‘Dancing? I do it for a laugh,’ says Nasib, 100

And the fact that her party took place some months after Nasib Kaur’s birthday is testament to the active life she still leads.

Mrs Kaur celebrated with friends at the Milan elderly Asian women’s group in Old Town on Wednesday, seven months after her birthday - having travelled to Pakistan to meet her children and take part in religious celebrations.

The Old Town resident regularly catches the bus to Wolverhampton and Coventry and has an entrepreneurial streak, calling at friends’ houses with her trolley of cardigans and Indian clothing.

She puts her longevity down to her vegetarian diet - and staying cheerful, saying: “Be happy. Life’s too short.”

Born in the village of Jamsher in the Punjab. She moved to what later became Pakistan in the 1940s and had three children before returning to India before the partition in 1947.

She came to the UK in 1968, two years after her husband Jaggar Singh - who himself lived to 104 - and worked in the Warwick Square Hotel in Kenilworth Road, washing dishes and preparing vegetables.

Her friend Gurmit Sansoy said: “She has picked herself up from being very poor. She works very hard.”

Mrs Kaur, who came to her party on the bus, still joins in dancing at the group.

She added: “Sometimes I do it - they make me. I do it just for a laugh.”