THE world's oldest man has said celebrations for his 112th birthday are a "dead loss" after they had to be cancelled because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Bob Weighton, from Alton, Hampshire, took up the title of the oldest man in the world last month after the death of the previous holder, Chitetsu Watanabe of Japan, and celebrated his birthday yesterday.

Last year, the former teacher and engineer celebrated with his many friends at his retirement flat but this year the supercentenarian - someone aged 110 and older - is under lockdown like the rest of the country.

He told the PA news agency: "Everything is cancelled, no visitors, no celebration. It's a dead loss as far as celebration is concerned."

Mr Weighton lived through the Spanish flu pandemic which swept around the globe in 1918, when he was 10 years old, killing between 50 and 100 million people.

He said: "I only read about it in history books when I got older.

"Actually I wasn't aware there was a Spanish flu around because none of my brothers and sisters or people I knew were affected.

"I am sure they were, but a child's world is not an adult's world, a child doesn't read the newspapers and there was no radio in those days so you didn't get news in the sense you get it thrown at you in all directions nowadays."

Mr Weighton said that now the "world is in a bit of a mess" with coronavirus.

He added that, unlike the two World Wars he lived through, the challenge of COVID-19 is the unknown elements of battling the virus.

He said: "In the Second World War you knew what you had to do, you might fail but the objectives were clear as Churchill rallied the country behind him, 'We will fight on the beaches', etc etc.

"We knew exactly what we had to do.

"That was an objective that you could possibly reach, but nobody knows how we are going to defeat the virus."

The father-of-three - one of seven himself - has 10 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren.