THIS young-at-heart great-grandmother is celebrating 100 years of a very colourful life.

Marion Williams has led a full and varied life – after growing up at a pub in Barton Hill she worked as a chorus girl, singer and dancer, and appeared on stage across Bristol.

And Marion, who celebrated her big day yesterday at a party attended by the Lord Mayor, is still "very glamorous" according to her daughter Shirley, who she now lives with in Westbury-on-Trym.

She is known as "the Duchess" by friends and family, loves having her nails and hair done, and it was only last year that she enquired about having her teeth whitened.

And despite being a grandmother of five and a great-grandmother of six, she is still sometimes mistaken for the sister of her two daughters, Shirley and Andree.

She was born Marion Morgan in Downend Road, Kingswood, in 1912, one of eight siblings of whom only four survived to adulthood.

When she was two, her parents Frances and Gilbert went into the publican trade.

They moved to Days Road in Barton Hill to run The Locomotive – where life was hard for the Morgan children. The day started early, with doors at the pub opening at about 6am to cater for the miners coming off their nightshifts, and staying open until midnight.

While busily attending school and chapel on Sundays, young Marion's heart lay with dressing up and making costumes for plays.

From an early age her love of singing and dancing was evident and she went for dance lessons from the age of five at Daisy Luxton's School where she studied ballet and tap. That took her to perform, singing and dancing and sometimes as a chorus girl, on stages throughout Bristol.

She trod the boards at Prince's Theatre in Park Row, the Theatre Royal, the Hippodrome, the Empire Theatre in Old Market and Little Theatre next to Colston Hall.

In between theatre roles, she did various temporary jobs, working in sales at Marks and Spencer in Castle Street and as a nanny for a baby boy belonging to the family behind Phillips wine merchants.

When she worked away from home at the Winter Gardens in Weston-super-Mare, she became very ill and spent six weeks in isolation in hospital with diphtheria and scarlet fever – a deadly combination which she was lucky to survive.

Marion has lived through two world wars, one of which delivered a particularly significant blow to her family.

Her father volunteered during the First World War, and was posted to France, where he survived being buried in a trench for two days.

He was cared for at home but never overcame the severe shell shock he had suffered, and was eventually committed to hospital where he spent the rest of his life.

When doing a panto at Prince's Theatre Marion met and fell in love with Ted Williams, who was working as a dresser for the entertainer Randolph Sutton. They were married in 1933 and moved into Marion's mother's home in Bishopston, where she had moved after giving up the pub.

Eventually her mother gave her the house, where Marion lived from the age of 21 until five years ago.

Since marrying, she has not worked but has enjoyed charity work, needlework and knitting, and her garden.

Her daughter Shirley said: "Her motto has always been, 'if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well'.

"She is still very beautiful, if not quite as mobile as she used to be. Her secret to a long life is that she has never smoked, never drank, and she walked a dog until she was 80 and broke her ankle. The vet once said she had worn the dog out."