When will I see anyone again?
As Three Degrees star Sheila Ferguson joins the growing number of lonely over-60s, she asks:
AGE cannot wither Sheila Ferguson. Or at least, that’s how it looks. Surely few who have been watching the Three Degrees star appear in the latest series of BBC1’s The Real Marigold Hotel would argue: despite being a year shy of her 70th birthday, she could pass for being decades younger.
Sheila can be seen in the reality television show living side by side with the other ‘OAP’ celebrities, including entertainer Lionel Blair, 88, Coronation Street actress Amanda Barrie, 81, and television presenter Bill Oddie, 75.
In the four-part series, they decamp to Kerala in southern India and live in a hotel, just like the characters in the similarly named film, to consider whether they could live out the rest of their days there.
The American-born soul singer still sports the trim figure and buoyant mane of curls that seemed to bewitch Prince Charles when he invited the girl group behind hits such as When Will I See You Again and Woman In Love to play at his 30th birthday party in 1978.
But the glitz and glamour of London in the 1970s and 1980s, when Sheila was a regular face at legendary nightclubs such as Annabels and Tramp, seem a distant memory. And beneath her still-fabulous facade, the mother-of-two admits she is terribly lonely, having struggled to rebuild a social life after the death of her partner in 2011.
Although the series is currently being broadcast (the final episode is on Wednesday) filming finished last year and Sheila is now back living at her sprawling hilltop villa in Majorca.
She says: ‘When I got home, I put my suitcase down, closed the door and sat at the head of my 14-seater dining table, alone.
‘I was the only one at the hotel who had no one to go back to.
‘Everyone else had stories about doing things with their children and grandchildren and husbands and wives. I just had to sit there trying to smile over my bacon and eggs.
‘Back at home, looking out over the veranda at the beautiful sea view, I knew I didn’t want to be here any more.
‘All this time, I’ve been filling the emptiness in my life with work. It’s easy, there’s always a script to read or costume designer to email, or people to reply to on social media.
‘Being on the show made me really address the end, and the fact that it’s closer than the beginning. I asked myself, where do I want to be in ten years’ time? I’d never done that.
‘So I’ve put the house on the market. I’m going to start property- hunting in London now and I want to be there by the end of the year.’
In January, the charity Age UK warned of a hidden epidemic of loneliness and isolation facing Britain’s older generations. Half a million people over the age of 60 often go an entire week without social contact, their survey found. Some 200,000 had not had a conversation with friends or family for a month. And an estimated 1.2million older people in England are now classed as chronically lonely, meaning they have experienced loneliness for many years.
Sheila, who has lived alone in Majorca since 40-year-old theatre technician Jon Curry, her partner of five years, died unexpectedly from a heart attack in 2010, knows only too well about the creep of social isolation.
She says: ‘When I’m not travelling for work, Thursday is the only day I see anyone and that’s my gardener and housekeeper.
‘Andrew Lloyd Webber and actress Claire Sweeney are my neighbours and it’s great when they’re around – but that’s not all the time.
‘Summer in Majorca is better, because people come to visit. But
between February and April it’s a ghost town.’
‘I always felt when Jon was alive it was like our own personal island. But since he’s gone, I’ve become more and more isolated.’
With her children, 35-year-old twins Alexandra and Alicia, living with their families in the UK and United Arab Emirates, and most of her friends dotted across continents, Sheila found herself spending more and more time alone.
She says she has been haunted by guilt over Jon’s death, and this has played a part in her reluctance to meet someone else.
She recalls: ‘Jon’s death was very sudden. I wasn’t with him, I was performing in Cork in Fame. We had argued and I said, “When I get back I want everything you have out of my house ASAP!” He hugged me and said, “We will never be parted until one of us is dead.”
‘Those were his last words to me. A friend came to stay the first weekend I came home after Jon’s death. We cried and drank too much vodka, but after she left I came to the realisation I was alone and I stayed that way for the next seven years.’
The pain of loneliness goes beyond being a detrimental emotional experience, with research showing that it can be harmful to health. Research by York, Liverpool and Newcastle universities showed that lonely people have a 30 per cent increased risk of suffering heart disease and stroke.
Last year, Age UK produced a report titled No One Should Have No One, which highlighted that the risk of dementia, depression and diabetes also increased with isolation.
Caroline Abrahams, their charity director, said: ‘Loneliness is certainly not inevitable in later life but it remains a widespread issue that blights the lives of far too many older people.
‘We know that those older people who are lonely are more likely to suffer health problems and to require long-term care, have a higher use of medication and need to visit their GP more often.’
For savvy silver surfers, social media and email makes contact easier, but it can compound the problem. It certainly did for Sheila. She says: ‘I spent hours and hours on Facebook and Twitter. But it’s not real contact. In my darkest hours I would pour out my feelings in email to two of my best friends. I’d got it out of my system but there was no real interaction. Nothing can be a substitute for that.’
In Real Marigold Hotel, Sheila went on her first date in seven years. It wasn’t love at first sight, but she enjoyed it. She says: ‘He was widowed so we had that in common. He owned the hotel we were staying in.
‘He asked me, ‘Would you consider spending your life with an Indian gentleman?” I think it was a proposal, but I didn’t accept. But it did make me realise I’m ready to share my life with someone again, and I would with the right person. I don’t want to die on my own.’ The Real Marigold Hotel is on BBC1 on Wednesday at 9pm.