As Jane Pesch walks into her favourite wine bar, she knows heads will turn. Dressed in a skin-tight minidress, fishnet stockings and skyscraper heels, with her long blonde hair flowing behind her, she knows she looks good as she glides over to a table to meet her girlfriends – or a toyboy lover.
But what most admirers probably won’t realise is that glamorous Jane has a secret. She is a pensioner with a free bus pass. She is in fact 73 years old. And the widowed mum of three is adamant that her age isn’t a barrier to dressing like someone decades younger. To hell with that, is her opinion.
“I suppose I should be wearing a comfortable cardigan and some flat, sensible shoes. But where would be the fun in that?” she says.
“I have friends my age who dress more conservatively than I do. They say, ‘I wish I could wear the clothes you wear, Jane’.
"But who’s stopping them? There’s no law saying the over-70s have to wear tweed!
“Thirty years ago, my three teenage boys’ friends used to wolf whistle me when I picked them up from school. I was flattered that I still ‘had it’.
“So now I’m in my eighth decade, I don’t see why I should fade into the background. I still feel the same as I did back then, so I make every effort to look as young, and as good, as I feel.”
Jane’s role model is Helen Mirren, who at 69 is four years younger than her and is in similarly good nick. She admires the way the actress dresses for her body shape and always looks immaculate. But Jane, from Swadlincote in Derbyshire, admits her size 10 figure doesn’t come easily any more.
“At our age, you can’t just roll out of bed and be ready to go. It takes a lot of hard work to look this good. I still exercise for 30 minutes a day, I still only weigh 8st 7lb but I work hard for a body to die for, and I want to show it off.
"Back in my youth, it was Jane Fonda workout videos that kept me in shape. These days I have a cycling machine in my sitting room which I use every day in front of the TV.
“I’ve always tried to look after myself because the way I see it, you’ve only got one body, you might as well take care of it.
“As a 30-something, I ate healthily and exercised. It was an investment in my future. I am still fit and healthy now, while I have friends complaining about their aches and pains.”
But as she turned 60, like anyone, she couldn’t pretend time wasn’t taking its toll. “Gravity was pulling my cheeks down and I looked tired. It frustrated me. I looked in the mirror and saw an old woman looking back at me. But I didn’t feel old,” she reveals. And she is not ashamed to admit that she turned to the surgeon’s knife for help – she had a boob job in the 1980s after her children were born.
“Unlike friends my age who just complained about ageing, I decided to do something about it,” Jane says. “I flew to Poland and had a face-lift with a company called Secret Surgery.
"I was so bruised I looked like I’d been in the boxing ring and it was painful but the results were wonderful and it knocked 10 years off me.
"After that, I realised there was nothing wrong with a little nip and tuck to help fight off the signs of ageing.”
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