My secret to looking good at 100? Vitamins and whisky, says ladies' man Frank (From Bournemouth Echo)

My secret to looking good at 100? Vitamins and whisky, says ladies' man Frank

4:00pm Tuesday 12th March 2013 in News By Derek Johnson

MULTI-vitamins and a whisky a day have ensured that Frank Lambert was on top form for his 100th birthday.

“He’s like an 80-year-old,” said daughter Mary, among 50 family and friends who gathered at Avon Lee Lodge care home at Burton, Christchurch to help the centenarian celebrate.

“He loves the nursing home. He’s made friends with quite a few ladies,” said son John. “He’s still a bit of a ladies’ man.”

Liverpool born and bred and a keen follower of Liverpool FC, he was delighted to receive gifts from the club, including a card signed by the players, alongside a card from the Queen.

Frank started work at the age of 14 for the Co-op, where he stayed until he was called up during the Second World War.

An anti-aircraft gunner, he was involved in the Normandy landings and fought his way through France and Belgium into Germany.

Demobbed at the end of the war, he suffered damaged hearing from the pounding of the guns.

After the war he met Dorothy at Gillingham and they married and lived in Liverpool until the Dorset lass found it too cold and they moved to Bournemouth. Frank joined the Post Office, working as a postman until he retired.

Dorothy died in 1996 at the age of 85, and for more than a year he lived with John in France before returning to the Bournemouth area.

“He missed his friends,” said John. Formerly a keen bowls player, sport has been the ‘great love of his life’ and he enjoys watching football on TV, extending his patronage to his home city’s other team of Everton.

He has one grandchild and two great-grandchildren and comes from a long-lived family with his sisters living well into their 90s. “He’s got good genes on his side,” said Mary.