ANY couple married for 43 years could expect to be close — but Gordon and Virginia Haslam have discovered they are so close their birth certificates even have consecutive numbers.

The couple, who met in their early 20s, were born six days apart at Bolton General Hospital, and grew up less than a mile away from each other in Heaton.

They would have had countless opportunities to meet, however in 1962 Gordon moved to Australia with friends while trying to make it big as part of a pop band.

It was only when his older sister, Jean, announced she was getting married in 1965 that he returned to Bolton for the ceremony.

On his return Gordon, who later became a sales manager in the motor trade, offered to help Jean out at amateur dramatic group, Sweetloves Operatic Society, to fill his time.

It was there he met and fell in love with Virginia.

The couple married in 1968, and had two children, Kathryn, now aged 39, and Christopher, aged 35.

When Virginia’s mother, who will celebrate her 100th birthday in August, moved into their house in Anderton, the couple were reorganising their paperwork when Gordon noticed the surprising coincidence.

Virginia, aged 68, said: “Gordon said, ‘Look, the numbers are consecutive’.

We worked out that Gordon’s mother must have been stood in front of my mother in the queue to register us at Bolton register office.”

The couple’s relationship seems characterised by quirks of fate. When their parents met for the first time upon the announcement of their engagement it turned out Virginia’s father, Albert, and Gordon’s father, Harold, already knew each other through the dance bands in which Albert played and Harold was MC. Even now the couple cannot quite believe the twists of fate that brought them together.

Virginia said: “When we talk to people about it, they say we could even have been in the same nursery at the hospital. It is quite uncanny. I suppose you could say that we were meant to be together.”