A 113-YEAR-OLD woman in Bury was reported to have been officially verified as the world's oldest living person today.

But researchers were understood to be still checking whether two other women in Japan and the USA were older.

Amy Isabel Hulmes, who gave up smoking 30 years ago in case it damaged her health, was reported to have been declared the oldest person on the planet by the Guinness World Records organisation.

When asked about the secret of her longevity, Mrs Hulme said she enjoyed a daily tipple of Guinness.

One of the previous record holders, Marie Bremont of France, died aged 115 in 1997.

Amy's daughter, Mrs Barbara Murray, contacted Guinness to have her mother recognised as Britain's oldest woman. To support the claim, Mrs Murray, aged 73, sent Guinness Amy's birth and marriage certificates and an insurance policy, but she could not trace her mother's baptism record.

She replaced Nellie Bradley in the UK record listings. She was born nearly two years after Amy's birth on October 5, 1887.