You know the famous scene from When Harry Met Sally? In the diner? When Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm and the camera cuts to an elderly “frump” who deadpans, “I’ll have what she’s having!”? Well, it transpires that I am that elderly frump and Meg Ryan is actually Carol Vorderman. Although she is not performing fake orgasms at the table next to me, we’re certainly in the same subject terrain after the TV star revealed to the Mail on Sunday that she is blissfully happy thanks to a carefully orchestrated “dating system” that involves a rotating schedule of five different “special friends”.
Yes, five! At 62? How does the former Countdown host find the . . . ? Where does she get the . . . ? How does she not . . . ? The mind boggles, just as the respiratory system balks, and so I will indeed have what she’s having. Although this turns out to be lots of yoga, intermittent fasting, 18-day juice retreats, a personal trainer, hyperbaric oxygen therapy and plenty of turmeric and spermidine.
The spermidine, apparently, is to encourage cellular renewal. You can source it from aged cheddar, mushrooms and mangos, although when Vorderman was asked she had fun with the etymology, and naughtily replied that it was, of course, “named after what you might imagine because that’s where it was first found”.
That’s the thing about Vordy. She’s always been one of the lads. Or at least she has been since sometime in her fifties, when she morphed from the giddy maths nerd with the curly mullet who blushed madly when the letters “F . . . A . . . R . . . T” were drawn on Countdown to the “sizzling” red-carpet curve queen who famously announced on a 2018 episode of Loose Women that her big ambition for the new year was: “I would like to go to space and do, ahem, certain things in space!”
Yep. She wanted space sex. Not to be confused with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s interplanetary business venture, which, knowing Musk’s canny marketing instincts, will probably involve space sex at some future point (Hey, Vordy! Give him a bell!). Vorderman, in the same interview, also noted that her fifties was her best decade yet, and she was basically living the dream as the thinking man’s Barbara Windsor, but with a pilot’s licence and an honorary RAF title, and jacked up on an intoxicating cocktail of good vibes, gut-busting gym routines, and sensational form-fitting Lycra outfits that left her fans “in awe of her amazing figure” (actual newspaper headline).
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And now, as she squat thrusts into her sixties, the dream seems even more vivacious, and even more intense. She is, in maths parlance, Vorderman squared multiplied by five (special friends). Where does this all end? At 88, on a Zimmer frame, piloting an enormous rocket to Alpha Centauri with a cargo load of 2,000 special friends in hypersleep? “You know me!” she’ll say, on her Insta’ vlog, from just beyond Uranus, while shuffling slowly down the rocket’s vast interior past a seemingly endless row of quietly bleeping hibernation pods. “I don’t believe in all that Prince Charming nonsense! Hmmm, now which one will it be today?”
Obviously, as someone who’s only recently emerged into his fifties I want to believe that it is indeed going to be my best decade ever. But I cannot imagine the energy required to practise the Vorderman method, and I certainly can’t contemplate the idea of five special friends. Nightmare. All that small talk? And keeping up with backstories, and juggling their sensitivities. Because, not that she’s asking, clearly, I couldn’t become one of Vordy’s special buddies. I’m way too fragile and clingy. I’d just ruin every one of our trysts with solid crying and broken-hearted pleading. “I bet you make Rear of the Year jokes with No 3?” “Do you fly with No 2?” “Tell me the truth! Is No 4 better at conundrums than me?” And the answer to all of the above? “Shut up and drink your spermidine!”
Are vegans getting stronger?
I’m shocked to discover that militant vegans were planning to sabotage the Grand National. Apparently, the plan was to use bolt cutters to “storm” the security fences, then charge the track and finally glue themselves together. I’m shocked because most of the vegans I know would require a decent sit-down and several glasses of echinacea in between each phase. They tend to be a bit wheezy and brittle, with a year-round perma-sniffle and strongly held political convictions that are in direct and inverse proportion to their apparent physical health. That’s probably just my generation, though. There must be a new crop of vegans, the militant ones, who are super-healthy and focused and strong enough, at least, to lift bolt cutters. Then it’s nap time.
Buck up your ideas, baristas
The National Trust is apparently putting their café staff under the cosh and we’re supposed to feel outrage. In an attempt to speed up service times, the staff are being asked to make an order of three coffees and a hot chocolate within two and a half minutes. Some of the employees, perhaps unsurprisingly, have reacted with fury, claiming, “We’re being treated like children!” I think it’s a great idea. My favourite ingredient in takeaway coffee is speed — by which I mean the rapidity of service. There are, for instance, two cafés opposite our local railway station — an independent bijou hipster place and Starbucks. I’ve started, recently, patronising the Starbucks because the bijou place is agonisingly slow. I’ve ordered there previously and had to dash without the coffee, for fear of missing the train. The staff are essentially a posse of twentysomethings chatting among themselves and faffing about with each coffee as if they’re teasing out the secrets to nuclear fusion. Starbucks? To me it tastes like utter muck, but it’s done in 40 seconds. No contest.
