THE remarkable story of a prisoner of war who taught his Japanese captors to play football has been told for the first time - 60 years after the end of the war in the Far East.

Sam Purvis organised matches between guards and prisoners after being taken captive when Singapore fell in 1942.

And he saved the lives of dozens of PoWs, who were given extra food in reward for his skills.

Mr Purvis, from Washington, Wearside, played at amateur level for Sunderland then signed as a professional for Middlesbrough before the war.

But at the age of 22, he was called up and posted to Singapore with the 197th Field Ambulance.

He spent three-and-a-half years as a prisoner, but always refused to talk about his experiences until he was persuaded to tell his story by his nephew, Ray Watson, who lives in Hartlepool.

Mr Watson said: "It took 20 years of asking him before he would talk about it.

"Some of the things he had seen were so horrific he didn't want to remember them."

Mr Purvis told of how he lectured on his time as a professional footballer and organised matches, helping keep up morale among prisoners suffering terrible deprivations in the camps.

And a regular spectator, a Japanese solider named Yashata, asked Mr Purvis to teach him how to play football.

In return, Mr Purvis was able to win extra rations for his comrades, supplementing their meagre diet of rice.

He told his nephew: "Many was the good deed that man Yashata had done for me and my football comrades, and it was mainly the friendship of that man which enabled us to survive those hell-holes."

Mr Purvis contracted Alzheimer's and died in 1999, but Mr Watson has written a biography of his uncle, titled Mister Sam after the only words of English Yashata knew.

Mr Watson's efforts to trace Yashata have drawn a blank.

*Saving Mr Sam - see Features.