Con, 100, happy to lose bet with his surgeon

A SPORTSMAN all his life, Con McLaughlin, 100, was happy to lose a bet with his doctor when he feared he would not see his next birthday.

He now owes his surgeon €10 and is delighted he is around to pay up.

“I owe the man €10 because we each bet €5 ... He is not stuck for a few bob though,” the retired schoolteacher quipped yesterday from his home in Drogheda, Co Louth.

His surgeon was so confident that Con would see his 100th birthday, despite needing major surgery for bowel cancer, that he placed a tongue-in-cheek bet with him.

Con is delighted it was one wager he did not win.

Con’s family said the doctor was doing this “to prove to people that you shouldn’t write somebody off because of their age”.

Con was 99 when he had the surgery in March and he spent five months in St James Hospital. However, he was discharged in time to celebrate his centenary on August 28 last.

Yesterday, he attributed his hardiness and good health to “love, it is the mainstay of anybody’s life”.

However, he also admitted he has a tipple of Jameson whiskey “before dinner each day”.

Originally from Malin Head in Co Donegal, Con and his wife, Bridie, moved to Drogheda in 1957 and he still lives in the family home where they reared their children.

He has seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren and loves to keep active.

He played two 18-hole rounds of golf a day until five years ago and still does a bit of gardening.

He says the secret to a long and healthy life is “genes, my mother lived to 93, my father to 92 and I lived a physical life. I never opened a gate if I could jump over it.”

He says he has “a very good appetite, I eat peas, spuds, broad beans, tomatoes, courgettes and the lot of them I grew and I did all the digging with a spade.”

Asked for his advice for people living through these tough economic times he said, “never lose hope”.

Picture: Ciara Wilkinson