It would have been easy to miss Bernie and Irene as they did their shopping in the Co-op Food Hall on a Saturday morning. In the late 1990s I saw them quite regularly and would chat with them, writes Andy Winter, a former councillor who worked in social care and homelessness services for 40 years.

He knew that I had been a Labour councillor and worked for Brighton Housing Trust. I suspected he didn’t approve of either. He was, however, always very friendly.

Other shoppers would have had no idea that this old man, with his dear wife on his arm, had a few years earlier been the Conservative leader of Hove Borough Council. Bernie Jordan served as a councillor for 34 years and was mayor of Hove in 1995/96. After Brighton and Hove necame a unitary authority in 1997 he served one further term, standing down in 1999.

Afterwards, at an age when most people would be looking for a quiet life, Bernie was to make headlines again, not once but three more times.

The first occasion was in 2000 when, on the eve of its conference in Brighton, he joined the Labour Party. He was one of the very last individuals I would have expected to join Labour. But perhaps the Labour Party of Tony Blair was not too much of a transition for him. He was photographed with Blair in the conference hotel and it made headline news.

A former Hove Labour councillor, Andy Richards, wrote to The Argus at the time: “(Bernie) was not known for his criticism of Tory policies and may best be remembered for assisting in the Tories’ attempt to privatise the management of council housing in Hove, a policy thankfully reversed by the incoming Labour administration in 1995. Bernie’s defection may, as Ivor Caplin says, be a sign of how Labour is broadening its appeal. Even Tories can now join!”

That might have been it for Bernie. As Irene grew more frail, she moved into a care home to be joined later by Bernie himself. My mother-in-law, Molly Calder, was in the same home around that time. My wife Jean would see Bernie when she visited. He wasn’t yet a resident himself but visited Irene daily. They remained devoted to each other.

But Bernie wasn’t finished. When he turned 17 in 1941, he had joined the Royal Navy as an electrician. He survived the deadly Arctic Convoys taking supplies to Russia and in the North Atlantic.

Among the medals awarded to him was the Atlantic Star. In June 1944, shortly before his 20th birthday, he took part in the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy. Those of us who have never been under relentless enemy bombardment cannot even begin to appreciate the noise, the smell, the terror of those landings.

June 2014 saw the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Old comrades gathered on the beaches of Normandy for what was likely to be the last such gathering of veterans. Bernie Jordan was determined to be there to honour his fallen comrades. Efforts to get him a ticket for this memorial event were, for some reason, not successful. So, defying the care home management and concealing his medals under his raincoat, he made his own way to France and proudly took his place at the remembrance service sitting no more than 100 metres away from the Queen and countless other heads of state.

Notwithstanding the consternation caused by his sudden disappearance from the care home, his return to Hove led the television news and Bernie appeared smiling and waving on the front page of almost every daily newspaper. He told the press: “I expect I will be in some trouble. But it was worth it … I loved every minute. I’d do it again tomorrow!”

Following his “great escape” he became an honorary alderman of Brighton and Hove. The mayor at the time, Brian Fitch (who sadly passed away recently) said of Bernie that “his recent exploits delighted the media, entertained the general public, worried his friends at (the care home) and completely bemused his family. It’s his mix of self-effacing bravery and humour, wisdom and warmth, experience and perspective that prompted me to nominate Bernie as honorary alderman.”

Bernie died six months later, in January 2015. His beloved wife of 68 years, Irene, passed away just 24 hours later, devoted to each other to the very end.

But that is not the end of Bernie and Irene’s story. Bernie’s determined return to the beaches of Normandy has now been immortalised on film. The Great Escaper is due to be released in the autumn. It stars Michael Caine as Bernie and the late Glenda Jackson as Irene. It was Jackson’s last film role.