2 weeks Ago
FOR years people used to drop bags of rubbish on the drive of Alan Fish’s home in Malvern. A bit unsociable you may think but not at all. Because this was their way of helping a great-hearted character who has become known as the town’s 'Can Man'.
Alan’s collecting of silver foil and aluminium in aid of charity is the stuff of legend and, now at the age of 84, the man universally known by his boyhood nickname Kipper has received the High Sheriff’s Award for his sterling efforts which have raised well over £140,000 for Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Day. To his great surprise it was presented at the annual lunch of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regimental Association by the High Sheriff of Worcestershire Charles Moyle. “I knew nothing about it,” said Kipper.
“We had just gone along for a social time although I was told someone was going to get something. "But when they called out a name it wasn’t mine so I took no notice. Then a voice shouted: ‘Hey Kipper.
Get your backside over here. You’re wanted.’ I was speechless and a bit emotional.
” He was born in Ebbw Vale in 1940 the eldest of eight children but grew up in Malvern and began work as a 15-year-old messenger boy at Shrub Hill railway station in Worcester. Kipper was on station duty when a blind student on a return trip to Hereford walked into a pillar on the platform and became disorientated. While he recovered, Kipper stayed with the lad to make sure he got on the right train to Hereford.
During the wait the chat turned to the boy’s blindness and how the society for the blind was funded, especially how people got their guide dogs. “One fundraising method particularly interested me because I felt able to do it,” Kipper explained. “It was collecting tin foil and passing it on to be sold to raise funds.
I began collecting straight away at a time when the only sources available were the foiled back paper out of cigarette packets and milk bottle tops.” He went to great lengths to obtain as much foil as possible, asking family and friends to save all their foil for him and word soon spread. In fact Kipper and his family still save aluminium today and go on walks looking for discarded cigarette packets and their foil.
All the laborious collecting of this scarce foil meant it took Kipper a long time to raise enough to ‘buy’ his first guide dog. Later, as tin foil was used more, it became a little easier to raise funds, especially when aluminium cans became widely used for drinks and food. Kipper is well-known around Malvern where he has the nickname the 'Can Man' and pubs, clubs and private households from a wide area store bags of cans for him to collect.
His driveway and backyard became a collection centre as mountainous supplies of cans waited to be sorted, crushed and bagged ready for delivery to reclamation centres or collection by lorries. This processing took many hours of Kipper crushing the cans with his trusty metal tamper. After working on the railway for 50 years, part of Kipper’s retirement presentation was a life pass for free travel on the trains.
So he then used to leave his home in Newtown Road, Malvern, every weekday at 6am to catch the train to Shrub Hill. Here he would sort through the rubbish bags that came off the trains searching for the aluminium cans and foil. He has raised enough money over the years to buy three dogs and two puppies.
Between 1991 and 2021 alone he raised £16,272.50p. Kipper grew up in a family with a long military tradition and, being exempt because of his job, he became a reservist aged 18 in 1958.
His long service as a reservist or territorial included with the 7th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment, the Mercian Volunteers, the Home Service Force, 4th Battalion the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment and the Light Infantry. He reached the rank of sergeant and attended many camps both in UK and abroad. On retirement from the military aged 52 in 1992, Kipper was presented with his long service medal by Princess Anne who was then colonel in chief of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters.
He has subsequently been involved in the Royal British Legion, West Malvern branch, becoming a poppy collection organiser and welfare caseworker. For more than 20 years Kipper did his annual rounds of the houses collecting for the Poppy Appeal, only stopping when he reached 80. Between 1992 and 2024 he raised more than £125,350.
For many years Kipper carried the West Malvern RBL branch standard and for a while carried the county RBL standard. He still proudly carries the Worcestershire Regiments’ standard for the Worcester branch of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regimental Association and did likewise at the presentation of the new colours by King Charles, then Prince of Wales, to the Mercian Regiment at Sixways, Worcester. Chairman of the WFRA, Lt Col (retired) Mark Jackson, said: “Alan’s willingness to help anyone in the regimental associations, the Royal British Legion and civilian life has made him a well-known figure in Malvern and among the veterans’ community.
"Throughout all the years he has been fortunate to have a wife and family who have supported him in all his efforts.” And wife Judy was there beside him the day Kipper got the call..
