Bye bye,fun guy Burt

I’VE just listened to the recording of my recent interview with actor Burt Reynolds, who has died aged 82. His voice was still smokey and his giggle infectious as we chatted about women, wigs and whether there was life in the old dog yet. Burt was the ultimate 70s sex symbol and Hollywood’s top box office draw – before lavish living and car-crash love affairs led to debt and bankruptcy. He always kept his sense of fun, though – famously posing naked on a bearskin rug for Cosmo to parody his hairy hunk image,

Shooting

vulnerability. But I went to places I needed to go, emotionally, and I learned a lot about myself. I feel I’m only now ready to do my best work.” Even at 82 Burt saw the world through rose-tinted glasses – literally and metaphorically.

And I’d been thinking about him hours before he died, when the 2019 Guinness World Record holders were announced.

Because they included Betty Goedhart, 85, the oldest performing flying trapeze artist. She only began classes at 78 but “always believed I could accomplish anything with hard work and determination”.

And Sumiko Iwamura, 83, from Tokyo, has become the oldest professional club DJ. “Doing something totally different is energising,” she says. These optimistic octogenarians are an inspiration.

Burt had a terrible health history – spinal surgery, a heart complaint and rehab for painkiller addiction after a shattered jaw led him to lose 40lbs.

And in 80s La La Land, he became unemployable due to rumours he had Aids.

Yet two months ago he told me cheerily he was “getting in shape” for three new movies.

Sadly, we never got to see the roles Burt believed would be his best.

But, when his death was announced, I could hear his smokey voice once more. “I know I’m old but I feel young,” he said. “And there is one thing they can never take away. Nobody has had more fun than I did.”

of Galia Grainger, star of its new series The Extreme Diet Hotel.

So if the flab gets too bad I can always go and spend a week with the super-strict, whippet-thin, stilettoheeled Russian weight-loss guru.

Galia likes to wield a riding crop as she bullies people into knocking off a stone or two. And she calls herself the Diet Dominatrix.

Nah. Think I’ll stick to whipped cream and kneading me own baps.