World's oldest living man shares 112th birthday with UK's oldest woman

Bob Weighton, the oldest man on the planet celebrated his 112th birthday on 29 March – on the same day the UK’s oldest woman Joan Hocquard turned 112-years-old.

Bob Weighton celebrated his impressive age at his apartment run by Brendoncare in Alton, Hampshire, while Joan Hocquard celebrated in Poole, Dorset.

Joan Hocquard became Britain’s oldest woman after the death of 111-year-old Hilda Clulow on Christmas Eve last year.

Born in 1908, Joan and Bob have lived through the global pandemic that was 1918’s ‘Spanish’ flu which infected a quarter of the planet’s population.

They have also lived through cholera, smallpox and two world wars.

Staggering statistics

And the 112-year-olds have more staggering statistics surrounding them.

Bob and Joan have lived through the reigns of five British monarchs, 22 UK prime ministers and 21 US presidents. They celebrated their 35th birthday on the same day the former British Prime Minister John Major was born.

Joan Hocquard, who spent her formative years in Africa, celebrated her 112th birthday with her 92-year-old partner Ken. Bob Weighton is a widower and has 25 great-grandchildren living across Europe.

Only care workers were able to see Bob on his birthday and Joan was also in quarantine with her husband because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite a global pandemic cancelling their birthday party plans with family, the pair took delight in the birthday cakes made in their honour.

Mr Weighton is no stranger to sharing his birthday and the celebrity that comes with it.

He has celebrated previous birthdays with Britain’s former joint oldest man Alf Smith from St Madoes in Perthshire, Scotland who died at the age of 111 last August.

Though they had never met each other, the two birthday boys exchanged birthday cards every year asking about each other’s health and wishing each other well.

He has however stopping receiving birthday cards from the Queen because he no longer wants them. He has turned down her annual greetings because he is not happy that it costs the taxpayer money to send them.

’Far better to make a friend out of a possible enemy’

In an interview with carehome.co.uk after his 110th birthday, Bob Weighton shared some wise words for younger people.

The man born in Hull said: “I don’t think you should cease to be what you were born into. I’m just as proud now of being a Yorkshire man as I ever was.

“I think my horizons have expanded to an extent which I hadn’t dreamed they would do. Although I did travel, the most valuable experience is not the actual travel.

“It’s living in a community which is not the same as what you were born into. To include in my friendships people of totally different nationality, language and social structures.

“Although you recognise differences…in the end I found it possible to have the same sort of human relationships with anybody else".

During the second world war, Bob Weighton worked with the British Government, inspecting aircraft engines for delivery to the RAF. He translated enemy broadcasts and prepared programmes in Japanese to be broadcast to Japan under the title of the ‘Voice of Britain’.

He said: “You can’t live in a world where everything is perfect from your point of view and destructive from somebody else’s.

“It’s far better to make a friend out of a possible enemy, then it is to make an enemy out of a possible friend”.

Though Joan and Bob have never met, Mr Weighton said: "I don't know Joan but I would like to send her my best wishes for her birthday."

Referring to his long life and the events he has lived through, he says: “I’ve learned to take things as they come and trust that all will be well and it usually has been”.

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