The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Joanna has class to dye for
It wisnae me. I’m telling you now. Not guilty, m’lud. Which is more than Vladimir Putin can or will say as our relationship with Russia plummets to its lowest level since the dark days of the Cold War. That is serious stuff, of course, involving literal life and death. And, hopefully, in the long term, it will lead to the reining in of a power-hungry individual and his supporting coterie of wealth-obsessed oligarchs and kleptocrats who have been allowed to infiltrate so many walks of life in this beleaguered country of ours that even John le Carre probably couldn’t make it up.
No, on a much lighter note – because I don’t know about you, but I don’t know how much more bad news I can take – I am here to inform you that the spike in gin sales, reaching a record high over Christmas, is not down to me. Well, not all of it, anyway.
It would seem that eager consumers bought the equivalent of a bottle for every adult in the UK last year and I have to admit that several of them were purchased by (and for) me. But 51 million bottles? That’s going it some, even by my standards. And it does beg the question of who is doing it and where is it going? There are people out there (I’m told that a few exist) who don’t drink at all, let alone drink gin. Add to that the fact that if seriously well-practised gin drinkers like me aren’t pushing the numbers through the roof, somebody is panic-buying the fruit of the juniper and stockpiling it somewhere. Maybe it’s against the day when supplies of Russian vodka run dry as Mr Putin stamps his foot at the world. Being Scottish, of course, and adept at turning potatoes into anything, this will not faze my fellow countrymen and women one little bit. And you should see what we can do with a neep.
It is said that there are now more than 100 brands of British-made gin available, double the number that used to grace the offy shelves less than a decade ago.
Maybe some of the more esoteric creations will end up in the back of the nation’s drinks cupboards alongside the sad and solo bottle of red Martini with one drink out of it that used to be found in every household. Or perhaps they will find their way into the national medicine cabinet as a cure for whatever ails you. After all, recent claims have been made that drinking gin and tonic can aid those suffering from hay fever, due to lower levels of histamine than are found in other potential health aids such as red wine.
Well, that’s not to be sneezed at. Boom, boom! Oh, please yourselves…
National treasure
A pal of mine went to see the film Finding Your Feet last week and loved it. For those of us of a certain age, it’s a rites-of-passage movie for the older generation and boasts an amazing cast of distinguished – and veteran – British thesps.
What seems to have caught the imagination of many, however, is the appearance of the iconic Joanna Lumley with grey hair. National treasure status is seemingly only awarded to those who sport gold rather than silver threads.
“She’s let her hair go grey!” they gasp, failing to grasp the perhaps contradictory facts that a) this was for a film about older people and b) she was probably reaching for the L’oreal as soon as the last frame faded. And why shouldn’t she? As she has said herself, for female performers in particular, going grey can be like signing your own death warrant in a profession obsessed with looks.
Equally, it’s more than a little irritating for those of us who have succumbed to grey gladness for there to be so much surprise evinced that: “Joanna Lumley looks wonderful with grey hair!”
Of course she does, stupid. Petal, Joanna Lumley looks wonderful, full stop. Grey hair, like goodness, as Mae West once so memorably opined, has nothing to do with it. She starts with so many natural advantages, added to the unerring good taste and discernment of a woman with a brain the size of a small continent, that grey hair works out as a positive plus, even if she does revert to the safety of “ash blonde”.
But all is not lost as the pigment departs and the melanin bows out. Fading to grey is a bit of an art form, as serious practitioners like Jamie Lee Curtis, Diane Keaton and Glenn Close can attest. Then there’s HM (Helen Mirren, not Her Maj, although for a while there it was extremely difficult to get a bus ticket between them).
So “Go, Jo”, I say. At 70-something, you can make grey look great. All it takes now is for the (apparently) greying Duchess of Cambridge or the increasingly root-conscious Angelina Jolie to thrown caution and the Clairol to the winds and the young generation can cease to hope they dye before they get old.