99-Year-Old Becomes the World's Oldest Wing Walker, and Her 97-Year-Old Rival Vows to Simply Turn 100 and Take It Back

Most people at 99 are told to keep their feet up. Helga Duffy kept hers up too, at roughly a thousand metres, on top of an aeroplane.

The former nurse, who lives in a care home in Devizes, Wiltshire, has become the world's oldest wing walker, strapped atop a small plane at RFC Rendcomb Airfield in Cirencester. Guinness World Records clocked her at 99 years and 21 days. Asked how it felt, she chose the most British word available: "peculiar." In Britain, that word covers a wing walk, a foreign cheese and the end of an empire.

The idea came from the night shift. "One of our night supervisors suggested this wing walk. I had no idea what it was," Helga said. Most care homes offer bingo after dark. Hers offers aviation. Monday: crossword. Tuesday: sit on the outside of an aircraft.

There were obstacles. She has osteoarthritis and a bad right knee, and her first attempt was cancelled because of engineering difficulties with the plane. Note the order of reliability: the 99-year-old knee was ready before the aircraft was.

She was up for about eight minutes. "I wasn't frightened because I was so excited," she said. Up there she found the air "so pure you wouldn't believe it" and wondered, "is this like if you take drugs?" Her conclusion: "I'm sure it is." Britain has spent decades on anti-drug campaigns. It turns out all it needed was a pensioner and a propeller.

Her outlook was refreshingly unsentimental: "That's the last thing perhaps before I die, or before I get to a hundred." She has filed death and her 100th birthday as roughly equal scheduling conflicts. That is not morbid. That is diary management.

This is not a feel-good story. It is a sequel. Helga signed up after watching 97-year-old Betty Bromage do it on the news. Betty took up wing walking after moving into sheltered accommodation at 87, which is the opposite of what sheltered means. She first set the record at 93, has done six wing walks, and in August added a loop-the-loop, because if you are going to be on the outside of a plane at 97, you may as well be upside down.

Betty congratulated the new champion, then issued the most chilling threat in British sport: "I can't wait until I'm 100 and I can do it again, I'll beat you again." Most athletes promise to come back next season. Betty is coming back in three years, purely by ageing. Her entire training plan is birthdays, and no rival on earth can stop them.

The record has gone from 93 to 97 to 99 in four years. By 2030 it will belong to someone holding a card from the King and a parachute knitted from cardigans.

Helga raised more than £1,300 for Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance, whose Sam Conway called her a "legend." Sound planning, too: when your hobby is standing on aircraft, it pays to be friendly with the other aircraft.

Her motto: "Try anything. Don't ever say, I can't do anything. You can't see until you've tried." The certificate now hangs in the care home, which has quietly become the most dangerous address in British aviation.

Most people at 99 are told to keep their feet up. Helga did, at a thousand metres. Betty has three years to get hers higher.