Keeping mum at arms’ length

12:59pm Monday 30th June 2008

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WHEN my daughter reaches adulthood, I don’t want us to be best friends. I don’t want people to mistake us for sisters. And I certainly don’t want us to hang out together with her girlfriends.

The thought of tagging along with her to a club, having to pretend I like the god-awful music and shaking my ancient booty on the dancefloor fills me with dread.

By the time she reaches her 20s, I want to be a fully-fledged mad old bat who she loves dearly but doesn’t want to be seen dead with.

I don’t think it’s healthy – for the mind, body or spirit – for parents to cling on so desperately to their youth that their children eventually catch them up.

Flicking through a copy of Hello! last week (I know, I really don’t have any shame at all, do I?) I chanced across a photo spread of the actress Jane Seymour and her daughter, Katie.

Jane, who starred with Roger Moore in Live And Let Die and went on to cure the sick in Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman, is 56. Her actress daughter, who hasn’t starred in anything that I can find on Google or Wikipedia, is 26.

There is 30 years between them, but they look like sisters. There they are, lounging about on a beach in their bikinis, rabbiting on about how they are more like friends than mother and daughter without a single wrinkle, sag or bag between them.

They go to the theatre together, they run together, they learn lines together, they chill out with Katie’s twentysomething friends together and they even buy clothes together so they can swap and change outfits from one wardrobe to another.

Jane claims she looks young because she spends so much time with her young daughter. Personally, I think the breast implants, eyelift, liposuction and full-time hairdresser, make-up artist and personal trainer probably helped a bit too, but who am I to argue?

It’s the same with Fergie and her girls. They’re always bleating on about being the best of friends and wearing each other’s clothes and chatting up the same men. And, frankly, I find it cloying to the point of nausea.

It’s nice for mothers and daughters to be close, but when you can’t get a single, solitary page of Hello! between them, maybe it’s time they backed off a bit. And if you’ve gone past the point of sharing secrets and are fast approaching the point of sharing men, you might want to consider putting your friendly local psychiatrist on speed-dial.

To be honest, I’m looking forward to the day when my daughter and her twentysomething friends look at me in wide-eyed horror every time I walk into the room because I’m such a heart-stopping embarrassment to them.

I already know what I’m going to wear: a gardening smock, flip-flops, a jaunty paisley scarf, pale blue eyeshadow and frosted pink lipstick (smeared on my teeth).

What fun!
AND that, my lovely chums, is your lot. After years of having to put up with my weekly witterings, you are being set free to indulge in other more culturally nourishing pursuits (you’d better be quick though, Loose Women finishes in five minutes).

I’m very sorry to be leaving, but times change and so do columnists. I only hope my successor has as much fun with you as I have had.

And if you do see me wandering aimlessly down Coney Street next Monday desperately looking for someone to rattle on to, don’t be shy, say hello and buy me a cuppa.

Or you could just sling 50p in my tin cup and I’ll buy my own.