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 Things to think about when you go dating online

Whom are you looking for:

Pick out a few profiles that catch your eye, and scribble some notes about what they're looking for. These notes will help you start writing your profile. If you're drawn to profiles written with a dry sense of humour, or which are very chatty, write yours in that style too.

 My mother was very meticulous about what she wore when she reached 60. Indeed, she laid down a strict list of dos and don’ts – and if you’re wondering why you should listen to anything that my old mother said, she was, in the ‘sixties, a veritable fashion icon, Professor of Fashion at the Royal College of Art and responsible for nurturing designers like Ossie Clarke, Zandra Rhodes, Anthony Price… you name them, she influenced them.

…and it’s not the Playtex bra?

No I’m talking about jeans! Very special jeans brought into the country from the States by a company called nydj or “Not Your Daughter’s Jeans!

Doesn’t that just evoke a wonderful picture of all those designer denims:

We saw, we tried to conquer and then gave up

BUT then our daughters found them and are now looking fabulous in the new style and wash!!

I have mouthful of battleship-grey fillings that makes the tooth vet wince when I go there: full of enough mercury to measure the temperature of a glacier. The teeth are, however, more or less all there.

Not so for my unfortunate spouse, with a gap of three bottom left: shades of witches around the cauldron in Macbeth.

OK, six grand in the UK . Must be cheaper in France but, no, same deal. Friend in Lyon says all the Germans go to Hungary to get their teeth fixed.

After Hermès, we were the world’s biggest tie brand in the luxury sector: close on 1 million ties a year at £40 a pop.

I used to cruise round the Pacific, selling Dunhill ties into the duty-free sector. The most popular ties were the British regimental stripes, based on a blue background to match the standard work dress of the Japanese manager: the blue suit. Latterly we would sell burgundy-based ties to go with the newly fashionable grey suit of the corporate manager.

Are we all overloaded with “tips for looking good?

YES!! Magazines all seem to do it and TV, both terrestrial and satellite. I feel as though I see more women being pulled and tucked, stretched and filled, than I do chickens on cookery programmes. Haven’t we had enough?

Of course we still do, actually, like to look good! Our wardrobe is really the easiest place to start – no hideous decisions then on surgery or filling: just the minefield of who, what and why each shop/ brand/designer

“I’m old enough to be your mother/grandmother: but I don’t want to be!”

There is a growing trend and the media are full of it! It’s Older Women dating Younger Men. This has had high exposure in the celebrity world with people like Madonna, Demi Moore and, of course, Joan Collins all meeting and marrying men well below their own age.

The Daily Mail and Grazia magazine have both recently given pages over to discussing “Cougars”, as these women have been officially named.

The first time I took over as managing director of Lyle & Scott www.lyleandscott.com I was given the factory tour. The only locked door was the cashmere yarn store. “Aye that will go over the wall if we don’t lock it up.” Home knitted – back of a lorry.

The cashmere yarn came in two variants: single twelves for ladies’ 21-gauge, fully fashioned ( fine knits); and two-fold eighteens for the 15-gauge frames for the men’s trade ( chunkier for the American golfer!)