A PENSIONER’S wire mesh sculptures are starting to get folk ‘all shook up.’ Peter Lovegrove, 83, has been searching for the right hobby since retiring from the Atomic Energy Authority in Harwell.

The Beaufort Close, Didcot resident started sculpting life-size statues for friends after his wife died four years ago.

His latest creation is a wire Elvis Presley, which he gave to his gardener, Pauline Fleming, from Sinodun Road, Didcot.

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Retired care assistant Ms Fleming, 69, said: “They’re amazing.

“He originally made it as a weatherman but to me it looked like Elvis, so he gave him a guitar.”

The mother-of-seven is planning to marry her partner of 38 years, John Moxon, next year, the day before her 70th birthday.

They will hold the ceremony in her garden, watched over by the crinkly king of rock ’n’ roll.

She added: “I tell everyone about Peter. I think he’s a genius.”

Born in Abingdon, Mr Lovelock got his first engineering job at Harwell in 1949, then built remote-controlled drones in London before his former boss asked him to come back to Harwell in 1958.

When he retired in 1994 he opened a “small factory” building light aircraft in Ayres Yard, in Wallingford, as a hobby.

He got “too old and couldn’t be bothered any more”, so he started making bees and dragonflies out of beads and wire. He also made 74 bead mosaics, with an average of 30,000 beads each, totalling about 2.2 million beads.

He started making the sculptures after his wife of 57 years, June, died four years ago after a battle with Alzheimer’s.

He has made 10 figures for various people, including his brother David in Wallingford and friends in Banbury and Ireland.

The father-of-six said: “I am incredibly impatient; I have to be finished with things quickly.

“In my teenage years I was a ballroom dancer for six months. I won a bronze medal, then I started doing something else.

“I’m not into mucking about with panting or pottery and it had to be something I could teach myself.”

He buys the wire from garden centres and each sculpture costs about £50 to make.

He added: “People seem to be quite impressed, I don’t know why. Humanity is very strange.”

But his talent was spotted by the Soldiers’ Sailors’ and Airmen’s Families Association, who asked him to make them a First World War soldier.

His work, entitled Private Mainwaring, was adopted by Wiltshire Council for its centenary wall of remembrance, and he is now in residence at a primary school.

Community engagement officer Karen Thomas said: “I don’t think he has the slightest idea how incredible his figures are.

“When we took Private Mainwaring to a show at Trowbridge, people were having photographs with him. There is something about him children really identify with.”

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