How to look this good 47 at without ever going on a diet
That’s what Amanda Holden claims . But have YOU got the stamina for what she does instead ...
AMANDA HOLDEN ‘badly’ wants a glass of rosé. So much so, she’s eyeing a bottle in an ice bucket on the next-door table with the longing of a Britain’s Got Talent contestant lusting after a Golden Buzzer pass to the semi-finals.
In this year’s series, Amanda hit hers for 22-year-old singer Gruffydd Wyn Roberts, and the nightly live rounds are in full swing. For now, though, she’s basking on the roof terrace of Soho House in London, and wishing . . . well, that she could chill here all afternoon.
‘I’m looking over there,’ she gestures to a table of three blokes, jackets off, ties loosened. ‘Oh, I badly want a glass of rosé.
‘You have to enjoy life. I eat everything. Drink everything. I had a friend once who didn’t make it to her 50s and her biggest regret was she spent her life on a diet. I don’t diet.’
Hang on Amanda. You don’t diet? Ever? ‘I go
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to a fitness camp in Portugal before the live shows. I’m a vegetarian, so for me it’s lots of avocado, chickpeas, and quinoa salads as well as hikes and boxing. It’s really good for your mindset, rather like unplugging your computer and plugging it back in.
‘There are an awful lot of people who watch BGT [more than 8million last year] so I want to look the best I can. Alesha Dixon is the same. BGT is like going into the boxing ring. You train for it. You look your best for it and then you do the rounds.
‘But the entire thing only takes up a few weeks. You can’t live like that all the time. I practise a form of yoga, which is more to do with breath control and strength than getting sweaty, and I run every morning, but I love a glass of wine and going out.’ She lounges back and tugs her skirt above her knees to catch the sun.
AT 47, Amanda has the sort of toned legs most 20-year-olds would gladly borrow for a first date. She looks so arresting the rosé-swilling blokes are eyeing her up as much as she did their ice bucket. What’s her secret?
‘Collagen wave therapy,’ she says referring to a revolutionary treatment where skin is blasted with radio frequency waves to stimulate collagen and tighten the surface of the face.
‘I drink loads of water — a lot of coconut water — but I think it’s genetic because my nan looks amazing at 97. I also think having children as an older mum — or “geriatric mum”...’ She wrinkles her nose in distaste at the term once used to denote older mums, as well she might.
Amanda, who has two daughters, Lexi, 12, and Hollie, six, gave birth to her youngest at 41. Doctors now describe a woman who is pregnant over the age of 35 as being of ‘advanced maternal age’. Which is just as well. Amanda looks about as ‘geriatric’ as a teenager.
‘You just have to keep going when you have children. You’re constantly haring around,’ she says. ‘I do eat healthily but I have treats and I do love — I know I sound like an alcoholic — my glass of wine or gin. Life is too short to be strict.’
Amanda knows this more than most. Six years ago she died for 40 seconds when an artery burst after giving birth to her youngest daughter. It followed the stillbirth of her son, Theo, seven months into her pregnancy the year before
‘I had grief counselling when I lost the baby. My husband and I were both diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I felt I’d run out of petrol. I’ve always been self-sufficient and able to get on with life. I’ve never been so crushed I couldn’t get back up, but I didn’t have any tools left.
‘My agent at the time knew this amazing woman whom I went to see two or three times. She gave me different ways to think about things, which helped to bring me out of it.
‘I think the PTSD was more to do with Hollie’s birth than Theo. The placenta was attached to my main artery, which didn’t show up on the scan,’ she explains. ‘When they delivered the placenta, my artery burst. My husband thought he’d stepped in a bucket of water. He was ankle deep in my blood. It was horrendous for him. I didn’t know anything about it because I was in a coma, but for him it was terrible to be told to prepare Lexi for no mummy coming home.’
Amanda’s resilience after being so desperately ill is extraordinary, and a mark of the determination that made the girl from the village of Bishop’s Waltham in Britain’s Hampshire one of the best known women on TV.
‘It was touch and go for me, but ten days later I went on BGT. No one’s getting my seat! I always say to Simon Cowell: “No one else would come out of a coma, come back and sit next to you”.’
She laughs loudly. This relaxed, glass-ofwine-and-chill Amanda really is huge fun. She’s also a deep thinking, deep feeling woman who moves from irreverence to earnestness in a second.
‘I call it survival,’ she says. ‘You put on your lip gloss, you put on your eyelashes, and you go out. My daughters have always known Mummy works. If anyone buzzes on the door my children always think it’s my hairdresser — “Oh my god, where are you going?” ’
Again, she laughs before sitting forward in her chair. Her very pretty face is solemn.