Surely, great-grandmother Lottie Goodwin is Britain's oldest television extra. At the age of 98, she is appearing in ITV soap Emmerdale. She has been doing so since she was 60.

Mrs Goodwin gets up at 4.30am on a working day to be on set from 7.30am until 8pm. She will appear in three or more scenes a day — as a customer in the village cafe, or in The Woolpack pub nursing a coffee or tonic — without gin.

She says she tends to stick to indoor scenes, rather than going out on location. She tells People: "I love the job and I want to go on forever, until I am 100 if they still want me.

"At the moment I'm perfectly healthy and I can see no reason to stop. The cast is great and the atmosphere is really nice."

Originally from Prestwich, Mrs Goodwin has 13 great-grandchildren and has been a member of the choir at the Manchester Reform Synagogue for 56 years. She has appeared in hundreds of episodes of Emmerdale and was a Coronation Street extra for 30 years.

Widowed 14 years ago, she lives alone and shops and cooks for herself. And until a few years ago she drove herself to the TV studios in Leeds, 40 miles from her home in Altrincham.