A man from the Wirral said his marriage was saved when he was forced to scavenge from the local tip after he was sacked.
The story of Mickey, 30 at the time, was featured "On the Scrap Heap", a 1985 episode of the popular documentary series "World in Action", by ITV Granada. The episode focused on the plight of men from Birkenhead like Mickey, recently unemployed after redundancies made by local shipbuilding company Cammell Laird, which employed hundreds in the area.
Mickey, who had "worked all his life in ship repair," won promotion to "charge hand" and was leading a team of riggers by the time he was made redundant. He told the documentary crew that the sacking changed his life completely.
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He said: "I just couldn't believe it, I got the cheque on a Friday, when I woke up Monday I just couldn't believe I had nothing to do.
"I just started going out, going the pub, getting drunk in the afternoon. Every time I woke up I just felt depressed all the time. I was just walking around the house moping. I'm getting out of here."
"The first place I could go was the pub. I felt like the beer was my shield, things just got that bad."
Mickey's wife, Dot, with whom he shared four children, said she "couldn't stand" his new drinking habits. She spoke about how money for the gas and electric would go missing, and how she even reached the point where she "felt like running away without the kids."
Mickey soon found himself without his partner. The pair divorced in the early 1980s and soon Mickey found himself attending court at least "four times" and "in jail once."
It wasn't that Mickey wasn't trying to get a job, it was that he couldn't.
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Another man interviewed told of how the men were left with a choice- "sign on" or to move elsewhere, even abroad, for anything even slightly resembling a job prospect.
Mickey's depression continued after prison, until "some fella" asked him if he wanted to join him on a trip to the local Bidston scrap heap.
Mickey accepted the odd offer, and soon found himself among "hundreds" of other unemployed men, woman and children scouring the scrap heap for valuable items.
He said: "I was only there for about an hour/half an hour and I came out. You've just got to wait by a skip and dive in if you see anything. It just wasn't me.
"But then I just gradually went [there] over and over and over [again], and just got used to it."
His new "occupation" filled his time, taking him away from the pub and the drink and giving him something to get out of bed for, no matter how reluctant he was, no matter how "degrading" it was. Then, four years after their divorce, Mickey remarried Dot.
The new habit gave Mickey a way of "escaping" the harsh reality of unemployment that had wrecked his marriage. And he confirmed that it played a large part in getting back to friendly terms with Dot, and then eventually remarrying her.
Mickey told the ITV crew: "It all happened about three months ago.
"I just started coming back down. We just started talking, whenever I could I just started taking her out, and I just said 'Should we get married again and try it again'.
"She said yes. So we're going to try again now."
The investigative current affairs programme "World in Action", by ITV Granada, ran from Monday, January 7 1963 to Monday, December 7 1998. Episodes can still be found on subscription service Britbox.
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