Britain's Oldest Couple

PHYLISS Tarrant has been there and done that, thank you. Serious history has gone before this little old lady. But at 100 years old, she’s a spring chicken compared to her old man.

Because hubby, Ralph, is 105.

And that makes the Tarrants - with a combined age of 205 -Britain's oldest married couple.

I popped round to their Broomhill flat for a coffee and a chinwag.

“You can’t keep me long, I’ve got lunch club at 12,” she warned.

“Ralph’s gone to Tesco, he’ll be back soon.”

Their spotless lounge is adorned with family photographs. On the sofa, a tidy stack of crossword magazines. On the windowsill, a bouquet of flowers to mark Phyliss’s birthday. And on the mantelpiece, a bottle of Bells.

She spots me staring.

“We have a tot of whisky every night,” she laughs. “I sit in bed and Ralph brings them through on a tray. We have them with hot water, it helps us to sleep.”

Phyliss was born on Slinn Street, Crookes, and worked as a typist at Hadfield's steelworks for 30 years.A life-long Wednesday fan, she loves opera and is a member of St Mark's Church in Broomhill where she worships every Sunday.

The couple, who wed at Crookes Church in 1933, have two daughters - Brenda, 71, and Christine, 61 - as well as five grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

How this pair met is as sweet as anything.

“We all hung around Crookes post office,” she recalls. “He had his pals and I had mine."

“My parents were very strict and I had to be in for 10 o’clock. And all at once, the church bells struck ten and I had to run all the way home. Run, run, run. Ralph thought it was hilarious”.

Speak of the devil.

Her other half bursts into the living room with armfuls of shopping and a boyish grin.

“Sorry I’m late, duck,” he says, plonking himself into an armchair.

“Now,” he sighs. “Fire away.”

Ralph, originally from Nottingham, moved to Sheffield with his family when he was seven.He left school aged 13 and started work as an office boy at the George Turton Platts steelworks. He moved round most of the departments before he left to join Refuge Assurance, where he remained until he retired in 1968.During the war he served in RAF 201 Coastal Command, where he was a corporal based in Inverness.

The couple like it in Broomhill.

“I call this the West End,” says Phyllis. “It’s very green. If you look out of the window, you can see a long way. I like it when you can see a long way.”

But she rarely gets out anymore, and says Sheffield is not what it used to be.

“I went on a coach trip last year. The coach passed where all the steelworks used to be. I looked down and there was nothing. The ground was flat. I cried and cried.”

“Lighten up,” Ralph interrupts. “Have you seen the muriel I painted?”

“It’s mural Ralph, not muriel.” Phylis tuts.

The couple put their long lives down to “a good diet, exercise, avoiding cigarettes - and a tot of whisky each night.”And the secret to their 75-year marriage?

“She behaves herself,” chuckles Ralph.

“Don’t write that,” she says.

Many happy returns.