I'd rather watch paint dry !

Most of us would admit to finding our working day slightly tedious at times.

But spare a thought for Keith Jackson.

The married father-of-one has perhaps the most boring job in the world - watching paint dry.

For more than 30 years, assessing the drying time of industrial paint has been part of Mr Jackson's working life.

The highlight of his day is simply touching the paint to assess it's tackiness.

Although he admits his job is seen as a bit of a joke and can be slightly tedious at times, the 57-year-old has never tired of the task.

"People do laugh and find it amusing when I tell them what I do,' Mr Jackson said yesterday. It could be described as the most boring job in the world, but it is a very important one. We supply paint to a variety of industries and for our customers it is very important that they can cover their products with paint that dries quickly. For example, we make the paint for the floors and walls of stations for the London Underground. They can't afford to shut to passengers for long periods so the painting can only be done between 3am and 5am.

"Once the paint is on the floor it has to dry hard and fast enough for people to be able to walk on in time for when the station re-opens in the morning."

Mr Jackson, from Llandegla, North Wales, whose official title is technical manager, has worked for industrial paint manufacturers AquaTec Coatings for the past four years. However, he has been in the paint industry since he left school as a 16-year-old.

Mr Jackson refused to reveal exactly how much he earned, but said watching paint dry paid "fairly well."

"Watching paint dry sounds quite easy, but it can be stressful at times," he added.

"I put the paint on pieces of cardboard and literally time how long they take to dry with a stop watch. The quickest paint we produce is ready to walk on in less than 30 minutes. Once we have done that the paints then go through a whole host of other tests, such as accelerated weather testing, when they are sprayed with salt water to see how they fare."

Mr Jackson's boss, Anthony Kershaw, said he was doing one of the most important jobs in the company, which is based in Wrexham, North Wales.

He said: "We paint everything from metal containers to conservatories but the crux of our business is customers want paint to dry quickly. Keith's job is to formulate water-based paint that does this as quickly as possible. He puts the paint on specialist pieces of card and literally just times it. Every so often he'll touch his finger on each one and see if they are wet to the touch or dry. It sounds very boring but it is very important. If our paint didn't dry quickly we wouldn't have any customers."