It's going to be a busy year for Peter Stocker.

Not that this is unusual, because he already combines running Workshop Pottery in Brighton with his responsibilities as chairman of North Laine Traders' Association. (NLTA)

So celebrating a 50th birthday in August and a 25th wedding anniversary in September shouldn't pose too many problems.

Next year will probably be no less hectic as the pottery marks its silver anniversary.

This is no mean achievement when you consider Peter knew "absolutely nothing" about throwing a pot when he started the business with his wife in 1979.

Peter was born in Battersea, London, but spent most of his childhood in Croydon, where his father worked for Nestl.

By the time he was coming up to leave school he decided he wanted to pursue a career in art and, almost by accident, found himself in an apprenticeship at the same firm.

"I was leaving school and my dad said 'oh, we've got a display studio where we do lots of screen printing and photography, why don't I take you around?'.

"I went with him and talked to a guy that worked there and he said Nestl did apprenticeships and I could go to college and get paid.

"So I went. It was very difficult in the sense I was very different to the normal sort of people they took on. I wore flares, had long hair and a beard but everyone else was middle-aged and conservative.

"They wouldn't let me go out. They used to organise presentations in London hotels and, when they launched the Milky Bar, they would decorate these rooms to look like western saloons.

"But I was never allowed to go because I was too scruffy and I got a bit fed up."

He moved to the South Coast in 1971 after getting a call from one of his college lecturers.

"This guy was starting an agency in Hove and he asked me if I wanted to be his first employee. I went out and took photographs."

One of his first jobs was photographing the redevelopment of Shoreham Harbour.

"I used to get pushed out on boats, climb up things to photograph them taking down bits of old power stations. It was great."

He did that for a couple of years and then, after a brief spell managing a printers, set up his own silk screen printing business doing adverts for "buses and all sorts".

"It was incredibly hard graft though and I knew I couldn't do it forever. Then I met my wife, who was studying to be a teacher.

"We got married in 1978 and decided we wanted to do something together. At the end of the Seventies there were loads of student teachers and no jobs so we naively decided to open a pottery.

"She was very interested in pottery and had done a few evening classes. We even had a kiln in the bedroom - so we started the business with £600.

"It was one of those naive ideas but I was only 25 and you can do anything when you're 25."

They started the business in the Open Market, off London Road, and still have customers today who bought things from the stall there.

But they decided it wasn't the best place to sell hand-made pottery and moved to their current premises in 1981.

He says: "I knew the North Laine area a bit through Arthur Whitehouse, who used to run the North Laine Runner. I got to know the guy who ran a shop and one day he said he'd had enough and was closing.

"I said I was very interested in the shop and three months later we moved in. It was that easy. My life seems to have been easy. I've never gone for a job and I've never really had to look for anywhere to live. It's all just happened."

He says he felt part of the North Laine community from the very beginning and got involved in the community organisation.

He and his family moved out from the flat above the shop in 1989 and, by this point, he had already realised there was a need for a trade association.

"A number of traders come here during the day and then go home at night and they were missing out on the benefits of the community organisation."

He became the first member of the NLTA, which now has about 160 members.

He is still clearly very passionate about the area, saying: "The North Laine works like a village. It's a close-knit community where people know and trust each other.

"The other thing is it's difficult for chains to move in because most of the shops are too small.

"What we want are useful shops. The way the North Laine works is you need a mix of shops and I just hope we can keep it like this but unfortunately commercial rents have followed house prices and it's starting to get too expensive to be a small trader here.

"Street crime has been tackled quite well. In the early Eighties it was a bit like the Wild West."

He runs the shop on his own and has done for the past ten years or so.

"When we started my wife used to make the pots and I used to decorate them. When she returned to teaching I was on my own and I had to learn how to throw pots."

Away from work he loves gardening and plays "very bad" guitar. Music by Crowded House and Frank Zappa is an important part of his life.

He doesn't think the business would have survived in many other towns.

"Brighton has been really good to me. I'm just lucky."

I suspect the hard work didn't go amiss though.

Monday April 14 2003