AN OXFORDSHIRE man has appealed on national radio for help to find 'his guardian angel' who saved him from going blind at a train station.

David Kerrigan told Saturday Live on Radio 4 this morning how the 'mysterious' older man had told him he needed to get urgent eye surgery.

After going to hospital in Oxford the next day, doctors told him he needed an operation within days and could have lost his sight.

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Mr Kerrigan, a Baptist church minister in Didcot who was previously general director of the international aid group BMS World Mission, told the show how he story started when he was hosting a Christian conference in Birmingham in November 2016 and he started to realise there was something wrong with his eye.

He went on: "Towards lunchtime I began to notice one of my eyes was hurting and I was seeing a halo of rainbow-coloured light around the bulbs in the church.

"I didn't think much about it at first, just rubbed my eyes and tried to ignore it."

However when the problem continued in the afternoon, he said he slipped out of the conference and went to a local optician.

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"They said I needed to go to the eye hospital in Birmingham straight away just as a precaution.

"I did as they said, I was seen by a specialist - he seemed a little less concerned but he said I should go to my eye hospital A&E when I got back to Oxford the next day.

"I went to New Street station and I sat down on a bench next to an older man and called my wife.

"I explained to her what had happened and I said to her that the next few days are really quite busy and so, as I didn't think it was urgent, I said I'd go to the hospital in Oxford the following week.

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"But when I hung up the older man on the bench next to me tapped me on the arm and explained that he couldn't help overhearing my call. He was a retired opthalmolagist and from the symtoms I'd described he said I could lose my sight if I didn't get the problem seen to urgently."

At that moment, the pair's train arrived at the station so they both quickly got on.

It was only once the train had pulled out of the station that Mr Kerrigan decided he wanted to go and find the old man to say thank you properly.

However, despite searching the entire length of the train, he said he could not find the old man anywhere.

"I walked up and down the train and there was simply no sign of him.

"I went to the A&E at the eye hospital the next day and they said I had a blocked duct which had allowed pressure to build up behind my eye and I was fast-tracked for laser surgery two days later in Oxford.

"They said yes I could have lost the sight in that eye.

"I've often thought about that man on the bench at the station that he may well have saved my sight. The fact that I couldn't find him has remained a mystery.

"I do feel that he was probably my guardian angel that day and so I'd like to say thank you to my mysterious retired opthalmologist friend."