THE world's oldest person, Mrs "Jeanne Calment", celebrates her 121st birthday in a nursing home in Arles, southern France, today, alter launching a pop record about her life this week.
Born in 1875, as Charles Stewart Parnell was rising to power in the Home Rule movement and five years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Mrs Calment was already at retirement age when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, although she never worked. She has lived all her life in Arles, where she met the painter Vincent Van Gogh when she was a young girl. On Monday she was in the nearby seaside village of Saintes Mariesde la Mer, to launch a four track compact disc, Mistress of Time, in which she recounts her life to a six year old girl to a backing of funk rap, techno and dance music. The proceeds will go towards buying a minibus for fellow residents of the retirement home where she lives in Arles.
The tiny woman, blind, almost deaf and confined to a wheelchair, said she was "happy" to have made the disc. An interview with her was also recently launched on the InterNet to celebrate her latest birthday.
Mrs Calment who was married for 54 years and has been widowed for 50, became the world's oldest person with documentary proof who ever lived last October, when she overtook a Japanese man, Mr Schigechiyo Izumi, who died in 1986 at the age of 120 and 237 days. She already features in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest living person.
Asked by Le Figaro newspaper this week what was the secret of her longevity, Mrs Calmant replied "Destiny wanted me to make it to this point. Life is a mystery. You have to come and live in Arles to become a centenarian for the Rhone air, the olive oil in cooking."
She married her cousin, a cloth merchant, at 21, and the couple had one child. Mrs Calment was widowed in 1942, when her husband died at 74, but together they enjoyed the life of the Belle Epoque. "We often used to take the train to Paris on Friday nights and return on Mondays," she told Le Figaro. "Like me, my husband loved the theatre, concerts and fine revues. He spoilt me a great deal, especially at the beginning.