'It took us by surprise,' said Nicola, the daughter of record breaker Jan, aged 73. 'During a family meal out my brothers and I had begun remembering our old next door neighbour, Tony, when, no sooner had we mentioned him, mum chimed in to tell us that he's dead now. Couldn't have taken her any longer than 20 seconds'.
'It was actually 12.6 seconds,' said Jan, who also holds the record for number of times a mum over Christmas has asked her son why he and his girlfriend haven't had kids yet. 'The record had been in my sights for a while, so I'd made sure a representative from the Guinness World Records was present at another table timing it.'
Jan insists that despite the records she holds she isn't predisposed to the negative, and indeed when asked if she enjoyed herself at the family get together, she answered positively, saying that 'it was better than doing nothing'.