EATING lots of vegetables and staying mobile is 100-year-old Burma Star veteran Jack Osborne’s secret to living a long life.

The well-known character, who celebrated his birthday yesterday, also said he agreed with Henry Allingham, the world’s oldest man who died this week aged 113, who put it down to ‘cigarettes, whisky and wild women’.

“I don’t smoke and I don’t drink whisky, so I am not left with much,” he said. “I think largely it’s through living a happy life, doing good deeds and thinking noble thoughts, but nobody believes that.”

Mr Osborne, who has lived in Salisbury for three years, was born in Smethwick and brought up alongside his two sisters, Kathleen and Christine.

His memories of the First World War are of rationing and telegrams.

Mr Osborne was called up to serve in the Second World War in 1941, and was commissioned in the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry before joining the Royal West African Frontier Force, where he trained for the second Chindit expedition.

Last year, he travelled back to Burma (now Myanmar) for a Chindit pilgrimage, and visited many of the places he saw when he was serving there, including the Broadway airstrip.

He married Sylvia when he was 42 and they had two sons – John, who lives in Salisbury, and Timothy, who lives in Hertfordshire. He also has an 11-year-old grandson, Thomas.

Nowadays, Mr Osborne is kept busy as a member of many different groups, including the University of the Third Age, the Macular Disease Society, the Retired Officers’ Club, the Royal British Legion, the Burma Star Association (BSA), the Unitarian Fellowship and the congregation of St Paul’s Church.

He has already celebrated his birthday with the BSA and enjoyed a party with Pembroke House residents last night.

He is also due to travel up to Shropshire for another one next Friday, where he will be reunited with a 100-year-old cousin he hasn’t seen since 1927.