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Every week a well-known celebrity reveals all in our health quiz.
Here, bonkbuster queen Dame Shirley Conran reveals how she suddenly gave up sex, aged 89.
And why he always uses a measure for his lunch gin and tonic.
Dame Shirley Conran regrets smoking to be ‘like everyone else’ during her university years
Can you run up the stairs?
No. In 2021 I had hip surgery and since then I can’t stand for long, much less run.
Do you get your five a day?
Certainly not. I think five a day is marketing rubbish.
I have a boiled egg in the morning and a proper meal at lunchtime, with a gin and tonic.
Breakfast for the author of Lace is a boiled egg, with a “proper meal” and a G&T at lunchtime.
For tea I always have one or two fruits (today, a large orange) and in the evening, an open sandwich.
My favorite vegetable is spinach, barely cooked and with a spoonful of cream.
Have you ever been on a diet?
I used to be a size 10 up and 12 down, and 5ft 7in.
I am now 5 feet 2 inches tall.
I don’t worry about my weight because a couple of years ago I was prescribed steroids and became Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Steroids are for COPD. [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].
It means that sometimes I have difficulty breathing.
When I was an art student I smoked cheap Woodbines to be like everyone else.
I didn’t know I was inhaling death.
Any vice?
As my father was an alcoholic, I always use a measure for my gin.
Any family ailment?
My father died of liver sclerosis at the age of 59.
My mother was 97 years old when she died after a fall.
I inherited my father’s asthma, as did my brother Charles, and he died of an asthma attack when he was 76 years old.
My brother Jason died of a stomach ulcer and my sister Juliet of cancer.
My sister Isabel and my brother Richard are still alive; I am the oldest.
Worst illness/injury?
I have had chronic fatigue syndrome (or CFS/ME) since I was 37 years old.
I went into the hospital with viral pneumonia and left with it.
I was the Mail’s women’s editor and had to stop working regular hours, and that’s why I wrote Lace, to earn money, as I had two small children.
Sometimes I would stay in bed for two months at a time, in a dark room.
Everyone has to whisper to you because talking normally damages your ears and daylight damages your eyes.
All you can do is stay there and suffer.
Take any pills?
I took HRT when I was 57, but after six weeks my gynecologist stopped it because I started to look like Humpty Dumpty.
I also take something called levetiracetam; I have no idea what it is for, and risedronate and spironolactone.
Whoever invented the blister pack deserves a knighthood.
Dame Shirley takes a trio of pills daily, but stopped HRT after six weeks on the advice of her doctor.
Has anything ever been taken from you?
A benign lump the size of a tennis ball on my head in 2020; It was only after the operation that they told me that they were surprised that I had survived.
I had to relearn how to talk, eat and drink.
Have you ever had plastic surgery?
At 14, I looked at my mother’s neck and thought, ‘I’m going to have neck surgery when I’m 50.’
So I did it.
Cope with pain well?
Yes, I had a wisdom tooth removed and eye surgery, both without anesthesia.
Is sex important?
It was important until I was 89 years old.
Then overnight it stopped, bingo, no response.
Alternative remedies?
I take a vitamin recommended by Helen Mirren on television.
Have you ever been depressed?
He was depressed when I left the hospital with me.
And the doctor said there was nothing wrong with me.
They thought I had gone crazy.
Hangover cure?
I don’t have a hangover because I don’t drink much.
What keeps you up at night?
Worry. I have four lawsuits right now.
Dame Shirley Conran has been co-curator of the modern art collection at St Paul’s Girls’ School. Art, which opens the next fall.