A FORMER Inverclyde parks boss and councillor has been buoyed up on his birthday after a much-loved local landmark was given a spruce up.

Jim Hunter, who turned 91 this week, was delighted to work has started to paint the historic buoy on the Esplanade.

Jim told the Telegraph that he had saved the buoy, which originally marked the boundary of the Rosneath Patch on the Firth of Clyde, when it was moved from Battery Park.

Jim, who lives at Riverside Gardens in Gourock, said: "Myself and the late Alistair McDougall saved it from being scrapped and arranged for it to be brought to the Esplanade.

"I had been asking for it to be painted time and time again when I was a councillor, and I am quite proud that it has been painted."

Trainees with Inverclyde Community Development Trust scraped back the old paint, and have applied an undercoat.

They are set to complete the job next week.

Jim said: "I am delighted The Trust boys are painting it, especially when it is my birthday.

"It's like a birthday present for me."

Jim said it was important to maintain such Inverclyde landmarks for posterity and future generations.

A spokesperson for the Trust added: "Projects like these are great for our trainees, because it allows our supervisor Pat to teach new skills to the team."

Councillor Jim Clocherty requested that the work be carried out.

The buoy was placed in the river by the Clyde Lighthouses Trust in 1880 and was the first flashing buoy to be lit by oil gas.

It was moved to Greenock when the Little Cumbrae lighthouse was de-manned and automated in 1977.

The plaque attached says it was 'the first flashing buoy to be established to aid navigation'.

The engineers mentioned on the plaque, David and Thomas Stevenson, were members of the famous family of lighthouse builders who had a long connection with the CLT.

The Trust was the first lighthouse authority in Great Britain or Ireland to be allowed to build lighthouses and to collect light dues for their maintenance, making the Clyde the first estuary and river anywhere in the world to be lit by buoys and beacons.

Thousands of similarly lit buoys were soon in use worldwide.