‘I envy people with deep religious beliefs... India could bring me some sort of peace’
Marigold Hotel – to see if I could actually see myself having a different sort of life.”
There’s no fear of Zandra, who flew to the coastal city of Puducherry in April last year for the show, becoming a grey-haired old lady – she never travels anywhere without a bottle of her trademark pink hair dye, which proves a huge hit in India.
“If you have pink hair, locals want to touch your hair wherever you go,” she says. “I apply the dye, go to sleep with a plastic bag over my head, I wake up and I am miraculously pink again.
“I’m so grateful that I had the energy, despite my bad back, to explore an amazing part of India,” says Zandra wistfully, as she potters about on her terrace watering her camellias.
“It would be fun to retire to India so long as I wasn’t alone. I don’t like being alone, but providing I had my friends with me it would be to die for.
“Britt said when we were in India that the best thing about growing old is that you don’t give a **** and she doesn’t really care what people think. She reckons if you want to stay relevant in show business then you have to look after yourself and, when she looks in the mirror, she feels OK.
“I feel the same but I am not always happy in my skin. It depends on what my mood is. Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not. You happen to have caught me on a day where I am happy in my own skin.”
In a recent interview, Barbara Dickson accused female stars who have had plastic surgery of “betraying the sisterhood”.
Britt Ekland has previously admitted that cosmetic surgery destroyed her looks but what is Zandra’s view on going
STARS: Barbara Dickson, Susie Blake, Britt Ekland and Zandra Rhodes in The Real Marigold Hotel; below, with John Altman
under the knife? “I’ve known Britt since 1969 and I think we are the remnants of the true Sixties in London,” she says. “She has lived in America too much. It is the land of the facelift and she was married to Peter Sellers and with Rod Stewart, I guess.
“But it’s different strokes for different folks,” she adds diplomatically.
“I think Barbara is so wonderfully Scottish and I respect her views.
“But I don’t ever want any surgery. I can’t see what it would do. You think it wouldn’t hurt but people I know who have had it done say it is very painful too. I just put on more make-up to cover up the cracks!”
IN THIS week’s episodes, viewers will see the celebrities travelling eight hours on an overnight sleeper train to celebrate one of India’s biggest festivals in Madurai, the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu. Zandra reveals that while she fell asleep at the drop of a hat, Britt struggled. “I volunteered to go on the top bunk and, of course, I was the only one that managed to sleep all the way, but I just went to sleep wherever they put me,” she laughs. “I think I got the sleeping prize but poor old Britt had a really rough night although she always manages to look glam.
“I have never been an all-night person but we had to stay up until 5am to wait for this giant procession and golden horse to come through. “Luckily I had my sketch book and I did little sketches while I was waiting, of my surroundings and the locals’ colourful outfits. “I never really stop working. I am married to my work.
“But I have wonderful friends and life so I can’t complain. “However I envy people with deep beliefs. You’re aware in India that everyone is really religious. If I was to retire it is one country that could bring me some sort of peace in a different way to anywhere else before.”
●●The Real Marigold Hotel is on Thursday on BBC One at 9pm