A WHISKY every evening is the key to long life, according to Britain’s oldest living Olympian.

Despite his athletic feats, Bill Lucas marked his 100th birthday by revealing it was the daily tipple and a glass of wine or sherry before lunch that had kept him going strong.

Mr Lucas, who is also the country’s oldest living Bomber Command pilot, competed in the 5,000 metres event at the 1948 Olympic Games at Wembley.

The decorated pilot, who lives in Cowfold, West Sussex, blamed his call-up to the RAF during the Second World War for his failure to reach the final.

He said: “I spent six years in the service. I had done very little training and I’d missed 1940 and 1944, where I might well have got a medal or something like that in those two years, but Hitler deprived me of those so I went and bombed them instead.”

Mr Lucas spoke about his remarkable life at a birthday party organised by his athletics club, Belgrave Harriers, of which he has been a member for 81 years.

The club presented him with a 172-year-old bottle of Madeira at the party to celebrate the occasion.

He trained for the Games while working full-time in insurance and living off rations in the post-war era, in what he said was a stark contrast to modern athletics.

Mr Lucas added: “They are looked after hook, line and sinker – I think, too much but there you are.

“They produce results and that is all they are required to do.”