225 YEARS YOUNG! TV TRIO PROVING AGE IS NO BARRIER TO SUCCESS
to dwell on her own mortality despite, she says, breast cancer and dementia running in her family. “I’m just not up for worrying about what is going to happen to me,” she says.
“Dementia is a huge problem these days. I signed the petition that Barbara [Windsor] and her husband Scott took to No. 10 to campaign for better dementia care.
“I really admire them for what they are doing. Barbara doesn’t socialise that much so I haven’t really seen her a lot but I talk to Scott from time to time and he has been the most incredible support.”
It is 15 years since she lost her beloved daughter, Blue Peter presenter Caron Keating, to breast cancer, aged just 41. The year after Caron’s death, Gloria took part in Strictly Come Dancing and she revealed at the time how the show helped her to smile again.
She went on to set up the Caron Keating Foundation, which gives grants to all types of cancer charirefuses ties, and was awarded an OBE by the Queen in 2017.
To this day, Caron is never far from her thoughts. “I do see a lot of Caron in my grandsons. She had a wicked sense of humour and her boys, Charlie and Gabriel, are now in their twenties and are both very funny and interesting.
“I have a saying that people never die if they live on the lips of the living and that is how we keep her memory alive. I see her spirit through her sons and there is no greater legacy than that.” Gloria knows just how fragile life can be, having lost Caron and experienced the trauma of her husband suffering a mild heart attack and, later, a small stroke. “Stephen’s family have a history of heart disease. He’s lost four out of his nine siblings because of heart issues.
“His heart attack happened just after his favourite brother had died. Stephen is an emotional man and I think he was so distressed that it sparked something. Thank God he has been fine since and he is very diligent at taking his medication. He’s a year older than me but he is in fantastic shape. He does a lot of exercise and stretching and keeps himself busy all the time fixing things and gardening. I do have to tell him to sit down sometimes.”
Gloria married Stephen in 1998. Her ex-husband Don Keating, with whom she had children Caron, Paul and Michael and divorced in 1992, had died a year earlier.
“I think with second marriages you have learned a lot from the first and also from our point of view our children were grown up when we met,” she says.
“It left the two of us to do what we wanted, when we wanted. Stephen is very impetuous, like me, and if I said to him ‘Tell you what, let’s just get a couple of tickets and go to France’, he would reply, ‘Why not?’ He is always up for an adventure.”
NATURALLY slim, Gloria tries to eat the right foods after a blood test in 2013 revealed she was pre-diabetic and a doctor advised a strict diet.
“I tried to cut out sugar and carbs but I still occasionally eat chocolate and croissants. But when I was told I was pre-diabetic, I was very strict with myself and dropped two stone to 8st 7lb. Now I am back up to 9st 1lb.
“But I wouldn’t want to lose that amount again. I am only 5ft 2in and feel as if I’ve been shrinking ever since. I keep the weight off by walking my dog but it’s mainly from being on the go all the time.”
If she has one major regret, it is not having had more children. “As you get older you realise just how fabulous it is to have them.
“I guess the great thing about modern day life is that you can be what you want. If you want to change gender then you can and if you don’t want to have children then you don’t have to.
“But that is what I like about still working because it helps to keep me up with modern thinking. I was always for equal opportunity but I was never a very strong ‘women’s libber’. I still want to be treated like a woman. I love a man opening a door for me. But I certainly won’t be retiring as long as I have the health and will to want to do it.”
She adds with a laugh: “As much as I love my husband, I don’t want to be at home every day.”