Over the last couple of years Londonist has been privileged to bring you tales from the life and times of Buster Martin, the centenarian Pimlico plumber who first came to fame after being ordered, under duress, to take a day off work on his 100th birthday.

Now, having completed the London Marathon in just under ten hours - and collecting some £20,000 for the Rhys Daniels Trust in the process - Buster was expected to be entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the race's oldest participant. But those dour folk at Guinness World Records have stuck a running spike into proceedings: they claim that, without a genuine birth certificate, Buster's claim is null and void.

As a French-born citizen raised in a British orphanage, Buster has a certificate of naturalisation, but no official record of his birth to prove his claim that he's walked this earth some 101 years. Without that, quoth the Gradgrinds at Guinness, then no dice: his effort doesn't count.

Londonist would like to wag our collective finger at the record-keepers. In a world where inane stunts and bizarre spectacles are permitted to fight their way into the once-hallowed pages, here we have a genuine marvel, a man who has negated decades of wear and tear on his body to complete an indubitably arduous task. And how is he greeted? By a fussy and fastidious clipboard-wielder at the finishing line who marks him down because he didn't cross a 't' or dot an 'i'.

We'd like, of course, to reserve the right to ignore the above sentiments should it emerge that Buster has indeed been fiddling the numbers a little. But, for the record, we believe you, B!

Image courtesy of zimpenfish's Flickrstream