Oldest man’s birthday cancelled

THE world’s oldest man has said celebrations for his 112th birthday are a “dead loss” after they had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Bob Weighton, from Alton, Hampshire, took up the title of the oldest man in the world last month after the death of the previous holder, Chitetsu Watanabe of Japan, and celebrates his birthday today.

Last year, the former teacher and engineer celebrated with his many friends at his retirement flat but this year the supercentenarian – someone aged 110 and older – is under lockdown like the rest of the country.

He told the PA news agency: “Everything is cancelled, no visitors, no celebration. It’s a dead loss as far as celebration is concerned.”

Mr Weighton lived through the Spanish flu pandemic which swept around the globe in 1918, killing between 50 and 100 million people.

He said: “I only read about it in history books when I got older. Actually I wasn’t aware there was a Spanish flu around because none of my brothers and sisters or people I knew were affected.

“I am sure they were, but a child’s world is not an adult’s world, a child doesn’t read the newspapers and there was no radio in those days so you didn’t get news in the sense you get it thrown at you in all directions nowadays.”

Mr Weighton said that now the “world is in a bit of a mess” with coronavirus and it worries him because “nobody knows what is going to happen”.

He added that, unlike the two World Wars he lived through, the challenge of Covid-19 is the unknown elements of battling the virus.

He said:“We knew exactly what we had to do. That was an objective that you could possibly reach, but nobody knows how we are going to defeat the virus.”