112- year-old whisky
Amazing Grace puts her long life down to a daily dram of Scotch
BRITAIN’S oldest person celebrated her 112th birthday yesterday – with a dram of the whisky she has drunk daily for the past six decades.
Grace Jones, known to her friends as “Amazing Grace”, puts her longevity down to having a nightcap of Famous Grouse for 62 years. The mother-of-one was born on September 16, 1906 – only five years after the death of Queen Victoria. She said: “I never miss my nightcap. Whisky is very good for you. I started having a nightly tot when I turned 50. “My doctor said, ‘Keep up with the whisky, it’s good for your heart’.” Daughter Deirdre McCarthy, 80, said: “She is extraordinary, glamorous, beautiful and intelligent. She is really alert. She loves her tot. It’s done my mother no end of good.” Grace, a Liverpudlian by birth and daughter of a vicar, wed engineer Leonard in 1933.
They were married for 53 years until he died in 1986, aged 79.
She said: “The best memory of my life was when I married my husband.
“He was a true gentleman, the son of a parson. We were always together and we loved one another.”
The former millinery factory owner lived in Sidmouth, Devon, before moving to Broadway, Worcs, in 2005.
Grace, who will celebrate today at a country manor house, added: “I feel full of spirit. We’ll be here next year as well.”
She became Britain’s oldest person in August following the death of Olive Boar, 113, of Felixstowe, Suffolk.
Britain’s longest-lived person was Charlotte Hughes, of North Yorks, who died at 115 years and 228 days in 1993.