A TRIO of brothers who were born two months premature, celebrated their 70th birthday together with their loved ones.

John, Gerald and James Fazackerley, from Oxford, survived against all the odds after being born at the Old Radcliffe Infirmary weighing at just 2lb 10oz, 2lb 9oz and 2lb 7oz.

The identical triplets, who grew up in Kidlington, celebrated their birthday at Bure Farm pub in Bicester.

Their sister organised the surprise party along with their 90-year-old mother.

James, who lives in Witney with his wife and four daughters - two of which are twins - said: “The turnout wasn’t great because of the snow but we still managed to have a good time and remember some funny memories of our childhood."

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John, the first-born and father of two sons who lives in Kidlington, said: “We’ve been celebrating our birthday for many years now and its always nice to get the family together for it.”

The triplets were all educated at Stoke Lyne school near Bicester at a time when the school only had two classrooms before going to junior school in Kidlington and Gosford Hill School.

Oxford Mail:

They left school at 15-years-old, just when the law changed that children should stay in full-time education until 16 and pursued apprenticeships in electrics and mechanics.

While in education people often would not remember who was who and said their were many times when they had confused their school teachers as not all of them were aware of the identical triplets.

John said: “One teacher would try and race us from one lesson to the other, but we always got there first. He couldn’t understand it. He didn’t know it was always a different person until two months later.

“It is a laugh sometimes with people getting us mixed up.”

James became a mechanic while John and Gerald got jobs as electricians doing maintenance and repairs.

The brothers have all retired now, John being the last.

He said: “I want to get back into the hobbies I used to do. I’m into designing and collecting model aeroplanes so I’d like to start doing that again.”

Gerald, who has been living in Warwickshire for the past 30 years, brought his wife and step-daughter along to the gathering last week.

He was the first of the triplets to wear glasses.

He said: “That was the only way to distinguish me from my brothers until they started wearing glasses later on.”

Gerald said he enjoyed being an electrician for his whole working life.

He added: “I would always be doing something different – that was the best thing about my job. We weren’t just doing housing jobs like a lot of companies do now as we did commercial jobs too."

Now retired, Gerald was surprised when he saw our photographer, Ed Nix, turn up to take photos of himself and his brothers at the party last week.

Now that he has a lot of free time, he plans to work on his house and do some travelling and caravanning with his family.

The identical triplets' mother, Frances Fazackerly, who gave birth to the triplets when she was 17, did not know she was expecting them until they were born.

She said: “They came unexpectedly. We didn’t think they’d live because they were so small. They were in incubators for six weeks before they came home. I was told their chances were very slim.

“It was nice that people came to the party despite the weather."