Anthea Turner: ‘It’s about looking your best at the age you are’

It’s almost hard to believe she celebrated her 61st birthday last May, but Anthea Turner has been gracing our screens for almost 35 years – becoming both a TV icon and an inspiration to women when it comes to her effortless style and beauty.

After first starting out on Top of the Pops in 1988, followed by her most famous TV gig presenting Blue Peter for two years until 1994 before she left to join GMTV AND The National Lottery and travel show Wish You Were Here…?

Anthea’s appearance on Dancing on Ice in 2013, aged 50, and The Jump the following year, left viewers stunned when she appeared not to have aged a day.

But, in her recently released book – How to Age Well: The Secrets - Anthea assures fans there is no secret ingredient to ‘staying young’, instead revealing she has adopted small lifestyle changes and undergoes ‘tweakments’ to keep her looking her best.

On her day-to-day tips, she tells Closer, “We can’t all do yoga every morning and spend the day in an organic spa, we just don’t have the time. It’s about a little collection of things that you fit into your everyday life that put a spring in your step and make you feel better about yourself.

“You don’t have to go to the gym, although resistance training is great, but try pulling your shoulders back and being aware of how it pulls your tummy in. Try it when you’re in Tesco!

“I also live by the 80/20 rule and if I make the right decisions 80% of the time, then I can have that glass of wine or that tiramisu, or apple pie and ice cream.

“Eat food you can see that hasn’t been messed around with and if you like wine, just have one instead of three or try a spritzer instead. It’s about tweaking those little things.”

And although Anthea is a strong advocate of beauty starting from within - mostly from "food and movement" - she’s also very open about undergoing a boob job, Botox and other injectable ‘tweakments’.

“I’ve had my boobs done. They’re the best thing I ever did and I love them! And I haven’t frowned since I was 40,” she says. "But you should just do what feels right for you."

“If there’s anything around that’s a nice injectable that gives you a little bit of a bloom. So you can use all of those things, of course you can, but a pot of cream or Botox can’t hide your lifestyle.”

She adds, “I know two people who have had a little bit of liposuction after they’d had babies. They just had this little bit that didn’t go. I don’t have any judgement whatsoever.”

However, Anthea is keen to stress that after turning 60, she realised more than ever that keeping healthy was paramount.

She added, “These are the years things start to go wrong. It’s not like when you hit 30 and you think you are young, so you can avoid all the horrible illnesses that happen to old people. You are now THAT old person.

“There was quite a good gene pool given to me, so I can’t not acknowledge that, my parents are both still in pretty good shape, but we are now entering the danger zone when it comes to our health. It’s not about how long you live, it’s how well you live in that time.

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"Do you want to be huffing and puffing when out with your dog or your grandchildren, or do you want to wear those jeans and know your ass is going to look good in them? Do you want to wake up feeling like death? Or do you want to wake up feeling sparky?

"It comes from within – it’s a whole lot to do with food and movement and then that starts to show on your face. Of course you can have Botox and ‘tweakments’ but you can’t ping up skin that’s been burnt in the sun because you forgot to put your SPF on.

"It’s about looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘I can’t turn back time, but I look a good example of my age.’ That’s all you can do, really.”

In an age of selfies and self-obsession, Anthea, who is set to wed her fiancé, Mark Armstrong, reveals how vanity and loving yourself – with a slick of lippie! - can really pull you through the toughest of times

“There’s nothing wrong with vanity,” she says.

“At the beginning of my husband and I splitting up [Anthea divorced Grant Bovey in 2015] I was having a really bad day and feeling like s---. It was 2pm in the afternoon and I was in my pajamas and crying on the phone to my mum.

“She said, ‘Get in the shower now, wash your hair, blow dry your hair, put your make-up on, and then call me back’. And I did. All of a sudden, I thought, ‘Ok, then, I can do this’. It doesn’t fix everything but actually, putting your war paint on sometimes [gets you in the right mind set].”

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And Anthea says that despite her confident façade, even she has to give herself a push sometimes.

“You’re always the same person. We’re all still unsure of ourselves,” she says.

“Doing The Real Dirty Dancing, where you really have to channel being an 18 year old, I thought, ‘My god, that’s a stretch! How am I going to do that?’

"But then I realised it’s not that difficult! We’re all that person who walks into a room and thinks everyone is better dressed than them, or they don’t look right, or they don’t sound right. We’re never far away from that person.”

Buy Anthea’s book ‘How To Age Well: The Secrets’. Anthea is also doing a book signing on Wednesday 16th March at Coco White Kings Rd, Chelsea, at 11am.

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