Birthday sky dive for Bush Senior

Bush has been making jumps for some 60 years

George Bush Sr has celebrated his 80th birthday with a parachute jump in Texas which he described as a "day of joy... for an old guy".

The US ex-president, and father of the incumbent, made a tandem jump from 3,900 metres (13,000 feet) in the arms of a paratrooper amid difficult winds.

He got up beaming in front of some 4,000 spectators, including ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The jump capped two days of events to mark the former president's birthday.

Get out there and realise that at 80 years old you have still got a life George Bush Senior

Mr Bush waved to the cheering crowd near his presidential library in College Station as he came in to land, gripped by a member of the army's Golden Knights parachute team.

He had made a solo jump to mark his 75th birthday and planned to repeat it on Sunday but was warned of dangerous wind conditions and low cloud.

"It was a different sensation but when you're in the arms of an expert parachutist, there's far less concern," he said afterwards.

"The feeling is the same. It was incredible."

Thanks but nyet

The former president has been making jumps since he was shot down as a pilot over the Pacific during the World War II.

He said that his latest jump should be an example to other people of his age.

"Get out there and realise that at 80 years old you have still got a life," he said.

Mr Gorbachev, 73, had joked earlier that he preferred to stay on the ground.

"George will be jumping and I will be waiting on the ground with a bunch of flowers," he said.