Holding back the tears for dear Bill
WE seem to be a nation obsessed with looking and feeling younger.
This week government figures revealed ten million Brits alive today can expect to reach 100, there are j ust 15,000 centenarians in the UK today.
With one in six of us expected to reach that magic number, anti-ageing is now a lucrative business.
TV is jumping on the bandwagon by making programmes aimed to help us grow old gracefully. The returning ten- part BBC1 lifestyle series Holding Back The Years aims to show golden oldies how to tackle everyday problems.
This week’s show, presented by Bill Turnbull, Fiona Phillips and Dr Rangan Chatterjee, covered everything from the dreaded middle- aged spread to the nightmare of sleeplessness – no cuppas after midday, avoid caffeine and switch off or move bedside electronic items.
All practical advice that you’d be lucky to get in the ten minutes you’re allowed with an NHS GP. Even at my tender years it was fascinating stuff, without being PIERS Morgan’s Life Stories with comic Jim Davidson was disgraceful. It should have been compulsive viewing given Davidson’s five marriages, drink and drug addictions and an arrest for alleged historical sex crimes. Instead they smirked and joked their way throughout the interview like a pair of old dinosaurs. After a Davidson boast about twelvesomes, Morgan asked: “Your sons are listening to this?” The comedian replied: “I would’ve invited them but they were too young.” Shameful. Davidson showed no preachy or pompous, with plenty of humour. Bill, wearing a bald wig and investigating the hair transplant trend, asked a passerby: “Would you be attracted to a man without hair?”
“Only if you were Bruce Willis,” chuckled the middle-aged woman.
But Brian Beacon, 50, had forked out £8k to cover his thinning patches and didn’t regret a penny of it.
He said: “Some people can look great bald but when you’re 5ft 8in, Scottish and blue-eyed you look like a criminal.”
Moving
But the 9.15am weekdays programme, a sort of updated version of Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life! also took on topical, hard-hitting issues.
Millions of British women are currently turning to prescription drugs to hold back the aches and pains of later life.
The number of opioid analgesics doled out has leapt by 500 per cent in 20 years, having the potential to be a huge public health disaster in the future. Fibromyalgia remorse for his womanising. The pair were shockingly out of touch especially when they laughed over the phrase “women of horizontal refreshment”. Piers was an even bigger idiot not to have his finger on the pulse – aired days after we celebrated International Women’s Day. sufferer Cathryn Kemp, 47, from Brighton, revealed she was taking around 55 painkilling lozenges a day. “By this stage I knew I was going to die so each night I’d write a note and leave it under my pillow for mum saying ‘I’m sorry.’”
Cathryn was refused NHS detox help because she was neither an offender nor homeless so was forced to sell her home to pay for expensive private treatment which, thankfully, worked.
She has since formed PAIN, Painkiller Addiction Information Network, to help other sufferers.
It was a poignant and moving confession especially as Bill, 62, has revealed he has incurable prostate cancer.
The ex BBC Breakfast host, diagnosed last year during filming for Great British Bake-Off celebrity special in aid of cancer, said he may have another decade left.
I have nothing but admiration for the much-respected presenter and we all wish him and his family well throughout his treatment. Holding Back the Years? It was more a case of holding back the tears. BRITS are bonkers about bulldogs, who symbolise our courage and fighting TUreet, spirit. sum Sadly quipit these nim days aliquamet, the bulldog at, quis has alit little chance of verosti a healthy ncincilit doluptat, life. After 150 corem years of inbreeding veros they digna dolore te mincidunt are plagued by spinal and breathing faccumsandio lobor acilit problems and repeated conumsa praesenim alit bacterial infections. Shock research ver aut landiamet shows unless it’s crossed with other breeds it will die accummo dipsum out. ing Dog lover, comedian and ea commy nos actress Catherine Tate was clearly “bovvered” and having none of it on BBC1’s Saving the British Bulldog. She saw the dogs’ suffering and sought expert advice on saving them. Rowena, from The Royal Veterinary College, told us: “The health of the bulldog is only going to get better if we stop breeding it for looks.” And therein lies the problem.Most Brits want a bulldog because of the way it looks. Unless we change, it seems we are in danger of loving this adorable dog to extinction. For a nation of dog lovers this was tough viewing.