Well-known Bognor physio calls it a day

Ken Scutt used his hands to heal a patients' aches and pains for the last time at his Nyewood Lane consulting rooms and home.

His final customer was a regular who needs his back manipulating to cope with damage caused by fell running in his younger days.

Mr Scutt said: "I will miss all of my patients very much. It's so rewarding getting people better. I can see the results immediately and I think spending 45 minutes with each of them is healing in itself."

Mr Scutt (80) qualified as a physiotherapist in 1958. A Bognorian, he served an electrical apprenticeship at Bradleys in the town before he was called up into the Royal Navy in 1945.

The navy had no need for any more electricians and switched him to the medical branch. He worked in a rehabilitation centre and signed on to train as a physio.

He worked at Haslar Hospital in Gosport, Singapore and Scotland before he was chosen for the crew of the Royal Yacht in 1964.

Nine enjoyable years were spent on Britannia as he travelled on it around the world three times.

He treated all the members of the Royal Family except for the Queen. But he did receive the Royal Victorian Medal from Her Majesty when he retired in 1973.

He set up his private practice in Nyewood Lane specialising in manipulative therapy and sports medicine and carried out some 70,000 treatments in all.

He became a town councillor in the 1990s. His year as town mayor co-incided with Bognor FC's last major FA Cup run to the second round in 1996.

This mixture of civic and sporting pride provided him with one of his proudest moments when he treated some of Bognor's team before their big tie at Peterborough Utd.

"I became very good friends with most of my patients," he added. "Of course, not only were the clinics medical, but I could get a very good idea what the patients were thinking about conditions locally, which was quite useful in my political career."