OPINION
Twiggy (L) and Vanessa Feltz (Image: PA)
We all know about You’re walking into the school staffroom, or board meeting, or Nobel Prize recipient arena and instead of striding confidently forwards, you’re beset by an overwhelming conviction that everyone will realise you’re a blagger: a kid who got lucky and is utterly out of her depth.
Impostor syndrome is a pandemic. Even the revered says she suffers from it. Did you realise another syndrome is also running rampant?
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It’s called “impossible syndrome” and none of us is exempt. is one illustrious example of a human being caught in its throes. She is 75 and says candidly: “I don’t feel old enough to think about death.”
Twiggy’s piercingly bright.
She knows perfectly well that she’s already exceeded her biblical allocation of three score years and 10. Don’t waste time wondering why she believes she’s to juvenile to contemplate her own mortality. It’s obvious. She’s in the warm embrace of “impossible syndrome”.
How do I know? Because I’m in the identical position. Technically, I’m on the cusp of my 63rd birthday. Intellectually, spiritually and metaphysically I know it’s impossible I could be so ancient. Inside I feel 14. I’m convinced I am still frisky, bursting with hormones and as naively impressionable as I was in my teens.
It’s out of the question for someone with my frolicsome temperament to be an antique, creaking through my seventh decade. If I catch a glimpse of myself in an artfully lit mirror I’m certain I can pass for 37. Yes, I know my isn’t what it was but a touch of visual fuzziness helps to foster the syndrome.
Some of my contemporaries are in varying stages of decrepitude. Some have “had work”. Some should. Some are weighed down by life’s burden, limping resignedly off to the knacker’s yard.
Not I though, and not Twiggy. And we’ve all met 87-year-olds who volunteer to help the elderly.
Despite what it states on their passports they are forever young, happy to serve soup to people 10 years their junior, adamant that they have dodged the ageing bullet. Please don’t attempt to “cure” these “impossible syndrome” sufferers. We may be deluded but we’re bouncy and buoyant and we like it just that way.
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Amanda Holden is unstoppable (Image: GC Images)
is a fiercely hard-working, straight-shooting, potty-mouthed and hilariously feisty example of relentless re-invention.
Refusing to be sidelined, Amanda, has the talent and determination to do any job that crops up to fill the family coffers and accomplishes the task at hand with grace and good humour. Not only can she sing, dance, act, present, guest and design interiors, she also manages to sizzle in an impossibly alluring style all the while.
The level of graft she’s prepared to put into simply being is eye-wateringly impressive. She has toiled tirelessly since she was a child and at 53 is poised to take over Saturday night TV.
She’s one of the few people I believe implicitly when she says: “If it all went t*** up tomorrow I’d be gutted, but I’d work as a cashier in again.”
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Classicist Mary Beard is not really Mary Beard at all. The somewhat prosaic “Mary”, a name so often associated with contrariness, is in fact her middle name. She abhors her first name which turns out to be the wild and wonderful “Winifred”.
Why Mary, considers her true moniker “frumpish” I can’t imagine. Winifreds shimmer through history and shine through literature. My favourite is Winnie in Dorothy Edwards’ Naughty Little Sister, proud possessor of cascading ringlets so envied by her sister. For the record my middle name is Jane: far too boring to use except on last wills and testaments.
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King Charles III and Alessandro Palazz during a dinner in celebration of Slow Food (Image: PA)
I have so much to say about the royal Anglo-Italian dinner featuring flavoursome input from foodie and flawless glamour courtesy of served to
Was anyone else floored by item one on the menu: “Rare and pasture salumi”? Alongside millions of bewildered Windsor-watchers, I found myself googling “difference between salami and salumi” and I’m still none the wiser.
Salami – apparently the word is plural – are a specific type of salumi, which means cured meat made from a whole cut of any animal. The “rare and pasture” bit suggests some of the beasts were grazing in a field before being culled, while others were roaming wild and had to be bumped off with bows and arrows, which is unlikely. Don’t get me started on the mysteries of Scottish crab panzanella.
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I swore I’d never be one of the clingy grandmas who walks through the door and demands kisses from her descendants. All the child-rearing manuals tell you to respect kids’ boundaries and make sure never to pressure them for cuddles or kisses.
Usually, I comply dutifully but last Friday night the rule must have slipped my mind. “Come on, give your Grandma Vanessa who adores every hair on your gorgeous head a smacking great kiss,” I implored. The answer was swift: “I don’t feel like it.”
has faced similar tribulations: “I say, ‘Come and give grandad a kiss’, but she won’t,” he lamented.
I might have said something sharp but a vivid memory of being forced to embrace relatives when I was a child – and how violently I detested it – bubbled into my brain. “Fair enough,” I said, calmly. “Entirely up to you.” Half an hour later my right cheek was voluntarily pecked. Hooray! Those manuals are spot on and Sir Rod and I just have to sit tight and wait.
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Royals plant trees. Straight-forward enough, but who knew it could develop into some kind of competitive sport?
Sophie, , has revealed she and her husband Edward make spot-checks to see how their trees are doing. “We’ve got a bit of a competition between the two of us as to, if we plant a tree, whose then does better over the years.”
The Edinburghs have been married 25 years and Sophie’s snippet of information gives us a tiny insight into one of the Windsor family’s few truly happy unions.
Gently joshing one another about trees beats stony silence or complaining about the boredom of tree planting. Finding something to enjoy and ignite a spark of good-humoured competition in what could be a repetitive routine is an art.Sophie and Edward have cracked the challenge of teasing out life’s laughs. Onlookers described their recent Nepal tour as abundant in laughter. Here’s to the next 25 years.