A former West Ham player and his wife are celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary six decades after their wedding was paraded on the front of their local paper.

On June 28 Bill and Patricia Lansdowne will mark 60 years of matrimony, having tied the knot in St John's Church in Loughton.

The pair met over the phone in the mid 1950s when Bill called Patricia while they both worked as telephonists, she in Oxford and he for the RAF exchange.

He asked her on a date to the cinema which proved a success.

They married several years later when Bill was 22 and Patricia 21.

In the same year the Shoreditch born midfielder's career took off.

Son Greg Lansdowne, from Loughton, said: "He was part of the West Ham team that got promoted to the first division in 1958.

"He played for the start of the next season in the top division, but was replaced by Bobby Moore who played in the same position.

"He was with West Ham for 20 years and as a coach until 1979 after retiring through injury when he was 29."

By the time he did leave the club, Mr Landsdowne had been coaching oldest son Bill Jr.

The footballing protege - whose birth was covered in the Statford Express ten months after his parent's wedding - would later go on to play for Charlton and then in Sweden, where he would become a commentator for more than a decade.

Mr Lansdowne, a 44 year-old sports journalist whose book about Panini football stickers was made into an ITV4 documentary this year, added: "A footballer getting married back then was huge news in its way.

"People were interested in what players. Players still went to games with the fans on public transport.

"It has definitely been a happy marriage. It has to be for it to last 60 years."