Israel National News reporter and radio host Walter Bingham, who holds the Guinness record for the world’s oldest journalist, recently celebrated his 99th birthday.
“Some people tell you all kinds of things are good for you. I believe birthdays are good for you,” Bingham says. “The proof – that those people who have have the most, live the longest. Hashem has been very good to me. Exceptionally good. Look, I'm standing on my original legs, thank G-d. Mentally alert. And the idea is to keep working, to keep mentally alert, because activity is the name of the game.”
Bingham, who received the Guinness record for the world’s oldest journalist in 2021 when he was 97, is a Holocaust survivor who was saved due to a Kindertransport to Great Britain in 1939. After enlisting in the British Army in World War II, he was stationed post-war in Germany, where he worked in counter-intelligence and helped identify Nazi officers attempting to conceal their former role.
After studying philosophy, he went on to work as a journalist and broadcaster in Britain, also acting in movies and TV shows, including as a wizard in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and in other TV roles that needed older men with white beards.
He made aliyah in 2004 at the age of 80, after which he began working as a journalist for Israel National News.
Today, he is the host of popular podcast Walter’s World on Israel National News Radio, which he has hosted since 2004.
In 2018, Bingham, who maintains a curiosity for all things, became Israel’s oldest skydiver, participating in a parachute jump in northern Israel.
Bingham’s daughter Sonja Kent explains her father’s youthful energy: “I'm used to this very energetic father who normally when he tells me what he’s doing in a day I actually get out of breath myself and that's without doing it. He's extraordinary. He fits into Israel like a duck to water. We always knew he would. He has that chutzpah which you need here.”
Commenting on her father’s career as a 99-year old journalist, Kent remarks that it still amazes her.
“Well that’s extraordinary on its own, what he does and how he sees and who he interviews,” she says.
Bingham says his 99th birthday is all about looking forward, not looking back.
“You look forward. I said today that I am now beginning my hundredth year of life at this birthday… and I only hope Hashem will give me that at the end of the hundredth year I should feel as good as at the beginning,” he says.
When asked what his secret is, Kent answers that she isn’t quite sure.
“I don’t know. I think obviously some of it is genes, we can’t take that for granted,” she says. “And he just keeps going. He’s a survivor, as you know, he’s a Holocaust survivor. And he literally is everything that would appertain to that word. Everything you could imagine.”
“What is my big deal that everybody knows me? It’s the fact that I’m still working, and I’m the oldest working journalist and radio commentator in the world,” Bingham says.
He was awarded the Guinness world record for the world’s oldest journalist in 2021 when he was 97 years old.
According to him, “That’s not an achievement. Hashem gave me the age and my work is my work.”
Commenting on the secret to his longevity and his amazing energy at 99 years old, he says that part of the secret is his work, always being curious, always learning.
“Always inquiring. When I was a young boy, they called me in German, the “varum” – the why. Because I always said: ‘Why, why why…’ I inquired. And my academic studies were in philosophy, and that is inquiring and analyzing.”
“So it keeps me going,” he adds, “to ask, to inquire, and particularly to work. Activity is the name of the game, so you have to be active.”
“He’s a great believer that you must keep going and you take something on, see it through to the end. That’s always been his motto,” Kent says. “He always talks about that and says, ‘Don’t just start a bit here and bit there and a bit there.’ I think he’s immersed himself so completely in what he does today, and it’s an accumulation of everything he’s done in his life.”
Bingham comments that making aliyah was one of the best decisions of his life.
“I’m very glad I live here. This is a wonderful place. To come here is in fact the second best thing I ever did. The best thing of course, was to get married, have a family, have a daughter.”
His message to others on his 99th birthday: “To look forward, to be positive, not to quit, not to be negative, particularly. And of course, in due course, they’ll all have to come to Israel, because when we look around the world with the developing antisemitism, it’s not going to get better, it’s only going to get worse. And the quicker they come, the better because they can still bring all their belongings and all their money, and not come with a little suitcase like I did.”