STARS of the big screen played their part in a Second World War veteran’s 103th birthday celebrations.
Action film fan Joyce Ensell marked her special day with a fish and chip supper at Royal Star and Garter with life-size cardboard cut-outs of The Matrix actor Keanu Reeves and Gerard Butler, of 300 fame.
Three years ago, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) veteran had celebrated her 100th birthday with a surprise video message from Hollywood hunk Jason Statham, and a life-size cardboard cut-out of the star.
Joyce regularly watches high-octane films from her room at the Monkspath Hal Road Home, which cares for veterans and their partners living with disability or dementia.
Joyce was born into a mining family in Westerhope, Newcastle upon Tyne, in 1921.
She served in the WAAF from 1941 to 1944, reaching the rank of Leading Aircraftwoman, and met her husband Leslie, an RAF electrician, during the war.
The couple married in 1943 and later settled in Birmingham, where Joyce worked as a school dinner lady in the 1950s and sixties.
She has lived at Royal Star and Garter since 2019.
