An eternal student, who has qualified in photography and accountancy, is celebrating 30 years in his Kingston bar job, insisting there is no better profession.

William Vincent, 51, has held down his job at the Antoinette Hotel through three recessions and was the only bar worker left during the economic crisis of the early 1990s.

He has worked for three generations of the same family, after joining the company on September 16, 1979.

Mr Vincent met his girlfriend of 28 years, Cecelia Fernandez, at the hotel and they worked alongside each other until she retired two years ago.

He said: “I’m a professional student as well as working in the trade. I love my job. I’m earning my living in a living room. I like meeting new people. It’s a positive thing.”

He has kept his mind active by completing a degree and masters in photography at the University of Westminster, has done a diploma in accountancy at Kingston College and plans to do an accountancy degree at Oxford Brookes University.

But he insists he would never want to work in the fields he has studied, preferring his simple live-in bar job.

The hotel, in Beaufort Road, was founded by Arpad Buzasi in 1961, after he moved to the UK from Hungary during the 1956 revolution. It is now run by his grandsons Paul and Adam.

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