When my blood ran cold from the embarrassment…

ALREADY we’re being nudged to deal with bingo wings and turkey neck plus back fat and muffin top and cankles (calf and ankle joining up) and ninkles (wrinkled knees) and not, so far, wankles (wrinkled cankles) or finkles (fat ninkles), though surely it’s all on the horizon.

But now we’re being offered anti-ageing treatments like vampire facials, derma-rolling and micro-needling to make the face look younger and healthier.

Micro-needling (uses tiny pins to mildly prick the skin, supposedly making it produce more collagen and reduce wrinkle lines) sounds just about bearable whereas Vampire or “Dracula” facials involve blood AND needles – two of my least favourite things. A nurse takes a small syringe of blood from your arm from which the platelet-rich plasma is extracted. Your face is then covered in a topical anaesthetic so when the plasma is injected back into it, it hurts less – allegedly!

But then, these are strange times we live in now. With regular news items about teenagers choosing Botox and other anti-ageing procedures. Male TV actors/presenters having “work done” to look better (ie. younger) on HD TV. Let alone what A-Listers get up to simply to keep their fans happy.

Though one actor, at least, apparently didn’t care less about his fans. One cold, wet night, after a stage performance of My Fair Lady, an elderly woman stood alone outside the Stage Door waiting for Rex Harrison and his autograph. When Rex told her to “sod off”, she was so enraged she rolled up her program and soundly thumped him. Fellow actor Stanley Holloway, who’d witnessed this, congratulated Rex on making theatre history for “the fan has hit the ****!”.

My only claim to acting “fame” was in a joint girls/boys school production of Julius Caesar. Unfortunately, I was killed off early on – an abrupt end to surely a promising career. But my death scene was a particular challenge because I had to lie unmoving on stage for ages and because, from my prone position, I had teenage boys in togas bending right over me…

Nora Johnson’s psychological crime thrillers ‘The Girl in the Woods’, ‘The Girl in the Red Dress’, ‘No Way Back’, ‘Landscape of Lies’, ‘Retribution’, ‘Soul Stealer’, ‘The De Clerambault Code’ (www.nora-johnson.net) available from Amazon in paperback/eBook (€0.99;£0.99) and iBookstore. All profits to Costa del Sol Cudeca cancer charity