Whether it’s the New York firefighters or the actors of London’s Burning – there’s always a certain ‘something’ about those brave recruits in uniform.

Jen Bishop, of the Wiltshire Gazette & Herald, wasn’t slow to take her chance to join the local station to see what they really do all day.

You can only taunt somebody so many times before it comes back to haunt you. And this was the case during my visit to Chippenham Fire Station on Friday, when some firefighters dispelled the common myth that for 90 per cent of their working time, they sit around drinking tea.

Sub officer Julian Hancock and his Red Watch crew put me through one of the most active days of my career so far when I went along to experience a day in the life of a firefighter.

Sub officer Hancock, leading firefighter Darren Nixon and firefighters Jack Nicholson, Mark `Windy’ Miller, Ady Frances, Rob Kynoch and Dave Kay, greeted me with the obligatory banter you’d expect in a male-dominated environment, but assured me I was in for an action-packed day. By the time 6pm came, I realised that for a group of men whose job involves saving lives, a sense of humour is crucial.

When I arrived at the station at 9am, the watch had already inspected all the equipment on board the appliances (that’s fire engines to you and I), which is done daily to ensure everything is in working order. A few minutes later I had a self-indulgent moment of “I told you so,” when I was informed we were going to have a cup of tea.

Twenty minutes later however, we were back downstairs, where some of the firefighters showed a group of children from Derry Hill School around the station. They had brought along the proceeds from their harvest festival to add to the many thousands of pounds Wiltshire Fire Brigade has already raised for firefighters in New York, after many of their American colleagues were killed during the terrorist attacks last month.

Next up was a briefing on emergency bio hazardous chemical procedures, in the wake of recent anthrax scares.

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