During my Mykonos to London City flight this August, I gazed down at the Alps, engrossed in the thought-sequence I use to self-soothe during any turbulence in life as well as air travel.
I’ve had peak everything, I tell myself, looking down at the wriggly white cols, the crumpled ranges, the deliquescing glaciers. If my plane goes down today, no hard feelings, God. I’ve been hashtag blessed, big time.
I’ve had peak education (top London girls’ day school, then I was actually paid to go to university). I had peak journalism (first job, graduate trainee on the Financial Times), peak publishing (I sold the rights to my first novel, Notting Hell, for silly money), peak broadcasting (BBC, now LBC), plus peak travel with cheap flights and cheap oil…
I know this is irritating and sounds boastful — sorry, I am coming to the boil soon.
My husband counters all this by saying yes, but he had peak music as the Beatles and Stones were his era, not mine, and he was there at the Isle of Wight in 1970 to see Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, the Doors, Leonard Cohen, but still. Overall I win and now, guess what?
Elizabeth Hurley has been floating naked on a slice of watermelon, Carol Vorderman posted a clips reel with plenty of bikini pics
I have surfed the zeitgeist of outrageous fortune yet again because if you hadn’t already noticed, Baby, It’s Hot Outside — and this time the fires are being fanned by women my vintage.
Let’s leave aside the fact Sienna Miller, 41, is with child with a child (actually the divine Oli Green is my son’s age, 26. I know that because they were best friends at school). Too young (both). Doesn’t count.
All rise then, for — in no particular order — Amanda Holden. She just posted, as is her wont, a picture of Amanda Holden showering poolside in a tiny bikini looking a trillion dollars.
This triggered one Andrew Tate, the King of Toxic Masculinity. “You’re a wife and mother and you’re far past a teenager. There is no need for this post,” snarled the man who has been locked up for alleged sex-trafficking to the Queen Of Heart Breakfast. Ms Holden said she was tempted to reply “kiss my 52-year-old arse” which was on brand. “I am seriously thinking my girls need separate representation to me,” she doubled down (I hope each “girl” gets an agent each — they deserve nothing less!).
Meanwhile, this August the age and gravity-defying Elizabeth Hurley has been floating naked on a slice of watermelon, Vorders has released a clips reel to celebrate reaching 400k Instafans, with OK magazine drooling that the content contained plenty of “bikini pics, red carpet looks and workout videos”.Trinny, 59, the make-up mogul, has promoted her new book Fearless with a stunning shoot (I think she was topless but all I could look at was her six-pack).
The soundtrack to this summer of 2023 has been Kylie, 55, who has topped the charts twice, first with Padam Padam and now with Tension.
Her producer, Lostboy, took Capital and Radio 1 to task for initially being slow to play tracks by an “older woman” and therefore way behind the times.
All I can say is yaaaas KWEEN! to all the above — and more. I can’t tell you how long this — first the acceptance, second the celebration of the foxiness of the Mature Laydee — has been in coming.
It seems only yesterday that the only woman in the world with a younger man was Joan Collins. British women over 35 were informed most days in the Daily Mail they were biologically extinct, New Yorkers were more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get a date with a man. Any man.
Amy Schumer’s legendary “Last F***ble Day” sketch was a skit on the fact that if you were a female actress you had built-in obsolescence in the “industry” around age 35 and — unless you were Susan Sarandon — you would be cast as the male lead’s mother. Even if he was older than you.
That was then. Now, ripeness really is all and — I know this because I tried to bag them as I thought the sites could be a tidy pension if I had any business smarts at all — every varietal of the domain names Only Grans and Only Nans has been snapped up already. And you know why, don’t make me explain.
It’s official. Forget Hot Girl Summer, whatever that was.
It’s 2023. It’s Hot Milf Summer now and I am here for it.
PS: This just in. My old man has inquired if I’d like a sub to a site called ToyBoyWarehouse.com he’d been reading about with eyes popping in the out-there extracts of Stacey Duguid’s new “peak milf” memoir.
Reader, I’m not even sure he was joking.
