Honorary degree for Bristol youth club worker

A Bristol man who has worked with hundreds of youngsters is being honoured by the University of Bristol.

Dennis Stinchcombe, MBE, who runs the Broad Plain Youth Club is going to become a Master Of Arts.

He told BBC Bristol he would have to "get a longer business card" after the award of the MA.

"It's such a tremendous honour. When I got the MBE I thought where do you go from here? But getting this award is like getting a key to the city."

He added the honour was a "really lovely thing from Bristol".

Better chance

The former Oldland Boys' School pupil admitted he was "Mr Average" during his education and said the award of the degree proved "he hadn't done too bad".

The former social services worker has been running the club for the past 35 years.

He said the club helped "difficult to reach" youngsters to try and give them a better chance in life.

"Where we are situated, in the middle of Easton and St Pauls, as you can appreciate it's quite a tense time for working with young people," he added.

"I think young people get a bit of a bad press. Like anything, it's a small minority that cause the crime and they tend to get labelled that every young person is a yob.

"Well they're not and I've got some tremendous young people at the club."