Thousands celebrate Edna's 101st after card appeal

A 101-year-old woman has celebrated her centenary a year late with help from Billy Connolly, the Queen and 30,000 well-wishers from around the world.

Edna Clayton, who moved to Hector House care home in Glasgow last August, spent her 100th birthday in Covid lockdown.

Her card from the Queen was not sent because of an administrative mistake.

After staff at the care home appealed for help, more than 30,000 birthday cards arrived and Billy Connolly sent a personal message via BBC Scotland.

In a video from his home in Florida, he told his delighted 101-year-old fan: "I'd like to wish you a happy birthday. A hundred and one - that's spectacular. Well done!

"The people at the BBC in Scotland got in touch with me and told me about you, and that you pray for me every day. Thank you very much, I really need that.

"It's nice of you to think of me. I hope you're having a great time and you don't get too drunk and don't stay out too late dancing tonight."

Edna received about 30,000 cards from around the world

After watching the clip on a tablet, Edna said she and the Glaswegian comedian, who has retired from live performances after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, were "in the same boat", but he "looks younger every day".

She told BBC Scotland she had no secret to looking so good at 101, but she got her hair cut short every week to "keep up to date, as far as I can".

"It's easier kept - long hair is no use to me," Edna joked, and she said a "big thank you" to all the "beautiful, gorgeous people" who sent her a card.

"I don't go in for show. I'm just an ordinary Glaswegian trying to live day-by-day," she said.

"I just took each day as it came and I was busy during my whole life with my son."

Edna's other birthday celebrations include a trip in a party bus, an afternoon tea and a visit from her son, who was unable to see her on her 100th birthday.

Care home manager Angela Todd's appeal for cards went worldwide

Manager Angela Todd initially asked people in the community in Battlefield to send Edna birthday cards to the home in Shawlands.

"Well, that went worldwide," Angela told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme. "We're sitting here with at least 30,000 cards."

Staff have been going into the home on their days off and working into the night to help open the post.

"We just felt that people went to the effort to do this," Angela said. "We felt that every individual card is worth opening and reading."

She said Edna wasn't a woman for a big party, and although her visiting carers took cake to her home last year, Edna had been disappointed to not see her son because of lockdown or get the card from the Queen, as is customary for those reaching 100.

Angela said there had been a "glitch" in the system at the DWP, which usually triggers the process for the royal missive, partly because Edna was born Edina.

Edna was a well-known figure around the Battlefield area of Glasgow and dedicated her life to her son James, who has Down's Syndrome and lives in sheltered accommodation.

"He was her life, she brought him up herself for more than 40 years," Angela said. "He is 56 or 57 now. She has no other family."

Before the pandemic, Edna was living in her own flat. Fiercely independent, she went out every day, did her own shopping and washing.

Angela said: "She became socially isolated. She lost her routine, lost her confidence and went downhill a wee bit. Then she came into care."