Dahne Cutten is being taught how to pull pints - despite serving behind the bar for nearly half a century.

New laws mean the landlady of 43 years must go on a training course to become an official licensee.

She has spent most of her life behind the bar at The Murrell Arms in Yapton Road, Barnham, where she took the helm with husband Mervyn in 1964.

He died just short of his 90th birthday and was believed to be the oldest licensee in Sussex and one of the oldest in the country.

Mr Cutten's pub licence was inherited through "grandfather rights" in 2005 when liquor licences had to reapplied for to local authorities instead of magistrates' courts.

However, Mr Cutten's licence will not be transferred to his widow under new licensing regulations.

Mrs Cutten, 73, said: "I won't automatically get the licence despite having been here for 43 years.

"They are making me go on a training day in March at The Bull in Fishbourne, which is owned by the brewery.

"Then I'm going to have to go to the police and get all the criminal checks done and after that I'll have to go to the local authority.

"It seems stupid because I've been doing this so long, and it's all costing me money." Since starting at The Murrell Arms, Mrs Cutten has seen five takeovers by different breweries.

The most recent change was from Fuller's to George Gale and Co.

Mrs Cutten said customers had been very supportive since the death of her husband in October.

She added: "He always said the devil would get him and he died on Hallowe'en."

Mr Cutten's family were coach-builders at St Pancras in Chichester until the early Thirties when the advent of the mass-produced car killed off the business.

Not long before he died, a new road in Chichester was named Cutten Way in his honour.

Mr Cutten went to school at St Margarets in West Street and was sent away to Colbrook House, a boarding school at Bognor, at the age of seven.

He was posted to Port Said in Egypt in 1940.

Enemy activity in the Mediterranean meant his convoy took three months to get there via the Atlantic, then to the African coast at Sierra Leone, on to Durban in South Africa, and finally to the Red Sea.

Changes in the licensing laws in 2005 meant everyone with a licence had to reapply for one.

"Grandfather rights" gave existing licensees automatic rights when making their application.