Chain smoking whisky drinker celebrates 100th birthday

A lifelong chain-smoker has celebrated reaching his 100th birthday – despite puffing his way through nearly 300,000 fags.

Hard-living Arthur Langran has smoked at least 10 cigarettes a day since the age of 20.

The father-of-two also religiously drinks a dram of Macallan single malt Scotch whiskey every evening before getting into bed.

Arthur, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, even celebrated his 100th birthday drinking pints of ale at his local pub with friends and family.

He said: ”I always say the secret is doing things you’re not told to do.

”I have been smoking since I was 20 and I still enjoy it, and a pipe. I have a whiskey every night.

”I also like reading the papers and doing crosswords with the help of my son John.”

Arthur’s eldest son Peter, 62, revealed that doctors have told his father to keep smoking.

He added: ”Dad has smoked roll-ups since he was 20-years-old and more recently used a pipe.

”These days he rolls himself five or six a day but used to smoke more and has his pipe once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

”He has a small single malt whiskey every night. He’s been doing that ever since he was elderly.

”He’s had a tough old life. He was an orphan, had a terrible time living and working in Canada and was blown up by a grenade in the war.

”The doctor has said its not worth getting him to give up the cigarettes.

”He’s still in good health despite the smoking and still mobile and gets up stairs whenever he wants.”

Arthur was born an orphan and sent to Canada by National Children Homes when he was just 14 years old to work as a farmhand.

He returned to Britain in 1940 when he was 30-years-old so he could join the Army and fight Hitler and the Nazis in the Second World War.

It was also the same year that he smoked his first cigarette, shortly after signing up with the Suffolk Regiment.

After smoking ten cigarettes a day since then, Arthur’s fag tally adds up to 292,000 over eight decades.

He fought in Burma during the Second World War and spent 25 years in the armed forces reaching the rank Warrant Officer class two.

During the war he was hit by a grenade and 80 years later chunks of lead shrapnel from the explosive remain underneath his skin.

When he left he army he worked as a storeman at the army barracks in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, before joining the civil service.

For many years Arthur celebrated his birthday on September 8 but he discovered it was September 6 after applying for a birth certificate upon leaving the army.

He said: ”All those years I’d been having it on the eighth , then when they sent my certificate back it was on the sixth.”

Arthur celebrated his birthday at The George pub, in Hintlesham, Suffolk, which is run by his youngest son John, 57.

He was married to Ivy who sadly died in 2000.