NORMAN and Avril Banks readily admit to having had a number of rows in their 60 years of marriage.

But the couple of Gilesgate Moor, Durham, say it is ability to move on as soon as the air is cleared that has been their secret to happy marriage.

Celebrating their diamond wedding, Norman , 81, said: “They say that a Yorkshireman calls a spade a spade. It’s a load of rubbish all this about ‘we never had a cross word in our lives’.

“We have had plenty of fallouts and shoutings. Or there was, not so much now. But when it’s done it’s done, that’s it. Finished.”

The couple, who hail from Goole, on Humberside, met at a youth club, before he went to Army for National Service. When he returned they “took it up from there”.

Avril, 78, has worked as shipping firm clerk and a traffic warden in Consett and Durham. Norman worked as a station master on a branch railway with five small stations and later came to the region where he worked as chief clerk at the Consett, Durham, Bishop Auckland and Gateshead county courts.

He was deputy chief clerk at Sunderland County Court when he retired.

The couple have two daughters, Sandra and Susan, and three grandchildren.