a fitter erector, then as an inspector, but was much better known as one of Swindon's finest musicians.

In the 1940s, he helped put Swindon on the national music map as a pianist and arranger for the Johnnie Stiles Band, which Melody Maker voted best dance band in Britain in both 1948 and 1949.

After the Johnnie Stiles Band folded in 1958, he formed his own group, and in the 1970s he created the Swindon Big Band, which carried the local swing tradition into the 1990s.

Gordon also spent several years as the Wyvern Theatre's musical director after retiring from the railways in 1983.

And it was only the deadly asbestos fibres he inhaled at the railway works that finally silenced the man known locally as Mr Music in 1991. He was 69.

His widow, Vee, from Haydon View Road in Pinehurst, says music was a great comfort to Gordon in the months before his death.

Vee says her husband's death still makes her angry "because he had so much to give."

But she says his recordings are a memorial to him, as well as the fact that groups like the Kentwood Choir still play Gordon's music in their concerts.

Vee is also proud of the part that her husband, the railway worker, played in putting Swindon on the map.

And this is why she has contributed to our appeal to set up a memorial garden to Swindon Disease victims in Queen's Park.

"I just think it's good for all the railwaymen who died to be remembered," she said.

"They made Swindon what it is today."