A sprightly Nanna, who celebrated her 100th birthday on New Year’s Day, says the secret to a long life is to keep a sense of humour, take life as it comes and keep dancing to keep happy.

Cambs Times: 100 year Margery Gover from Wisbech. Picture: Steve Williams.100 year Margery Gover from Wisbech. Picture: Steve Williams. (Image: Archant)

Party girl Margery Gover has crammed thousands of amazing experiences into her century of life but both she and her family say her happiest days were when she worked as a radar operator during the Second World War and had a different boyfriend in every camp around the UK coastline.

“It may have been the war but there were dances, a sense of friendship you did not see before or since and different boyfriends every time we moved camp. What fun!” she said.

Fiercely independent Mrs Gover only stopped driving from her home in Wisbech to art classes in West Walton and Peterborough four years ago after her family felt it was a good idea to call it a day on driving at the age of 96.

Born on the Isle of Man, she was one of 11 children who later moved to England and then Canada to work as a nanny.

She was employed by the English ambassador to Egypt and then worked for a family in Malaysia until her father died and she moved back to the Isle of Man to be with her mother.

When war broke out she trained for the highly secretive job of radar operator for the RAF tracking the German bombers in different camps around the UK coastline.

After the war she worked as a house mother in a school at Frimley in Surrey where she met and married her teacher husband Arthur with whom she had two children, Andrea and Arthur, having her first child at the late age of 37.

While in her 80‘s, after the death of her husband in 1992, she spent the next decade travelling around the world with her niece to destinations including New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and Alaska.

She said: “I miss not driving, but still carry on with my art. I write in my diary most days and have done for as many years as I can remember.

“I’ve been lucky, I’m still in good health, still enjoy a daily drop of brandy when medication lets me and can still smile.”