LYDNEY man Claude Mickelson had a busy time of it last week celebrating his 100th birthday.

Among the friends celebrating with him were fellow members of the Tuesday afternoon tone and balance exercise group at Lydney Community Centre where they held a party this week.

Mr Mickelson said: “Although I live on my own I don’t get lonely because I have so many interests.”

He only gave up his driving licence a couple of months – because of the soaring cost of insurance.

He said: “Until June this year I drove a car.

“I only stopped driving because they put my insurance up 250 per cent.

“Last year I paid £600 and this year they wanted £1,500.”

Mr Mickelson was born on September 8 1923 in London.

“I got married 70 years ago this year and my wife and I couldn’t find anywhere to live in London that would suit our pocket so we came to live in a caravan in Cheltenham.

“Over the years we moved about a bit but eventually there was the chance of a job in the Forest so we came and I’ve lived in the Forest for 42 years.”

Mr Mickelson worked as an insurance agent for the Co-op for nearly 20 years and still meets friends from his working days more than 60 years later.

Mr Mickelson was a regular contributor to the local newspapers’ letters pages, particularly on political issues.

He said: “When I was a child I always wondered why some were poor and some were rich.

“My dad leant me a book called The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and that made me a socialist at the age of 14 and I’ve been a socialist for 86 years.

“Hopefully one day the world will be put to rights but its taking a long while.

“There’s too much of the people at the top looking after themselves and not the people underneath but I think there is much more good in the world than bad.”

Mr Mickelson, who stood for election to the Forest Council as a Trades Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts candidate in 2015, was the subject of a biography published by the Bristol Radical Readers Group.