Can there be anything worse than sitting across the table from a man who sees you as a piece of meat, or another potential notch on his bedpost? No there can’t, says Jan Leeming. ‘Yuck!’ she says with the most glorious diction.
The former BBC newsreader — the Fiona Bruce of her day — known for her very British poise (and the small matter of her five marriages) is describing a disastrous first, and last, date she had in Argentina recently.
She was there to film the Real Life Marigold On Tour series, the BBC TV show which sends older celebrities off to exotic climes to explore how foreign pensioners ‘do’ retirement.
In Argentina Jan, 77, discovered that older men eat slabs of near-raw steak, dance a lot of tango — and source potential partners for a bit of ‘no strings’ horizontal tango, too. And she was having none of it. ‘At that stage I became the English prude, made my excuses and left,’ she says.
Jan Leeming was in Argentina to film the Real Life Marigold On Tour series and revealed how she went on a disastrous date
Now she’s rather regretting that she allowed herself to be talked into going on the date at all. It was dancer Wayne Sleep — another Marigold traveller — who egged her on, she says.
She’d met her suitor at an art class and Wayne was saying ‘go on, go on’. So she went.
But she was most certainly not up for what was on the menu: ‘To me, sex and love go together. You may think you’re in love and an affair may not last that long, but sex has no meaning if there isn’t love and affection.’
She knows this sounds quite prudish. ‘And I am not a prude. How can I be, for goodness sake? I’ve been married five times! Believe me, I’ve had a very, very healthy sex life before.’ Nor is that book closed for good, it seems, although she has a rather curious way of putting it: ‘What I can say about it now is that there’s still fire in the grate. It may burn lower, but it’s still there. I’m just not willing to leap into bed with anyone.’
Who would have thought Mrs BBC Jan Leeming would end up talking so expansively about sex, dating and the single 70-something.
When she agrees to this interview, based on what we have seen of her in Marigold On Tour, she shrieks at the idea that she’s going to be once again painted as poor Jan Leeming, who can’t find husband number six.
Jan can shriek quite terrifyingly. She didn’t acquire the nickname Screaming Leeming (said to have been bestowed on her by BBC colleagues back in 1987 when three intruders mugged her and she ran screaming into the newsroom) for nothing.
It was reinforced some years later when, in 2006, she entered the I’m A Celebrity jungle and screeched a lot during the copious trials she had to do. That year was mostly remembered for Myleene Klass’s white bikini, but Jan’s incessant whingeing didn’t go unnoticed.
Jan said: 'I say I’m like Elizabeth Taylor but without the diamonds'
Today, she’s frustrated at how the edit of the Marigold programme has depicted her. She takes no prisoners when she is cross.
‘I am sick and tired of being this poor patsy who seems to be desperate for a man. I am not desperate. I have never needed a man to keep me,’ she objects.
‘In fact, it’s the other way round. I’m a great romantic and, unfortunately, I have sometimes gone for men who have been womanisers.
‘It does make me cross, because if I’d been born, say, three decades later, it wouldn’t be an issue. I wouldn’t have got married at all, possibly — I’d just have lived with these men. But I come from a different era. I’m old-fashioned; I’m old-fashioned about everything.’
Which is why she finds the dating in your 70s business so baffling.
The biggest drawback when you are Jan Leeming, though, is the ‘blasted internet’. The first thing Google throws up is the ‘five-times-married’ fact. ‘There was one, a retired professor, who seemed quite promising. I’d used a pseudonym in the ad, but, of course, I had to tell him. And that was that.
‘He said: “Oh, I think it’s too soon after my wife’s death.” He’d obviously read Wikipedia and thought: “Oh God, married that many times. She must be an absolute hag.” ’
And those few older men she has dated, she found ‘boring’.
What about young men? She’s been propositioned by a few, and sighs deeply. ‘When I was internet dating (she dabbled, briefly), there were a few who made approaches. They probably thought: “Older woman — she’ll be grateful.” I turned them down and said: “I’m old enough to be your granny.” ’
Ultimately, her internet dating was a disaster, mostly because she got rumbled by the Press for knocking a few years off her age in her ad. ‘Women lie about their age, but you know what? Men lie, too.’
Then again, Jan isn’t happy being single. There’s a terribly poignant moment in Marigold On Tour where she says she misses having someone’s hand to hold. It will chime with every woman of a certain age who has loved and lost.
‘When I take my dog for a walk and I see couples — particularly older couples — holding hands, I feel very envious,’ she says. ‘It’s the companionship and the sharing that I miss.
‘I don’t think I could be married again. I wouldn’t want to do the 24/7. But I would like someone to go to the theatre with. To love, really, and someone who would love me back.’
Your heart goes out to her. But only so far. Somewhere in the middle of our discussion about what rotters men are — well, her men anyway — she drops the bombshell that she has been on dates
