THE key to a long, happy life? According to a Newton Abbot centenarian preparing to celebrate his 101st birthday, it’s decent food and consistent exercise.

Philip Coaker, pictured, was born in Plymouth on July 20, 1925.

‘I will be 101-years-old, I was bombed and shot out - but they missed me!’ Philip said.

‘I enlisted in the Royal Navy in 1941 and finished in 1965 as Chief Ordinance Artificer.

‘I went all over the world, I served in the New Zealand navy for three years aboard the HMS Bellona.

‘I have been to Japan, all over the Pacific, through the Panama Canal’, Philip added.

During the Second World War, when Philip was just 14-years-old, a lone German bomber dropped a ‘stock of eight’ over the area of Plymouth where he and his family were living.

‘It was October 9, 1940, I will never forget it, I dove under a bush in the front garden’, Philip said.

‘I was very lucky, but Jean Wigmore, it was her 15th birthday, and we were all supposed to be going to her party, a bomb fell on their shelter, killing her and her mother’.

‘I was there for the Blitz, when all the bombs fell’, Philip added

Philip moved to Newton Abbot in 1967, living in the town ever since, writing books about gunnery and torpedo procedure

The former Royal Navy man will celebrate his 101st birthday at Riccas in Newton Abbot.

‘What’s the key to a long life? Well, I don’t drink a lot, I used to have a tot of rum a day in the navy, but I never liked it’, Philip said.

‘Doing exercise, keep going, eat decent food, I really can't think of any particular thing’, Philip added.