Two years ago, Jack Saheid was working behind the counter of his post office in East Worthing when someone walked in and stuck a gun in his face.

It was to be one of three horrific robberies at the shop in just nine years but the incident hit the headlines because Mr Saheid fought back.

He noticed the hammer on the double-barrelled gun was not cocked, took a calculated risk and tussled with the robber, frightening him off.

Two years later, Mr Saheid looks back on the incident as a significant moment in his life, not just because of the publicity the event gave him but because it showed him he had the tenacity to become the first Muslim councillor on Worthing Borough Council.

Coun Saheid won the long-term Lib Dem Selden seat in Thursday's elections with 1,053 votes, providing the Tories with a crucial seat to level the balance of power in the borough.

He said: "It feels great. It's something I've wanted to do for the past couple of years. Previously I was offered it but I didn't have the time."

Being the first Tory in East Worthing for 12 years is far more significant to Coun Saheid than the fact that he is the first Muslim in the council's 113-year history.

He said: "Quite frankly, until I saw your headlines, I hadn't given that any thought at all. Whether Muslim, Christian or whatever, it doesn't make any difference to me.

"I'm just a councillor and the people elected me on the principles I stand for and I'm sure it was nothing to do with religion. But I am very proud to be the first ethnic councillor in Worthing.

"It just goes to show the people around here don't think about whether you are a foreigner or whether you were born here."

Coun Saheid, a father of four, is coy about his age but will admit to being born in Guyana, South America, when it was still known as British Guiana, well before its independence in 1966.

He said: "I had a wonderful life. My parents were not very rich but we were never short of anything. I was totally in agreement with the British being there and I was so sad when they got their independence. Frankly, since they got their independence, in my humble opinion, I don't think they've done very well.

"My parents had to pay for me to go to secondary school in the city. I was very lucky. I got my GCEs, ordinary and advanced level. So I had a very good education."

Coun Saheid came to England in 1961 and lived in Balham, London, for two years before moving to Thornton Heath, a small village in Surrey.

He became a British Rail employee and worked hard, quickly gaining promotions before buying a plot of land and building a house in 1974.

At the height of Margaret Thatcher's popularity in the early to mid-Eighties, Coun Saheid bought into the capitalist dream and went into business.

He bought a farm in Sompting in 1981 and added his post office in Lyndhurst Road in 1989 and then in 1995 he bought the residential home opposite, which is run by his wife, Lyla.

He describes his early business career as moderately successful and was inconspicuously seeking out a good living before the robberies in 2001.

As if his tussle with a gunman was not enough, Coun Saheid was robbed again just three days later and then, a week after that, he was kicked repeatedly by a knife-wielding raider.

He told The Argus at the time: "I thought I was a goner. He had this long knife in his hand and he was saying several times, 'Don't do anything or I'll kill you'. I was terrified.

"What gave rise to all this now was the robberies. They say that any publicity is good publicity. Well, I had some publicity which was all for bad reasons but I believe it is because of that that the local Conservative people asked me to be their councillor.

"The MP, Tim Loughton, came to see me and the deputy leader of the Conservative Party in the council came to see me soon after the robbery.

"Since then I got interested in politics."

Coun Saheid likes to think standing up to the robber with the gun marked him out as someone who would fight for justice.

"I would say that had a lot to do with it and people know how honest I am. I'm a very likeable person, if you know what I mean, and I do talk to everybody, whether old or young, with great respect.

"I'm a very tenacious person. If I see something is wrong and if authorities try to say to me or to anybody else you can't do this and you can't do that usually I never take no for an answer. I don't give up."

Now in power, he said: "My main aim is to clean up East Worthing. It has been neglected for about 12 years.

"I've been round the area and I've walked on every street and I've seen the state of the pavements. The roads are all so busy - they need calming down - and the motorists are not adhering to the 30mph limits."

With just a little prompting and no preparation, he reels off a long list problems he wants to address when he takes his seat on the council, including a proliferation of industrial developments, the smelly, noisy sewage works, traffic calming and many other environmental issues.

He said: "The borough needs greening up. We need more trees. We need nice trees along the road like Lyndhurst Road.

"The West Worthing and Durrington area seems very, very nice and it seems all the money is being spent in that area and none in East Worthing.

"We want to put a stop to that and we want to try and get more funds into East Worthing."

Another issue which exercises Coun Saheid is the presence of Amsterdam-style cannabis cafes in Worthing.

He said: "We think that's all wrong. It's not right for the community. Kids go in there and maybe start using soft drugs and experience has told us that someone who has started on small drugs, like sniffing glue and that sort of thing, usually ends up taking the serious drugs later on.

"We have to nip the problem at the start. We've got to get those cannabis cafes closed."