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Fatigued from the hour time-change, this week I was already feeling substantially older than my 47 years before I came across some information which made me wither further. Proudly on my algorithm, next to an AI-generated picture of a woman with more wrinkles than an elderly Shar-pei, was the information that ageing occurs in two rapid bursts around age 44 and age 60. Super, I thought, that’s something to look forward to.

As most females over the age of 45 can attest – everything becomes more difficult right about now. There are days when I have less energy than a sloth and as much tolerance as a dying wasp, and I may well be in the market for some new knees.

That’s not to mention that a mere glance at a cake is all it takes to cushion my midriff, and that’s despite not drinking alcohol, going to the gym three times a week and doing my 10,000 steps a day.

But little did I know that a miracle cure was available all the while, to fight gravity and stop time in its tracks – an elixir of youth, if you will – and it costs absolutely nothing. Nada. And we can thank none other than the sublime Elizabeth Hurley for this life-changing knowledge.

At 60, she appears to have sailed straight past both of these supposed ageing milestones without so much as a stiletto wobble. And this week, dressed in her favoured attire of swimwear, she gave some revolutionary insight into her Benjamin Button ways.

Liz Hurley in a recent photo she shared on social media

‘I don’t personally guzzle weird green juices or take a load of supplements – but I’ve drunk two mugs of warm water first thing every morning for as long as I remember, and I swear by it (and it’s free),’ she wrote on Instagram, prompting a nationwide shortage of kettles. Really? Warm water is all it takes for such dramatic telomere shortening? I’d guzzle it by the gallon if I thought there was anything more than a drop of truth in it.

Over the years, Hurley has consistently denied cosmetic intervention, crediting it all to good genes. And yes, genetics play their part – but the overall picture is, at the very least, a little… conflicting. This woman looks better than she did 30 years ago.

But whether she has or hasn’t gone under the knife is almost beside the point. For those of us firmly on the wrong side of 45, navigating the daily realities of hormonal mayhem, this kind of advice lands a little thin.

Liz also helpfully claims she doesn’t ‘go to the gym or do any set exercise’, instead describing herself as extremely active thanks to a daily dose of NEAT (that’s non-exercise activity thermogenesis, for the uninitiated). In other words, she burns up calories pottering through life.

OK, so warm water, no gym and her third magic ingredient to eternal youth? Bread.

‘I try to have vegetables or fruit equal to half of every plate I eat. For example, if I have a sandwich, I also eat an apple,’ she told Women’s Health recently, adding that her best investment was a breadmaker and that she also bakes cakes at the weekend.

Admirable, perhaps, but it does make a perimenopausal woman wonder: where exactly does it all go? Well, she doesn’t ‘really sit down until 6pm’– so there’s that. Her mantra above all is: ‘Move more.’

It’s the kind of advice that sounds perfectly reasonable – if you’re a prepubescent child: drink water, eat your fruit and veg, don’t be a couch potato.

But common sense is not going to undo decades of biological reality. And I can’t help feeling slightly insulted by the suggestion that it might.

It’s like Liz’s tidbits of wisdom were tossed out a little thoughtlessly, like pennies from a gilded balcony. Charming, perhaps, if you’re also sipping tepid aqua from the comfort of a private yacht. Less so if you’re a perimenopausal woman staring at your own reflection, armed with a kettle and an apple, wondering why it is you can’t look remotely like a 60-year-old Elizabeth Hurley, never mind a 30-year-old one.

There’s a meme doing the rounds that perfectly illustrates the gulf between ordinary mortals and those hyper fabulous beings we see on screen.

It shows the Kardashian family before fame and now, captioned: ‘You’re not ugly, you’re just poor.’ Harsh, yes, but you get the gist.

The ageless bodies and faces we see today are rarely just about genes. Aside from any digital manipulation, all that skincare, fitness, dentistry, aesthetic wizardry – these take lots of money and time, two things that are in short supply for the average woman. And to their credit, some public figures are refreshingly transparent about such.

Kris Jenner has openly confirmed her cosmetic procedures, while Denise Richards recently graphically detailed on social media the extent of her deep plane facelift. Knowing they suffer for their art somehow makes us all feel a little better, and that we are not failing at the very basics.

Hurley, of course, is entitled to her privacy. She can keep her methods close to the buoyant chest and also never talk about any misery the menopause may have caused her. She is, after all, the ageless one in a bikini and there’s no doubt she looks absolutely spectacular.

But let’s not pretend that she has reversed decades in ways that are in any way realistic to us mere mortals. We can keep boiling our kettles, flopping at 6pm, and baking our weekend cakes… but we’ll never look like Liz.

So spare us the nuggets of nonsense, please – chances are, they’ll only make us fat.

No need for Swift exit from Wax Museum! This time it’s a good likeness

The waxwork of Taylor Swift recently unveiled in Dublin's Wax Museum

How do you know you’ve really made it? When you’ve ended up in the illustrious surrounds of Dublin’s Wax Museum. This week, Taylor Swift cemented her place in celebrity history by becoming the latest victim – I mean, superstar – to be immortalised in effigy, pictured, at the Westmoreland Street, em, haunt. 

I was genuinely shocked at the appearance of the Shake It Off hitmaker, who looked, well, actually like Taylor Swift. 

Sadly, the same can’t be said for several of the other celebrities who reside in the museum – who can forget the furore over the late, great Sinéad O’Connor’s waxwork disaster of 2024, which caused her own brother to phone into RTÉ’s Liveline at the time and state, quite accurately, that it looked like something between ‘a mannequin and something out of the Thunderbirds’. 

Sinéad has since been removed; however, U2 and Ryan Tubridy have not. If you know, you know.

Captain Kirk battles to save life as we know it 

It seems the perils of AI have the power to touch all of us, no matter what age we are. Take nonagenarian actor William Shatner, who has recently been a victim of fake news. 

The 95-year-old Star Trek icon says stories that have been swirling online claiming he has stage-four brain cancer – and that he’s embroiled in a row with Erika Kirk – are not true, and warned that artificial intelligence ‘can be used as a weapon in the wrong hands’. 

I like that he’s tapping into his Captain James Kirk powers and defending the world as we know it. Although at his age, he really should be taking it handy. 

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