A NONAGENARIAN celebrated a landmark birthday and a landmark in his fundraising on the same day – receiving a certificate for smashing the £200,000 barrier from Cancer Research UK.

James Gordon, of Northfield Road in Ringwood, has held jumble sales, plant sales, coffee mornings, open garden days and street collections to raise the amazing sum over 34 years.

He first joined the charity in 1960, when a friend persuaded him to join the local committee. “I just got so interested in it I carried on,” he says.

In 1976 he was asked to be chairman of the group, and he set about fundraising, organising a string of events to bring the cash rolling in.

Mr Gordon, who lost his daughter-in-law Denise to cancer two months ago, said: “Every family is affected by cancer – it’s a very worthwhile cause.

“Denise had two brain tumours – she was only 60.

“And so many of my friends died of it.”

Mr Gordon moved to Hampshire from his native Glasgow during the Second World War. He met his wife there and they had two sons – Denise’s husband Paul, now 64, and Neil, now 59.

He worked for his father-in-law’s building firm RG Hoare for 20 years before opening a wallpaper, paint and art shop, Gordon’s, in Ringwood.

But his spare time was devoted to Cancer Research.

He said: “I couldn’t have raised all that money without all the support from people in town who collected for me.”

Many of those people were at a special party last weekend to celebrate Mr Gordon’s 90th birthday, with cake and balloons.