'A lot of people don't like me because of my retentive mind," explains Buster Martin with a characteristic glare from beneath his furrowed brow. Neither the garlands of world's oldest marathon runner and Britain's oldest employee, nor the rival insinuation he is Britain's oldest fraudster, comes close to describing this unique force of nature.
Buster was hailed as a 101-year-old hero after completing the London Marathon in less than 10 hours this year. Then it transpired that Guinness World Records refused to recognise the achievement because he could not produce a birth certificate. It was reported they held evidence Buster told NHS staff he was born on September 1 1913, not 1906 as he reckons these days.
Months of claim and counter-claim have followed during an ongoing row with William Hill, the bookmakers, which, in the absence of a birth certificate, is refusing to pay Buster winnings of £13,300 on two bets taken out on him completing the marathon. Buster wants his winnings to go to charity and now has two new weapons at his disposal: the Home Office has issued him a passport - his first ever - with the 1906 date of birth, and his boss at Pimlico Plumbers in London is threatening to take the bookies to court.
But perhaps the biggest weapon in Buster's battle to prove he is 101 is that retentive mind. The most striking thing is not the wit of the remarkable stories he tells, but their precision. Buster has a mania for dates. He started work at the plumbers three months after his 97th birthday. He claims a working life of 96 years, starting work - in an orphanage - when he was five. He came to London "in 1916. I was 10". Actually, it was 10am when he arrived. "By 12 o'clock I was working." He's sipping a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale with chunks of orange, and explains that this habit was acquired during an army training exercise in Egypt. "It was my 21st birthday. 1927." He says he spent much of his life in the army. "I joined at 14. 1920. And got married."
His life, as he tells it, is extraordinary. He was born Pierre Jean Martin "up in the hills" of the Basque Country. "I don't speak French because I don't like them," he says. He claims his mother fell pregnant to a member of the affluent family she served, and mother and baby were smuggled to Britain to avoid the disgrace. His mother was put in a convent and baby Buster placed in an orphanage near Bodmin, Cornwall.
After coming to London, Buster worked, joined the army and got married in France (hence no marriage certificate). "How did I get to France to get married? No passport. I learned how to get there and avoid the authorities, and I could still go and do it now if I wanted to," he boasts. Can he explain how? "No, because otherwise they would be watching the route for Christ's sake! Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what's the matter with you?!" Buster lurches forwards with a stare. "You won't get secrets out of me," he growls.
He says he has fathered 17 children and, after years of "roofing, plastering, floor-laying, carpentry, pipe-laying," he toiled on Brixton market. This, at least, is indisputable: when he poses for photographs on a south London street, a builder in his 40s stops and stares. "Buster! Don't you remember me?" he asks. Buster glances up and replies sharply: "Cheeky little bugger you were." The builder recognises Buster from his days hauling stalls around. "Come back down to Brixton, to your roots," the builder smiles.
After retiring from Brixton to his sheltered accommodation, Buster says he sought employment at the nearby plumbers. Why? "Boredom, and me muscles are getting a bit stiff, so I thought if I keep on the go, that's it. And it's worked. Because I've always been on the go right from when I was a little kid."
His workplace is no ordinary plumbing firm. Plumbers to "the stars", Pimlico has a fleet of vans with personalised number plates ("DRAIN", "SINKS" etc), their reception is stuffed with signed photographs and letters of thanks from the likes of Michael Winner, and press cuttings that Gordon Brown could only dream about. "Flush with success," says a headline about Buster's boss, Charlie Mullins, a charming London-boy-made-good who looks like Paul Weller. Pimlico - and Buster - are represented by Max Clifford.
A Guinness World Records internal memo reportedly suggested that Buster was being exploited to promote Pimlico Plumbers. It is obvious that Mullins has a keen eye for publicity - while we talk he extracts a vow from Buster he will try and run the marathon next year too - but Buster is far too unruly to be "exploited" and gives as much backchat as a cheeky apprentice.
Asked if it is all a PR stunt, Mullins says: "When he joined four years ago, could we foresee he was going to be 100? Did anyone know he was going to run a marathon four years later?" The marathon came about when Buster attended a charity ball and was wound up by the compere, Chris Tarrant, about running 26.2 miles. Pimlico has certainly made the most of Buster's feats, but there is genuine affection between him and other staff.
Before 10.30am, Buster drinks coffee; afterwards, only ale. He doesn't touch water and didn't change this habit for the marathon, for which he claims he was fuelled by seven pints along the way. "I like me booze, I like me smoke, but it don't mean to say I abuse it. No way," he says. How much does he smoke and drink a day? "You can always guarantee that anybody who counts how many they smoke or drink a day are a liar. Me, I never count. When I've had enough, I go home. Sometimes I go home a bit later than normal," he cackles.
He began smoking aged seven and this, he argues, is where the confusion over NHS records purportedly showing him to be 94 comes from. "I celebrated me seventh birthday in a pub with a pint and a cigar," he says. He first went to the doctors in his 70s, he reckons, and was asked how long he had been smoking and drinking. "All my life - since 1913," he replied, referring to the year he says he took up smoking. The doctor "never actually asked me my date of birth. He was probably coming to that and he put 1913. I'm not worried about that, but when somebody asks me a question I've got a very retentive mind and I can always remember the words that were said." Besides, he casts doubt on the doctor's record-keeping with a delightful embellishment: he later saw him drinking "double-doubles" down the pub.
Is Buster an attention seeker who has finally found fame aged 94/101? Last year he helped golden oldies band The Zimmers to No 26 in the charts with their cover of My Generation, and performed "agony uncle" duties for FHM magazine.
The marathon, he insists, "wasn't about the attention" or "getting in the records. All I was interested in was the charity - the Rhys Daniels Trust." It provides accommodation for parents visiting their sick children in hospital. His run "made people happy. If you're happy and you make other people happy, what the hell? A lot of the time, I didn't run or walk - I danced."
I meet Buster's formidable stare and ask him firmly: are you only 94? "If I was 94, as they say, I could've gone in the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest person to drink a pint of beer, a nice strong beer, in a jug, and smoke a cigar," he says wheezily. "If I was born in 1913, I would've only been three days old when I had that beer and cigar."
The passport that Buster now has would be proof of age enough for most bars, but because he was born in France, surrounded by such mystery, his age may never be proved. "What would it matter, a little bit of age?" says Mullins at one point. "He's obviously no spring chicken."
However old he is and however he tells it, his life is a great story. And Buster is confident he has "got a long way to go before I'm brown bread". When he took some leave from the army he returned to the orphanage and visited his favourite nun, Bridget. "She was 102," he says. "She died in my arms. But she did turn round and say, 'You'll probably live for 22 years after 102.' I said, 'Yeah I'll nick another year and probably a few more.' She said, 'Knowing you, you will.'"
