Meet the age-defying 80 year olds
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 was three years before she could dance again. Margaret’s illness made me think about what I still wanted from life. So I studied for my piano teaching qualifications.
Then, in 2004, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy and reconstruction.
Through everything, my sister and I lived streets apart, and spent time singing, playing and learning new numbers.
In the late 2000s, we auditioned for TV’s The X Factor. After three auditions, we featured briefly in one episode. Joe recorded our 15 minutes of fame on the video player, then accidentally taped over it.
By 2013 Margaret was single, and moved in with us, and she never left. In 2021, my wonderful Joe died, having battled MS for four decades. The following year, to honour his memory, my twin and I reformed our double act, playing together in public for the first time in 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?