I want to live to 120, says Corrie’s Ken
AT 86, he’s already got a fair bit of time under his belt. But Bill Roache plans to go on a lot longer – at least until he’s 120.
Describing ageing as a ‘ belief system’, the veteran Coronation Street star said he recites a mantra every day to ensure that his body ‘renews itself’.
‘Living to 120 is more than a possibility,’ he added. ‘The body was designed to go on for ever as cells renew themselves.
‘It’s not how many years you’ve clocked up – it’s the eating, drinking, smoking, bad thinking, stress, pollution. I’ve heard people say, “I’ve got a new carpet, that’ll see me out.” That’s not the right mindset to have… and down they go.’
He takes daily protein shakes, works out twice a week for an hour and every morning recites the mantra: ‘As my cells renew themselves, they renew themselves with a younger, healthier, rejuvenated cell, therefore I’m getting younger and healthier.’
Roache, a keen meditator who overhauled his diet and cut out sugar after finding out he had Type 2 diabetes, said: ‘I know it’ll have some effect. Living to 100 is nothing. We should live way longer.’ The actor, who has played Ken Barlow since the soap began in 1960, recently took time away from the ITV show after his daughter Vanya, 50, from his first marriage to Anna Cropper, died from a liver condition. He revealed that he
‘I’m getting younger and healthier’
missed her final moments after his car crashed on a snowy country road when he was 15 minutes away from the hospital where she died.
His second wife Sarah died of a heart condition aged 58 in 2009 and one of his daughters, Edwina, died at 18 months old in 1984.
The actor, who once claimed he had had sex with around 1,000 women, also credited meditation with keeping his mental health in check.
‘Meditation is a tough discipline,’ he told the Sunday Mirror. ‘I started doing it in the Seventies. I felt all this irritation in me, I couldn’t believe the chaos. That’s how I was living.
‘Now I go to my conservatory, I leave all my worries at the door. It’s a tea break from life.’
Living to 120 would make Roache the world’s oldest man, beating Jiroemon Kimura, who died in Japan aged 116 in 2013.