The 83-year-old first retired from his radio consultant gig in 1995, but was lured back by the persistent pleas of former radio manager Bill Morrison two months later.

“I didn’t think I’d be here for another 18 years,” he laughed.

Reminiscing on his last day in the job yesterday, Mr Lord admitted he will definitely miss the place. 

“I’m going to miss it all, but as they say everything has to come to a finish one day,” he said.

“It’s been a pretty good run here.

“I’ve had a lot of goods times, not many bad times.

“What I’ve always admired, is that the people are very helpful to me, they’ve always showed me lot of respect. That counts.”

As a radio consultant, Mr Lord was tasked with finding advertisers.

And every now and again he would help the announcers with different segments, one of his most well known roles was that of larrikin Wal in the skit “Wal from Walcha”.

The Moonbi local was also the official Tamworth town crier for 15 years, which provided a number of memorable moments.

The funniest, he says, was at the 1993 World Championships in Brisbane.

“Here I am ringing my bell and the donger flew off and hit the town crier from Tasmania fair in the shins,” he said.

“Well I didn’t know the mic was on above me and I’m swearing and he’s swearing back at me.

“Little did we know it was filtering through to the thousands in the crowd, until they started laughing.

“We didn’t win the championship, but we won best comedy act.”

Now that he is retired, Mr Lord says he is looking forward to putting his feet up and spending more time with his wife of nearly 62 years, Marcia.

“It will be nice just to be able to sit back I suppose, to relax at home, all going well.”