It’s so amazing to look in a mirror.. I look younger than Coleen now!

my f face t to recover and I’ve had an amazing response already. Two friends came round and when I opened the door they both screamed. “They were shocked at how well I looked. And my great niece Sienna, Maureen’s granddaughter, said: ‘ You look beautiful Auntie Linda’. That works for me.” One person who hasn’t seen Linda’s facelift yet is Coleen, who won Celebrity Big Brother on Friday. “I screamed the house down as Coleen won,” smiles Linda. “She would never in a million years have believed she could have won. She looked so shocked.” But Linda laughs that Coleen is about to have a bigger surprisei whenh sheh sees h her sister’sit ’f face.

Linda reveals: “I spoke to her afterwards and she asked me what I’d been up to. I felt so guilty because I didn’t say I was speaking to her with a new face!

“I know she’ll go mad as she’s so antisurgery. But she’ll only find out when she sees this paper!”

Linda reckons she could now challenge Coleen for youthful looks. She laughs: “I think I look younger than her now so maybe she’ll be asking for the clinic’s number! I looked years older than my age with all the grief. I was aged well beyond my years. People say I know look 20 years younger after my facelift. “But Coleen will kill me for it!” And Linda is hoping her facelift may also lift her love life. Just before Christmas she had her first smooch after losingl i Bi Brian with ith an old ldf friendi d whoh li lives overseas. She says it’s given her confidence of finding companionship.

“He texted me and said: ‘ We’ll have to try the new lips when I come back over’,” she says.

“He was the right person at the right time. He helped me get over that first hurdle of having a kiss. I’m still scared to death of dating but Brian told me he didn’t want me to be on my own.”

Linda still carries a mini urn of her manager husband’s ashes everywhere. “That sadness will always be inside me but I’m dealing with it now,” she says. “I miss Brian and Bernie but that desperate feeling of loneliness is gone.

“It’s as if something has clicked inside of me. Brian was fabulous for supporting me. He’d be looking at my new face now going,i ‘Y ‘ You’re’ not tb bad df for an oldld bi bird’.”d’” But her search for companionship which she says will “not necessarily be a sexual thing” will have to compete with work. She starts a major UK tour with musical Our House in the summer.

Linda admits: “It’s a shame, but looks do matter in showbiz. So the facelift has give me a real a boost to my confidence at work.” But that’s it as far as surgery goes. “It was a big decision to get this done and I’m delighted with it,” she says.

“For the next 20 years I’ll always look a bit younger than I am. I’ll be nearly 80 by then and I think when you’re 80 you’re entitled to look the way you want to look.”

Linda had her surgery at Harley Street Skin Clinic harleystreetskinclinic.com