BEING SINGLE AT 57 SUITS HER FINE
blankly. I’ll do it, because that’s what they want to do. But they can see I’m kinda like, ‘urgh’. “Do I stay in on a Saturday and watch Strictly? No! Nothing to do with Strictly, but because I’ve got so many other things I want to do. I enjoy living life like that. I’ve so much I want to do, I stack it all in. Even if by the end of the week I’m exhausted, I’d rather that because I’d have a big grin on my face.” Her children Katie, 27, and Cameron, 22, from her second marriage to Patrick King [her first, to Christopher Mather in 1985, lasted a year] have flown the nest, giving Carol more time to focus on herself.
She’s moved back to Cambridge, where Katie is researching a PhD in nanotechnology and Carol also gained her degree in engineering. Carol’s TV career, which she famously began in Countdown with Richard Whiteley in 1982, has never been busier.
Recently viewers watched one of TV’s brainiest hosts taking dating advice from Love Island winner Kem Cetinay.
The pair, who have a 35-year age gap, flirted up a storm. Carol laughs at rumours they linked up offscreen.
“That’s hilarious. And ridiculous! I am old enough to be his mother.” Carol and Kem swapped their experiences of dating and the contrast was stark.
She says: “It was so much easier when I was young. You had dates with people you were actually in contact with, from school, the youth club or night club.
“You arranged to meet outside a chippie before going to the pictures and both turned up. There weren’t 273 text messages beforehand.
“There weren’t all these nuances like, ‘oh, he’s put a kiss on this text’, ‘he replied straightaway’ or ‘he changed his Facebook relationship status’.
“This is not me, I’ve never been on Facebook.
“It’s good to have a bit of mystery and privacy.” Recently being asked for ID before being served alcohol is proof she looks decades younger.
Fans love her curves and Carol jokes that her bottom, a frequent winner of rear of the year, is so big it has its own gravitational field.
But ask her how she feels to be a sex symbol and she is serious. “I’m NOT a sex symbol. You can’t be at my age. That’s ridiculous,” she says.
“I am a very physical person, I’m effusive, I love my life and I’m a free spirit. If people want to put a label, it’s their label. I care nothing for that.”
The Daily Mirror’s Pride of Britain Awards are broadcast on Tuesday November 6 on ITV1.