THE book opens with his nightly drive away from the urban sprawl of Newcastle and out into the wilds of Tynedale.

By 6.45pm, give or take a few minutes, he is walking up the track to Kielder Observatory, the very embodiment of the dream that persuaded this former bricklayer to put down his trowel to pursue a celestial ambition.

“I’m buoyed up by the latest weather forecast, suggesting it will be a clear evening,” he writes. “The air is crisp and I take another big lungful as I habitually raise my head skywards.

“Ursa Major, or the Great Bear, gently growls at me, shining brightest. Radiating out from within the constellation is an asterism in the familiar shape of a cooking utensil.

“Her body and tail constitute the ‘pan and its handle’, seven stars that resemble a dot-to-dot of what you would find in your kitchen cooker.

“I can see the bright blue hue of Alcor and Mizar, two distant energetic balls of hot rarefied gas that form a part of the handle of the ‘pan’, held together by gravity.

“My eye then finds two stars in the head of the pan, Merak and Dubhe. They are important: they point the way to Polaris, the North Star, the position in the sky that represents our planet’s rotational axis.

“As you might guess, it also points directly north, so if you get lost at night, knowing its position could save your life.”

Gary Fildes wasn’t your usual brickie. And he isn’t your usual astronomer either. For not content with founding what is one of the best public observatories in the world, he is now leading a multi-million pound fund-raising campaign to turn it into the biggest.

All of which means Gary had a wonderful tale to tell when he first sat down to write An Astronomer’s Tale: A Life Under the Stars .

Lyrical – poetic, even – from page one, it is an autobiography that teaches as it goes. Cut into the narrative are chapters that together form a month-by-month guide to the night skies. His aim? To help readers reconnect with nature and to marvel at the universe, just as he does.

But his story begins at a time when he lived another life entirely. By day he worked on building sites – he was a brickie for nigh on 25 years – but by night, his activities were rather more anti-social. With unflinching honesty, he describes the gang culture in his native Sunderland he was a willing part of, in the early years at least.

“The fighting began around the time I left school,” he says. “It was the early 1980s and the Government’s plan to rid the area of heavy industry was in full swing.

“I was unemployed and becoming depressed and frustrated. I wasn’t the only one – anger hung over the town.

“We needed to earn a living. We wanted to vent. Someone, somehow, had to pay.”

Football was often the catalyst for the fights that followed; he describes one confrontation with Chelsea fans after Sunderland trounced them 2-0. But the father-of-four paid the price when he got home, with six stitches in his head and still covered in blood.

He said: “I am addicted to the thrill and my feelings of comradeship and belonging with the gang are real. But I know I am being selfish and destructive. I am sabotaging my family and I have to stop.

“My wife Maureen is crying and horrified when I get home. She rings out some home truths about responsibility and what it means to be a father and a husband. She is dead right and I feel shame. I have to change.”

An Astronomer’s Tale is available in bookshops now.