WHEN ex-airport boss Graham Slater decided on a complete change of career and set up a bookshop in a spare room at the 200-year-old family home at the North Yorkshire moors village of Gillamoor, experts told him it would take five years to show signs of becoming established.

That was three years ago, and today the multi-facted venture has proved so successful that it has been named Village Shop of the Year by Yorkshire Independent Grocers.

Gillamoor had been without a shop for 30 years when Graham and his wife Jo opened the business, initially armed with a thousand second-hand paperbacks.

Shelves he retrieved for under a fiver from a shop in Kirkbymoorside which was closing are now laden with everything from groceries and organic wines to locally-produced jam, confectionery and dairy produce.

In every corner of the packed little shop are to be found goods to keep Gillamoor residents and its many tourists, self-sufficient.

"We are a classic village shop with a few extras. We sell a little of everything, while our grocery and wine sections are split 50-50 between conventional goods and organic," said Graham, a Staffordshire man who moved with his Yorkshire-born wife to Gillamoor after a career running an airport and working at RAF Fylingdales.

The shop not only provides the couple and their two children with a modest living - "We're never going to be millionaires!" - but it also helps support 30 other small businesses in and around the North Yorkshire Moors who supply goods to sell in the shop.

"I'd never had any experience in retailing but I got some good tips by watching all the repeats of Ronnie Barker in the television series 'Open All Hours'," said Graham.

"It's great fun after being in a stressful job," he added. "Jo and I talked about setting up a shop over a bottle or two of wine one night and it still seemed a good idea when we recovered from our hang-overs the following morning so we decided to have a go."

Graham has explored every avenue to make sure the shop is a success. He even writes and sells details of walks around the string of beauty-spot villages of Gillamoor - famous for its "Surprise View" of the panoramic scenery on a sharp bend just outside the village - Fadmoor and Farndale and delivers groceries to the neighbouring villages.

"Our growth rate has greatly exceeded our expectations - in excess of 100pc each year," said Graham.

"People ask why we have succeeded when other shops are closing. I really don't know. But if someone were to ask where we got the idea from, I would be able to reply with confidence - "two bottles of cabernet-sauvignon!"

Customers, many of them tourists from all parts of the country, have given the village shop their thumbs-up with such comments as "This shop is the best thing to happen around here for years" and "You have a better selection of organic wines than Sainsbury's".

Updated: 09:05 Wednesday, February 26, 2003