SPRIGHTLY Betty Hughes was the life and soul of the party at the Broadbent Luncheon Club where she celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday (Wednesday, June 19).

Failsworth born and bred Betty is a regular attendee at the over 60s club in Lord Lane and still makes greetings cards for fellow members.

It seems incredible to contemplate that the then Betty Seaman, one of six children born to coalminer Tom and Alice in the long-gone Fir Street, was 20 years old at the outbreak of the Second World War.

Aged 21, she and husband Joseph, married at St John’s Church in Failsworth in 1941, but two months after their nuptials, he was off to fight in North Africa, Italy, Sicily and the Middle East in the Scottish Regiment.

“I didn’t see him for four years,” she told The Oldham Times. “When he came home, it was very emotional. I’ve still got a big suitcase full of his letters.

“He arrived back from the war in the middle of the night, and was sitting on his kitbag outside the house waiting until morning because he didn’t want to wake us up.

“When a local bobby approached him and asked him what he was doing, the policeman knocked us up. It was wonderful to see him, again.”

Betty and Joseph, who later worked as a travelling salesman, were thereafter married for 65 years until the death of her husband, aged 85 in 2005.

“My married years were wonderful,” said Betty, who attends the Church of the Holy Family in Lord Lane, twice a week.

Betty, who has survived her now departed four brothers and sister, has no magic formula for longevity.

“I have never smoked,” he added. “But I am not teetotal - I enjoy the odd glass of wine.”

Betty worked at the electrical engineering company in Oldham, Ferranti, for 34 years and later at Littlewoods.