NOT many 80-year-olds can claim to have run a five-kilometre race in the past decade - let alone 16 of them.

But Daphne Murphy, from Brunswick Park Road, New Southgate, is not your average 80-year-old.

She has run every five-kilometre Race for Life in Trent Park since 2000, along with eight Women's Challenge runs in Hyde Park - and she is now planning her ninth.

The nimble nan, who kicked a 40-a-day cigarette habit overnight in 1988, also ran an incredible ten marathons between 1983 and 2000, achieving a top time of four-and-a-half hours and forever changing her nickname from "Fag Ash Lil" to "Marathon Lil".

This year she will be joined in Hyde Park for the first time by her niece Jackie, 52, and grand-niece Hayley, 27, both from Barnet Lane, who will be raising money for the National Autistic Society.

Mrs Murphy, who will be running for Cancer Research UK, said: "It will be a great thrill to run with my niece and great-niece. I am absolutely over the moon.

"Normally I've just got Tom Jones with me, who I do love a great deal and will probably miss a little, but I'll just have to wait until I get home to hear him. Sorry, Tom."

Mrs Murphy will be putting on her running shoes on September 6, alongside 20,000 other women. She put her boundless energy down to hearty food and regular exercise.

“I love chocolate, like Cadbury's and Galaxy, and I have a jam doughnut every day, and plenty of spuds and meat and veg," she said.

"I always have breakfast, such as porridge or Ready Brek. But I don't eat any old muck. I try to eat well."

The gallumphing granny got her original nickname, Fag Ash Lil, when she worked at the Odeon Cinema as a cleaner in her 50s.

"I used to sweep the place with a cigarette in my mouth, dropping ash all over the floor, and one day someone called out: 'Hey, there goes Fag Ash Lil!'

"I used to stink of smoke back then, like an ash tray, but I never realised it. Then one day I just thought, enough is enough, and I stopped.

"Every time I wanted to buy a pack, I would put the money in a jar. I must have saved over £2,000.

"I still keep 40 cigarettes in a glass cabinet at home, market 1988, just to remind me."

Visit www.womenschallenge.co.uk for more information about races run by Cancer Research UK.