Joe, a member of Batley Cricket and Bowling Club, celebrated his 100th birthday with 80 friends and family who came to his home, perhaps in part to double check that he really is 100.

But the telegram from the Queen proves it though Joe looks and walks like a man 30 years younger, something he puts down to good genes, a good diet and exercise.

Joe was born in 1908 in the house his grandfather built off Church Lane, West Ardsley.

Following his marriage to Dorothy Atkinson in 1937 they moved to a house on Sunnyside Avenue which they bought for £375 and furnished for £54.

They stayed there for 11 years and their children Roger and June were born there but following the death of Joe's father Walter in 1948 they moved back to Church Lane for good.

"We had no electricity and just a couple of gas lights in the downstairs rooms while in the kitchen we had a candle on the sink and when we went to bed we would have to take a candle upstairs – the children thought it was brilliant.

"But the Sunnyside house was a modern, up to date house and Dorothy didn't want to move from a house with the mod cons to this one with a stone sink in the kitchen and no bathroom."

Over the years however Joe modernised the house and Dorothy made the garden her own, winning several trophies in the Leeds in Bloom competition.

Joe worked for 50 years at the Beacon Works as a skilled tool maker after being taken on as an apprentice at 14.
He said: "I left school at 13 and got one or two jobs I didn't like, mostly because I couldn't play cricket on a Saturday afternoon and then I got a job at the Beacon works"

After he had been there just three months the foreman told his father he was wasted on menial jobs and put him into the tool shop.

"I never fancied being a foreman.
"I ran the tool room once or twice when the foreman was away but I wanted to make things, I never wanted to be ordering people about," he said.

But throughout his life sport has been his preoccupation.
As a boy he was a talented cricket and snooker player and later he, along with Dorothy, became a founder member of the Tingley Tennis Club and he also had a hand in setting up a cricket club at Woodkirk in 1946.

"When the war was over I went with a pal to watch Hanging Heaton play the West Indies when a ball came across the boundary and I picked it up and said to may pal, 'we shall have to play cricket', so we started the club up again and won the league that first year," Joe said.

When Joe retired in 1973 he thought he would try snooker again.

It had been 29 years since he last handled a cue but the knack was still there.
"I heard a man say if it had been 29 years since I played snooker I must have been good and if I was this good at snooker I would be good on the green."

Joe tried crown green bowling for about three quarters of an hour and had so much fun he went back on the Monday for another hour.

"The secretary came up to me and asked me if I would play for them on Wednesday. I said, 'what at?' and he said, 'bowls'.
"I said, ' you must be joking' and he said, 'believe you me, it'll be all right', so the third time I walked on to a green I was playing in the Heavy Woollen League and I won 21-10.
"I have never looked back. I have been playing for the Batley Cricket and Bowling Club for 35 years."
In 2004 he was made an honorary member.

Joe added: "As I got older I couldn't play tennis and when I started bowling I realised it was a good healthy game, with all that walking."

He also puts his good health down to fresh fruit and vegetables from his garden, free range eggs from his hens and his son, Roger's good cooking.

In the course of a busy life he also bred exotic birds and was a member of the Woodkirk church choir for 50 years.
Sadly Dorothy died in 2006 following many years of poor health.

He has two children, Roger and June Dobson, six grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.