Birthdays are old hat to 103-year-old Stanley!

WORKAHOLIC . . . Stanley Lewis who is 103 tomorrow

Stanley Lewis will be too busy organising his 2009 exhibition in London to bother about celebrating his birthday . . . his 103rd!

Stanley, of Lane Head, Greenfield, has told his family he wants to be left alone on his birthday tomorrow to get on with what he loves best . . . art.

Still very much independent, Stanley puts his longevity down to cigars, whisky and Michaelangelo.

His daughter, Jenny Heywood (59) said: “My father’s birthday will be a very quiet do. He is the oldest man in Oldham, so his GP has told me, but even at his grand old age he is so busy organising his exhibition which will feature 60 of his paintings from the 1920s and 1930s at Paul Liss Fine Arts Society in Bond Street, London.

“He was an artist in the Second World War and has over 300 illustrations which he is pasting into a book for publication.”

Stanley illustrated a series written by his late wife Min, which appeared in the South Wales Evening Post in the 1940s and 1950s.

In 2006, he brought together the material to reproduce it in a book called “Adventures in Animal Town.”

Stanley, who has three children, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, opens the London exhibition in summer.