What started as curiosity about the history of T.Snook the hatters, one of the oldest businesses in Bridport, turned more and more into a fascination of the man behind it.

I had the pleasure of talking to Roger Snook, the third generation at the shop on West Street, about the history of the quirky hat shop responsible for the weird and wonderful Bridport Hat Festival.

Roger explained that his grandfather had Lower Ash Farm near Dottery until 1894 when 20 of his cattle died of Redwater Fever.

He said: "My grandfather didn't want to carry it on any more and he started an apprenticeship tailoring and outfitting in 1896.

"Many years later he started this business, a gentleman's outfitter and, originally, we were at 18 West Street. During the war we were bombed and the building was in such a state, in the early 60s we moved down here [current premises at 30/32 West Street], but we were purely a gentleman's outfitters then, nothing to do with hats."

When his grandfather retired in 1957, his uncle - also another Tom Snook - took over.

Roger added: "Unfortunately, it was failing a bit, I think businesses in the late 80s, early 90s, were suffering and he wanted to retire.

"I didn't know anything about tailoring, by profession I am an engineer, but I have always had a liking for hats and wherever I used to go around the world, I would send hats back.

"In 1987 I came here and we started introducing headwear and so forth and it is what it is today."

Roger Snook was responsible for Bridport's town hall clock for 18 years, the only clock to chime 13 times at midnight on New Year's Eve, which might have something to do with Roger and his friends taking a bottle up there when overseeing the midnight bells.

But Roger taking on T.Snook the hatters really made business boom and they have an impressive directory of who they have supplied headwear to, including Kate Moss, AC/DC, Chas & Dave, comedian Mark Steel, actor and model Noah Huntley, a range of sportsmen - including Chideock Cricket Club - jazz bands and pop groups.

Among those was also American rock band ZZ Top.

Roger explained that the shop supplies a lot of hats through agents and one agent wanted two brunel stove pipes - very tall top hats - in a very large size. Roger queried him and asked who they were for, 'ZZ Top for their European tour', he replied. Roger said they would never fit but the agent insisted they were perfect. Roger had a look online and found pictures of them wearing them over beanie hats.

Hats have also gone to the English National Opera, fashion houses, film companies, and a lot to Madam Tussauds, where Snooks has dressed Obama and Del Boy amongst others.

Which takes us on to when Snooks provided a hat for a cowboy legend.

World-renowned Bridport wax sculptor, Mike Wade, was working for an American waxwork museum on a waxwork of John Wayne, and was in need of a Stetson hat.

He called Roger Snook who advised him to contact various American hat manufacturers and gave him some contact details. However, when searching for the Stetson hat called 'Boss of the Plains', one American supplier told him it would take 20 weeks.

So, Mr Wade went back to Mr Snook and T.Snook could indeed supply the exact hat in the large size required as the shop happened to have some old stock of Stetsons, including a Boss of the Plain.

The little hat shop in Dorset came to the rescue when a large hat supplier in Texas could not deliver. It goes to show you can get whatever you want in Bridport.

This is when Roger's amazing story-making ability shone through.

He recalled 'the top hat disaster of 1797' - one of our favourite hat-related stories.

When a haberdasher John Hetherington strolled down the strand wearing a silk top hat - a tall structure having a shiny lustre and calculated to frighten timid people.

It is said that a woman fainted, children screamed, dogs barked and a small boy was knocked over by the crowd.

Hetherington was charged with a breach of the peace and incitement to riot and despite claiming that he was merely exercising a right not denied to any Englishman, he was bound over in the sum of £50 to keep the peace.

Snooks is the only place you will find a 'Lady Loverly's Chatter', an 'Automobile Cap', 'The Ecky Thump' and the 'Ferret Catcher', and the shop is known in both hemispheres.

Roger loves to find a "daft photograph" and add his own description, his own hat names - his own story for the photograph.

"It's like our moustache wax," he said. "On our website we have the largest selection of moustache wax in the empire, it's written in the window, but it's absolute junk. People read it and you see them smile or you see them laugh. What a great experience to go away with a smile on your face.

"It's a bit eccentric, I don't mind being eccentric at all, or daft."

Snooks the hatters also sells snuff tobacco and Roger has a story for that too.

He said: "On day these two ladies came in and one of the ladies said, 'what's this sniff all about?' I said, 'it's used a lot in the coal mines, you put it up your nose and blow out the dust - it clears out your tubes. But in Dorset we use it to kill rabbits'.

"I said if you get a flat stone by the warren and work out which way the wind is blowing, go down wind and put a pinch of snuff on the stone and you go up wind and sit in the bushes, keep an eye on it, it might take an hour or half an hour but the rabbit will get curious, he will come out and sniff the snuff and he'll cough and knock himself out.

"I said it's been done for hundreds of years and they went outside and the lady said to her mate, isn't that fascinating, you learn something new every day."

Another woman came in looking for some braces for her husband, Roger asked her if she wanted those that kept the trousers up or stopped them from falling down.

Another wonderful story from Roger is the Bridport Water Helmet - a Bridport invention in 1899.

For use in the tropics, the hat contained a gutter for catching rainwater, which was stored in a hallow reservoir below. The refreshing liquid was accessible by means of a tap to the rear.

The hat was tested in tropical Africa and worthy of adoption for use by the military. However, it had drawbacks and proved detrimental to health - tropical germs festered in the rim, provoking upset stomachs, foul odours and worse. In areas of extreme tropical rainfall, overloading of weight caused serious stress and pressure to the brain.

Another is the Bridport protective and armoured fez, an inventor who made a fez out of cast iron.

Roger also likes to design and develop hats himself, a lot of the headwear in the shop is their own. There are panama bowler hats, their own pork pie hats and more.

Roger said: "Sometimes hat bands are boring and we will get something spectacular and put that on it. I am always looking."

T.Snook is so much more than a shop that sells hundreds of different varieties of hats - from the serious to the ridiculous - it's an experience with knowledgeable, happy people full of incredible stories - you just might not know which ones are true but you are guaranteed to leave with a smile on your face.

You need more than just an interview with Roger Snook, you need a whole evening listening to his stories. Some of you may have been lucky enough to catch him when he used to do talks.

I don't care that the majority of what he told me was, as he says, "complete rubbish", I have never laughed so much and I left with a smile on my face.

Bridport Hat Festival

The popular event - which like many other events couldn't go ahead this year - attracts hundreds of people from all over the world to our lovely, little town of Bridport, started 11 years ago, which Roger says is "the daftest thing I have every thought of".

"I just thought, everybody says the hat is dead," he said. "When Kennedy stopped wearing hats in the 1960s, that's when the hat industry collapsed. There were hundreds of thousands of people involved in the hat industry, everything was hats, all the big hat companies went away.

"It was one way of reviving the hat. Let's see what we can do and that was the inspiration behind it.

"It was so stupid an idea that it worked.

"I went into a nursing home and they were all saying, 'it's the hat festival man', and I began to appreciate the enjoyment it brought

"When I thought of the idea, I was amazed at the interest from the hat industry and we were getting enquiries from Australia and South Africa to be part of it. As a way of promoting it, it had a £500 prize for any amateur to enter their hat, send photographs and the committee chose the selected ones. We had entries from Canada, USA, Australia, South Africa, and one woman actually came over from Australia.

"It was phenomenal - it's brought a lot of entertainment to a lot of people."