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The most famous ROC was the legendary Jeanne Calment (pictured), a French woman who attained the incredible age of 122 years 164 days, before her untimely demise in 1997. I say untimely because if you look at her biography, it suggested she may have become the first human being to reach two-hundred.
For instance, in 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal, common in France, to sell her condominium apartment ‘en viager’ to lawyer François Raffray. Monsieur Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay her a monthly sum until she died, an agreement sometimes called a ‘reverse mortgage’. At the time of the deal, the value of the apartment was equal to ten years of payments. Calment lived more than thirty additional years, saying: “Best fun I’ve ever had watching that smart-prick lawyer shithead twist in the wind.”
In 1985, then living on her own at spritely the age of 110, Calment was moved into a nursing home after burning down the house while attempting to spot-weld a leaking water-pipe, claiming: “Fucked if I’ll pay some ass-raping plumber to come and fix such a small, pissy job.”
At the age of 114, making her the oldest actress ever to appear on screen, she starred in the 1990 film ‘Vincent and Me’ as herself, uttering the immortal line: “If you try and feel me up again Van Gogh, I’ll cut more than just your fucking ear off, you hideous, misshapen orangutan.”
Calment smoked until she was 117, quit, and then picked up the habit again at 118 years of age, telling her 80 year old physician: "Once you've lived as long as me, then you can tell me to give up cigarettes, you know-it-all cunt.”
Aged 120, she released a rap CD entitled ‘Time's Mistress’, attending the Grammys and getting into a scuffle on the red carpet with ‘Fifty Cents’, about whom she said, ‘Fifty fucking cents ??I wouldn’t give you five centimes for that crap-filled jungle bunny.’
Alas, poor Jeanne, the feisty little ball of gristle who looked as though she’d fallen of a charm bracelet, passed away in 1997, cut down in the prime of her life at 122 and a half years of age.
They say it was ‘natural causes’…but I think you’ll see (in my next spine-chilling post), there is more to this mystery than meets the eye…