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If you too have been wondering what it’s going to be like to get really old then you might be interested to hear about a few old people who are making the most of their latter years. Oh, and he’s 70 this year by the way.
As most of you probably know, since her last birthday was pretty well publicised with all the fanfares and marches and stuff, the Queen is Britain’s oldest serving monarch. At the ripe old age of 81 she’s also the only monarch to have a Prime Minister serve under her who was born during her reign.
Now being Queen is a little out of reach for most of us but if you’re looking for a challenge in your old age you might want to bear in mind the achievement of Yuichiro Miura. The Japanese skier and headmaster is the oldest person to have climbed Everest, reaching the summit when he was 70.
If you fancy collecting some silverware then there’s plenty of time to get in training for the Olympics, as the oldest gold medal winner, Oscar Swahn, was 64 years 257 days old when he won a shooting gold medal in 1912. Not quite so advanced in years, but before he introduced the world to the wonders of low fat grilling, George Foreman won a world heavyweight title aged 45.
If all that sounds a little too much effort then keep crossing your fingers and buying those lottery tickets, as the oldest person to ever win it was 85 year old Reginald Smith from Staffordshire, who collected a tidy £2.3 million.
I thought I might finish on an oldest animal, expecting a relatively cute tortoise or some sort of weird wormy thing. Sadly my hopes have been thwarted - it’s a clam. Now 405 years was admittedly more than I was looking for but a clam is slightly lacking in journalistic sex appeal: it’s not even a giant clam. Honestly.
So after the clam disappointment the best I can do to lift everyone’s spirits is the world’s oldest acrobat. At 98 Konrad Thurano is the world’s oldest circus and variety performer. Look at him holding his elderly self up with his fingers.
On the note of little known facts about politicians, how many people also knew that our prime minister Gordon Brown is blind in one eye?
And that he could lose the sight in the other eye for the same reason when doing vigorous exercise
Does that explain a few things about the guy's waistband measurements?
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