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These days age is nothing but a number. Here we meet two extraordinary women – one rocker, one fitness world champ – breaking boundaries later in life
Ageing as we know it is changing. Yes, while in the past, older folk may have been content to sit quietly by a fireside with their knitting or their pipe and slippers, those days are long gone.
Inspired by golden oldies like actress Judi Dench, 89, rocker Paul Mccartney, 81, and US president Joe Biden, 81 – all still active and doing what they love – more and more pensioners are deciding that age is just a number.
Here we meet two extraordinary women still breaking boundaries later in life.
I’M PLAYING IN A ROCK BAND
Pat Bailey, 80, a piano teacher, lives in Ashford, Kent
My sister Margaret and I were born in 1944 as identical twins. She’s the older by 20 minutes and a total extrovert. In comparison, I’m relatively quiet and reserved.
Aged four, growing up in Dagenham, Essex, we started dance lessons. We also had piano lessons and from our teens competed together in talent shows together, singing and dancing. Performing became something of a passion for both of us.
At 16, we appeared on the TV talent show Top Town and were part of a London team who won the contest.
Later, we joined a band, Vicki and her Ladybirds, touring Britain in the Swinging Sixties. We needed bodyguards at some gigs as the crowds went so crazy. Life felt so rock ’n’ roll!
After the group split, I played folk gigs with my then boyfriend, while my twin joined rock band The Phantom Raiders, dating its bass player before marrying him.
Further down the line, the band agreed I could become its fifth member, with everyone taking a £2 weekly pay cut to fund my wages. I was delighted.
Eventually, I fell for The Phantoms’ lead guitarist, Joe. We wed around the time the band broke up. Saving to buy a home, he asked: “Shall we sell our instruments towards a deposit?”
“Never!” I told him, horrified. In fact we continued gigging, with various bands, until I was eight months pregnant with our first baby.
I had two children, while Margaret had five. For a while, music was put on the back burner as we raised our young families. I was a secretary in my husband’s parcel delivery business. My sister was a van driver, also running her own dance school and a successful musical theatre group.
But eventually we returned to gigging together, forming a trio, Free Dimension, with my husband on guitar. He was a brilliant musician until he developed MS, and had to quit playing.
Then in 2000 came another awful shock when my twin had a brain aneurysm. We almost lost her and it
ee years before she could gain. Margaret’s illness e think about what I still from life. So I studied for no teaching qualifications.
in 2004, I was diagnosed east cancer and had a tomy and reconstruction. ugh everything, my sister ved streets apart, and me singing, playing and g new numbers. e late 2000s, we auditioned he X Factor. After tions, we featured ne episode. Joe ur 15 minutes of fame eo player, then ly taped over it. Margaret was single, d in with us, and she In 2021, my wonderful aving battled MS for des. The following year, his memory, my twin med our double act, gether in public for the n many years, as our band Great Grannies Rock. We’re well qualified for that title.
I have five grandchildren and five great grandchildren, while Margaret has six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Most of our shows are charity events for the MS Society, but we get the odd paid gig too, and dream of appearing at Glastonbury. What a thrill that would be. Today Margaret and I live together. I work as a piano teacher, but she’s retired, apart from our band.
The public still love us, even after all these years, although family and friends think we’re crazy to be working so hard, rehearsing and gigging in a rock band at our age.
But Margaret and I have been making music together all our lives, so why stop now? We have a fund of shared adventures that keep us going and keep us giggling.
And maybe music helps us stay young – indeed, people often say, we don’t look our age.
Margaret and I recently celebrated our 80th birthday. And we have absolutely no intention of taking up knitting, any time soon.
We intend to rock until we drop!
Margaret and I have been making music all our lives – why should we stop now?