What I see when I look in the mirror bears little, if any, resemblance to my true self. The nervous-looking piebald staring back is more like Ginger from Black Beauty - compliant, broken, surrendered.

Looking closer, lurking somewhere beneath the surface, I can detect an ill-tempered, cruel-handed master. Yep, that's more like it - that's me.

Someone told me that what you see in the mirror is nothing like how you really look, and I think that's true. Well, you don't pose and pout to strangers on a bus do you?

I've noticed in every film there's a scene where the protagonist sizes himself up in the mirror, splashes water on his face and has a word. Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I've never talked to myself in the mirror.

Now, clocking in at 55, I have to smile when I see the "inevitables" coming to pass: the white streak interfering with the Jeff Beck fringe; the dodgem-car knees like bags of walnuts; the teeth, still intact but the colour of a tea bag; the hands, a shame, blue veins popping up through variegated patches as if trying to escape; the face, of course, doesn't count before being drawn on properly. I'm surprised, tomboy that I've always been, not to discover a moustache preparing itself.

I've read that when you're an OAP you become invisible. I quite look forward to that, but maybe only someone who's spent some time with a public profile could value such an indignity.

I think glamour is very important, but I don't know if I have any. You can only see that by the way a person walks down the street.