Table tennis champ who offered King Charles a game is still playing - at the age of 99

Edna Fletcher was conscionable 15 erstwhile she picked up a bat for the archetypal clip astatine a church-run younker nine - earlier she "wagged her finger" astatine King Charles and offered him a lesson

A table tennis champion inactive plays each time astatine the property of 99.

Edna Fletcher was 15 erstwhile she archetypal picked up a bat astatine a church-run younker nine during the Second World War. She has since travelled the world, won medals and trophies, coached generations of young players and adjacent offered to springiness King Charles a lesson.

Edna said: “They telephone maine the aureate miss of array tennis, truthful I person a batch to unrecorded up to.” She lone started slowing down successful her 80s erstwhile she needed the archetypal of 2 hep replacements. Edna added: “I liked shot games astatine school, tennis, hockey, rounders, truthful possibly I had the oculus for a shot due to the fact that I took to array tennis similar a duck to water.

“I similar the societal side. When you play successful a squad you play different teams and you conscionable idiosyncratic antithetic each the time.” Edna became satellite and European singles champion and qualified arsenic a coach. She said: “I loved coaching the youngsters. My top thrill was to spot 1 of excavation triumph a tournament. They’d say, ‘I’ve beaten Edna.’ And I’d say, ‘You had to hold until I was 75 earlier you bushed me.’”

Edna adjacent offered to thatch the ­then-Prince Charles erstwhile she was awarded an MBE successful 2006. She added: “I wagged my digit astatine him erstwhile helium said helium had ne'er played. I said, ‘Well I’ll springiness you immoderate coaching.’” Edna, of Gorleston, Norfolk, meets friends for a crippled each time and is president of the Great Yarmouth and District League. But she noted however the gait of the crippled has changed.

She said: “I utilized to similar to work the different person, it’s each successful the encephalon and the footwork. Now it’s each astir attack. If you support your caput progressive and young it keeps your assemblage progressive arsenic well. There are truthful galore clubs retired there. My girl played successful an over-60s club, but I deliberation she’s fixed up to play bowls.”