But forget all that. Everything\u2019s spoilt now because it turns out that Ward has let herself down horrendously. Why? She has posted an Instagram video in which it appears that in the past 43 years she has (trigger warning: prepare to be disgusted)\u2026 aged naturally. What a slattern.<\/p>\n
No Botox, no filler, no hair extensions, no \u201ctweakments\u201d, just shortish grey hair, zero make-up and a pair of specs that, brace yourselves, may not even be designer. The woman clearly has no vanity and thus no shame. She is 68 and looks, well\u2026 68. Bring me tar. Bring me feathers.<\/p>\n
Ward has spent the past four decades being happily married, running a cattle ranch in Australia and enjoying her beatific-looking grandchildren. What she has not been doing is getting her lips inflated so that she looks like a sexually frustrated koi carp on the pull. What a loser.<\/p>\n
Ward was ripe for an online kicking for the crime of looking perfectly normal for her age and, by Jove, she got one. \u201cOMG, what happened to u? U were so pretty??\u201d said one comment. \u201cI read she is 68. Looks way older!!; \u201cShe looks ravaged\u201d; \u201cDid she turn into an old woman or is it AI?\u201d; \u201cWhat happened to you, dear?\u201d; \u201cOld is one thing but completely giving up and throwing in the towel is not the way to go out. Rachel, fix yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be easy to blame sad, halitotic incels, sitting in their mothers\u2019 spare bedrooms spewing out misspelt misogyny. But women are just as bad and often worse when it comes to attacking other women\u2019s looks. It wasn\u2019t men, on the whole, who bought those women\u2019s magazines that, on a celebrity\u2019s photo, circled a patch of cellulite, a cankle or a thut, where the thigh and buttock meet in a way that\u2019s deemed too chunky. Most of Ward\u2019s trolls seem to have female names, though I know they could be fake.<\/p>\n
What a strange juncture we have reached when women aged 68 are vilified for looking 68 (if you have seen her documentary Rachel\u2019s Farm you will see she looks younger, which makes her trolls seem even weirder).<\/p>\n
![\"Rachel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/390fbb33-c982-4192-ad52-eb9e9a3402b4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rachel Ward with Mick Green Jr, her colleague and neighbour, in Rachel\u2019s Farm<\/p>\n
BBC\/WILDBEAR ENTERTAINMENT AND NEW TOWN FILMS<\/p>\n
Timothy Spall and Robert Bathurst are also 68, but I don\u2019t see any trolls writing \u201cOh my God \u2014 shocking\u201d under their photos. Hilarious that strangers are offended because a woman doesn\u2019t look exactly like she did in 1983. Life must be hard for them.<\/p>\n
Happily Ward doesn\u2019t give a stuff and wrote online that she felt sorry for \u201cpoor souls\u201d terrified of ageing, calling it the \u201cultimate freedom\u201d to let youth and beauty go with a cheery goodbye. \u201cIt was lovely while it lasted but there\u2019s so much more to life.\u201d Expect to see that slogan on a jar of anti-wrinkle cream on the 12th of Never.<\/p>\n
This is basically what Ulrika Jonsson, aged 58, said last year when she was similarly attacked. \u201cUlrika Jonsson has let herself go\u201d, \u201cshe\u2019s gone to seed,\u201d they wrote. \u201cI know I look older. But then I should,\u201d she replied. \u201cI\u2019m a menopausal mother of four whose body and face have lived quite the life.\u201d<\/p>\n
What would have happened if Ward had pumped up her face and hoisted up her rack like two silicone balloons? She would have been called mutton dressed as lamb. You can\u2019t win, so best just to embrace it, own it and laugh at the immense comedy in ageing, which is preferable to its alternative. As Joan Rivers said, \u201cI now consider it a good day when I don\u2019t step on my boobs.\u201d<\/p>\n
No posho would nick prosecco<\/p>\n
I wish to take issue with the story of the upmarket shoplifter, aka \u201cBritain\u2019s poshest thief\u201d, aka Pauline Al Said, who has been banned from Sainsbury\u2019s after stealing almost \u00a312,000 of vodka, wine, gin and prosecco and previously stealing Le Creuset cookware. And who, paradoxically, is a former criminology lecturer.<\/p>\n
Oh please. Everyone knows that any true self-respecting posho wouldn\u2019t be seen dead in Sainsbury\u2019s and would only deign to steal from Waitrose while obviously steering well clear of the plebs\u2019 Essentials range with its \u201cvalue\u201d style of packaging. Frightful! (An online review of some humble Essentials potatoes once declared them \u201c\u2026 a disgrace to grower and seller alike\u201d, which is exactly what a true Waitrose shopper would write).<\/p>\n