There hasn’t been much to cheer up this dismally wet and chilly season, so thank heavens for the wonderful Joan Collins and Jane Fonda.
At a time when every middle-aged person I know is fretting about the recession and the prospect of a miserable old age on an inadequate pension, it’s been left to these two indefatigable septuagenarians to show the rest of us how to live.
They’ve each published books this month and the common theme is that it’s possible to hit 70 and still have enormous fun.
In between ranting about the indiscipline of the obese and the ill-manners of the young, our Joanie has left us in no doubt that you can be 78 and still be slim, fit and fiendishly glamorous.
Whether anyone can really look that youthful at her age without cosmetic surgery - which she insists she hasn’t had -is beside the point: she’s determined to remain a player.
Jane Fonda, meanwhile, has made it her mission, at 73, to explain in explicit detail how fellow “seniors”, as she calls them, can have the same sort of mind-blowing sex as she claims to enjoy regularly.
She’s had a relatively modest amount of plastic surgery, compared with many stars of her vintage, and until recently was taking testosterone - “it makes a huge difference if your libido has dropped” - before stopping when she found it was giving her acne.
Vanity prevailed and the testosterone had to go. Undeterred, she suggests any number of other tricks, while also revealing that she and her partner, record producer Richard Perry, dance together each evening before bed.
Even if you haven’t the energy for all this yourself - and frankly, those of us a quarter of a century younger are left feeling tired just reading about it - you have to admire hers. When I was a mere 20 or 30-something, it seemed to me that three-score years and ten was a respectable age at which to shuffle towards the soothing twilit slopes of Velcro-fastened shoes and Easi-fit waistbands.
But now that I’m the same age as Joan was when she did her Playboy centrefold while starring in Dynasty (49), I find I’m hanging on to her every word. I want less of the spider-veined granny cheeks and more of the Collins smooth-skinned glamour; less of the Thora thighs and more of the Fonda frolics.
What’s so invigorating about Joan and Jane is their refusal to go quietly. Despite being part of the generation before feminism, theyÕve always worked ferociously hard and have fearlessly defied convention. They’ve taken risks and as a result have made some horrendous mistakes.
Fonda’s life has been marked both by ill-chosen politics and ill-chosen husbands. She married three times, subjugating herself each time to unsuitable men who used her.
Joan, for her part, married five times, but her first four husbands were disasters, from the abusive Maxwell Reed - who was furious when she wouldn’t sleep with a lecherous Arab for £10,000 while he watched - to the money-grabbing, womanising Peter Holm.
It’s only now, in their eighth decade, that she and Fonda seem to have found lasting love with men who don’t seek to dominate or belittle them.
In an era when we’re so terrified of ageing that women in their 20s reach for the Botox at the merest suspicion of a wrinkle, these gutsy Hollywood stars are bounding into the boxing ring for life’s final rounds, done up to the nines and raring to go. They’ve got more sex appeal than Nancy Dell’Olio and Madonna put together, and infinitely more pizzazz.
You can complain that it’s all very well for them; they’ve been blessed with good genes and plenty of money. That’s true, but what really sets them apart is their refusal to stop fighting.
Most women have a tendency to timidity. We often choose to avoid confrontation, preferring to keep the peace. Those who do go against the grain may gain some respect, but they’re rarely considered glamorous. So we learn that it’s not womanly to be feisty or independent.
Which is why Fonda and Collins deserve our respect. They will not be written off as ageing has-beens. They will not go gently into that good night. They’re too busy putting all their energy into one last prolonged and glorious hurrah. And even if we ourselves can never quite be them, at least they give us hope. - Daily Mail