GLEN Ambrose should today be preparing for a dream holiday to Australia, and looking forward to celebrating his twentieth wedding anniversary.A budding actor and musician, he had many gigs and bit-parts lined up for the coming months, but his dreams were cut short after an early morning visit to the gym ended in tragedy.

GLEN Ambrose should today be preparing for a dream holiday to Australia, and looking forward to celebrating his twentieth wedding anniversary.

A budding actor and musician, he had many gigs and bit-parts lined up for the coming months, but his dreams were cut short after an early morning visit to the gym ended in tragedy.

Mr Ambrose, 47, a reception clerk at the Port of Felixstowe, regularly attended the gym at the port's container terminal. He had been running on the treadmill when he suffered a suspected heart attack and died on May 14.

He had no previous history of heart problems.

The news came as a devastating blow to his wife Melanie, 42. She said: "It was a huge shock. A few days earlier he had suffered mild palpitations but did not think it was anything serious.

"He went to the doctor and had scans, but he wasn't really that worried about it. He didn't drink and he didn't smoke.

"He liked his keep-fit and tried to go to the gym fairly regularly. There'd been no indication that he'd got a problem at all."

Mrs Ambrose today described her husband as her "soulmate" and told how he had "so many things to be positive about."

He was due to fly out to Australia to visit his brother Paul on June 22, and later in the year, he and his wife would have been celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary.

The couple met at The Cavendish pub in Felixstowe in the late 1970s and were married in 1984.

They shared a passion for music and drama and were in a band, Lost City, together. They also worked as extras and had small speaking parts in some of the nations best-loved TV programmes and films.

Over the past few years they had made appearances in Casualty, Holby City, Bend It Like Beckham and Little Britain.

Mrs Ambrose, of Grimston Lane, Trimley St Martin, said: "Glen always wanted to be an actor but never really did anything about it until our agent, who sorts out our gigs for us, suggested that we get in to extras work.

"Glen loved it and was absolutely in his element.

"We've met a lot of famous people including Tamsin Outhwaite, Heath Ledger and Kate Hudson most of the cast of Casualty and Holby City.

"We also appeared in an S Club 7 video, which was good fun, but I think the thing that Glen enjoyed the most was appearing in Channel Four's Spaced.

"He didn't have a speaking part but there was a big close up on his face, and it was one of his favourite programmes. He was very proud of that."

Born and raised in Trimley St Martin, Glen had worked at the port for over 20 years and was pushing for regulations to be introduced to protect workers from abuse from lorry drivers.

Glen Ambrose's legacy could live on among his co-workers at the port, in the form of a new checking-in procedure for lorry drivers.

Towards the end of his life Glen was involved in campaigning for regulations and procedures to be introduced to prevent port workers being subjected to threatening and abusive behaviour from lorry drivers.

Reception clerks like Mr Ambrose are the first point of contact for many visiting lorry drivers and he felt they often bore the brunt of lorry driver's frustration if they had been waiting in long queues.

Now, port officials are making moves to implement a series of new regulations for lorry drivers and those that deal with checking them in.

Paul Davey, corporate affairs manager for The Port of Felixstowe, said: "Glen was a very valued employee at the port and everyone is extremely saddened by his untimely death.

"We have been in discussions with TGWU but this is not a direct response to Glen's death, the discussions are ongoing.

"What we are looking to do is introduce a charter at the reception and gate areas that will set out the standards of behaviour our people should be able to expect from lorry drivers, and that lorry drivers should be able to expect from our people."

The Transport and General Workers Union hope to call this the Glen Ambrose procedure in his memory.

Bradley McGuire, a representative for the TGWU, said: "It is being discussed with management at the moment. They are very positive and I'm confident it will happen.

"It will basically be a way of helping people talk to each other and get along with one another. It is a difficult situation at times when you've got people coming from all over the country. They get tired and fed up and it's a way of reminding everybody, port workers and lorry drivers, that we are all just trying to do our job.

"Glen was a close friend and a real champion. He started the ball rolling and I promised his wife that what he started, I would finish."

Mrs Ambrose said: "I'm so proud of Glen. He was a real champion of the underdog and stood up for what he believed in."

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