When James Ramplin was at primary school, one of the best programmes on television was the cowboy classic Hopalong Cassidy.

But he remembers it for other reasons.

It was 1955 and Mr Ramplin, then eight, was still learning how to live with polio. Two years previously he had caught the infectious viral disease and spent a long time in the isolation ward at Colchester’s Myland Hospital.

The disease weakens the muscles; in Mr Ramplin’s case, polio gave him “a weak left leg from the waist down”. It was definitely a case for callipers. But when Hopalong Cassidy ruled television, Mr Ramplin had yet to receive his leg braces. Instead, he hopped.

“Some of the other kids sang the theme tune from the show as I went by,” he said. “But I didn’t let them get away with it. I went after them and, if I caught them, I belted them!”

As far as he was concerned, he was not going to run away from his disability and he was certainly not going to let his disability rule him. Unfortunately, it ruled other people.

“So many see the disability and not the person,” he said. “They assume that, because I am disabled, I would not be able to do the job.”

Yet, while he may never have got the job of his dreams – he wanted to be a pilot with the RAF – and has been turned down more times than he cares to remember, he has rarely been out of work.

Now, aged 61, he is about to set up his own business. He has trained as an horologist – clock repairer – and taken a business course at Colchester Business Enterprise Agency (Colbea), mainly because he wanted to but also because it was becoming more and more difficult to find work. He admits his age didn’t help.

“I got a couple of interviews recently because now you don’t have to include age on the application form,” he said. “But I didn’t get further than the first interview. Whether it was my age or disability, or both, who knows.”

It can’t have been his lack of qualifications. He has an OND in engineering technology and an HNC in advanced manufacturing technology. So, why?

Despite the Government’s recent insistence that it wants to get disabled people into work, the Disability Rights Commission and the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act, Mr Ramplin is adamant the anti-disability laws have made little difference.

“If employers don’t want to employ disabled people simply because those people are disabled and for no other reason, they can get around the law,” he said.

“They can say they have interviewed someone more suitable, and then manipulate any questionnaire to show why that other person is more suitable.”

Yet he has kept to the promise he made to himself that his disability – and now diabetes, too – would not keep him away from work or life.

“I have lived most of my life in north Essex,” he said. “My father was a farm worker and we moved around a lot. We settled in a tied cottage in Layer-de-la-Haye when I was four.

“My parents were keen I stayed on at school. I went to what was then Stanway Secondary Modern, and I left when I was 17.”

That is when he applied to join the RAF. But as soon as the interviewing panel saw his disability – his left leg was, by this time, four inches (10cms) shorter than his right – he was told there was nothing in the RAF for him. It was the same when the Labour Exchange – now the Jobcentre – put his name forward as an apprentice printer with a Colchester print firm.

“They said I would not be able to cope with the work, but I wasn’t given a chance.”

Another Colchester firm did give him a chance.

He got a job as an apprentice milling machine operator/setter with Brackett’s, the water screening equipment company. His disability there was “not an issue”, neither with his bosses nor the workforce.

In fact, it was not an issue with more physical pursuits. In 1966 he passed his motorbike test; in 1967, his car driving test; and, in 1968, his advanced motorist’s test.

A few years later, he bought a 1976 Honda CB 400-4, which he sold on eBay not all that long ago for “a very good price”.

He is currently putting together a three-wheel motorbike with a 1991 Ford Granada 2.9-litre engine which, coincidentally, he also bought from eBay.

“Three wheels is a lot more stable than two,” he laughed. “As you get older, your balance isn’t as good.”

Since 1977 he has lived in Tiptree. He married his wife, Jan, nearly 33 years ago. They have two daughters, Sally-Ann, 29, and Donna, 28. It is Sally-Ann, a website designer, who is creating his web page for what will become Tiptree Clocks.

“I went on the ten-month horologist course in Exeter shortly after I lost my job with a firm in Earls Colne,” he said. “I have always been interested in clocks.”

He wanted to work with his hands, too, just as he had done at Brackett’s and later at Marconi Communications and Marconi Radar in Chelmsford.

“I can’t wait to get Tiptree Clocks off the ground, but I would still have loved to have flown planes.”