The freshest face: Lulu today
LONDON (Telegraph), February 4, 2008:
It used to annoy her when people like me gawped at her miraculous state of preservation when they should have been more interested in her latest album or tour.
But now she's pushing 60 and "making her own secret skincare formulas available to everyone" there are no such qualms about being asked how she does it. "Bring it on!" she roars.
Even in her pointy black suede high-heeled boots, Lulu is tiny, like a miniature rare breed, which in a way she is. When startled, she can be noisy and excitable. She is singing expressively in the bathroom when I arrive.
"That's what people tell me! It's the craziest thing!" she yelps when I state the obvious: she appears to have gone into some kind of reverse-ageing process. Her mother told her she shouldn't mind having a round face because round faces age well - and so, give or take a ton of moisturiser, it has proved.
The over-made-up 1960s doughnut, who burst on to the pop scene with Shout, has become timelessly pretty. "Why don't you tell them what your secret is?" asked a savvy marketing friend.
At the time, ever inventive, Lulu was buying borage oil capsules and mashing them into her favourite skin product of the moment.
That would have been rather unsophisticated for the multimillion-pound cosmetics industry, so chemists helped her refine the idea and, three years on, Lulu is pouring her personal elixir of youth into a row of globe-shaped pots called, collectively, Time Bomb.
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"People heard me sing Shout and they thought: 'She won't last long.' I thought: 'I'll show you.' I was determined. I learnt, I learnt. That's why I'm still here. I feel I can go on till I'm 80, or longer, if I take care of myself, which I do. It's about your mindset; your approach."
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The Daily Telegraph prepared her obituary way back in 1976 - a telling five paragraphs, which reported that she had the temperament of a prima donna and that the quality she most admired in people, she said, was self-discipline.
Perhaps this was not as glib as it sounded because, when I look at my notes of our conversation, there it is: "I've been disciplined and focused my whole life, and I am today." Two marriages, and four decades of all-round entertainment later, you have to give her full marks for consistency.
When that obituary was written, Lulu was still only 28 but she'd done variety, had her own TV show, starred in the film To Sir With Love (with Sidney Poitier), performed as Peter Pan and belted her heart out in forgettable songs like I'm a Tiger and Boom Bang-a-Bang.
These are extracts. Read the full TELEGRAPH report.
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008
