131 year-old World's oldest man discovered living with wife 69 years younger than him'

Civil servants in Brazil say they have discovered the world’s oldest man - a 131-year-old dad-of-three living with a wife 69 years his junior. The Guinness Book of Records recognises 112-year-old Yasutaro Koide from Japan as the oldest person alive. And Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died aged 122 in 1997, holds the record for the world’s longest living person.

Social security workers in Acre in the north of Brazil today caused furore by publishing photos of OAP Joao Coelho de Souza alongside a birth certificate dated March 10 1884.

The document showed he was born in the city of Meruoca in Ceara nearly 2,000 miles to the east of Acre.

A colleague of a civil servant who made a routine visit to confirm he was still alive and therefore eligible for his pension posted the information on his Facebook .

He called on the state government to confirm the find and register Joao for the Guinness Book of Records.

Brazilian papers today said he lived with a wife aged 62 and a granddaughter aged 16 in a village called Estirao do Alcantara, a 30-minute boat ride away from Sena Madureira, a municipality in the centre of the state of Acre.

 

His daughter Cirlene Souza, aged only 30 which would mean if his age was right that Joao was 101 when she was born, told one paper: “He has days when he is lucid but others when he doesn’t even recognise his children.

“He was very small when he came to work in Acre extracting rubber.

“He has been with my mum for more than 40 years and depends on others for everything.”