DORIS Johnson from Llanhilleth is not your average 100-year-old.

As she celebrates the incredible milestone today, Ms Johnson is already looking forward to her next bingo session, which she travels to by foot several times a week.

She puts her youthfulness down to her love of ballroom dancing and playing bingo regularly. Her 70-year-old son, Mike Johnson, said: “My mother still goes to the bingo six nights a week and walks around 300 yards there and back – She is an amazing woman.”

Born Doris Leadbeater on November 23, 1913, in Blackwood, she was the seventh of 16 children. Her only other living sibling is her 91-year-old sister, Betty Collins, who lives in Oswestry.

Aged 14, she was shipped off to service in London where she worked in a hotel. She also worked at hotels in Weston-super-mare and Brecon, before working at a bakery in Rogerstone and a lamp shade factory in Crumlin until she retired when she was in her 60s.

In 1933, aged 19, Ms Johnson attended a weekend dance at the Miners’ Institute in Crumlin. It is here where she met her future husband, Roy Johnson. They married on July 20, 1935, and went on to live together in a house in Llanhilleth.

Mr Johnson added: “Dad picked her to dance because he fancied her but she would not give him her name unless he agreed to go for a walk the next day. And that, as they say, was that.”

Her husband died in February 1991, aged 79, but Ms Johnson stayed at their home in Llanhilleth until three years ago. She now lives at Grace Pope Court where she remains “self-sufficient”.

Her son added: “She puts her youth down to a drop of Harveys Bristol Cream every night and playing bingo! She danced until she was 90.

“We are very close and she comes out with me and my wife Diane every Sunday for lunch to the Three Horseshoes in Newbridge. I’m very proud of her.”

Ms Johnson, of Grace Pope Court, was given a birthday presentation by Tai Calon Community Housing on Thursday, surrounded by friends and family, to mark her 100th birthday.