A Bristol couple who agreed to get married during a long-distance phone call are celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary.

Brian McManus rang his girlfriend Elizabeth while working for a telephone company in Canada, and popped the question.

The pair had been dating since meeting at a dance at the Regent Ballroom in Brighton in 1947.

Brian was on leave from his job as a pilot in the Royal Air Force and Elizabeth was working as a secretary at an advertising agency in London when their eyes met across the crowded ballroom.

The couple had not seen each other for nearly two years before the proposal because Mr McManus had been working abroad after leaving the forces.

Despite it being a long distance relationship, Elizabeth said yes immediately and Brian made his way home by boat and the couple married on April 30, 1949 in Brighton.

Brian, aged 84, said: "In those days you had to book a phone call a couple of months ahead and then you had to wait an hour or so to get connected.

"I popped the question over the phone and she said yes straight away. My proposal made headlines in the local paper at the time which ran a story called Cupid Calling Long Distance."

After they married, the couple went to America for a few months where Elizabeth fell pregnant with their daughter Stephanie.

The couple returned home to Brighton where Brian worked as a manager of shoe shops in Worthing and Kent.

Two more children – Stephen and Peter –followed and in 1956, the couple moved to Bristol where Brian managed the shoe department in the Jones department store.

Their fourth child, Wendy, arrived in 1960 and Brian changed his job and trained as a primary school teacher, working at schools in Knowle West and Withywood, while Elizabeth, now aged 83, worked as a school secretary at Headley Park School.

The pair retired in 1987 and moved to Clevedon.

The couple, who live in Ilex Avenue, have eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and plan to celebrate their 60 years of marriage with a family lunch at the Walton Park Hotel in Clevedon this Saturday.

Brian said: "I will be giving a speech on Saturday to tell the children how to arrange a happy marriage.

"Elizabeth and I rub along very well and have never had any major arguments. I put a lot of our success to just being lucky and just loving each other."