Rippon yarns

ANGELA Rippon looks, in a word, fabulous. She strides into the Darlington hotel where we're meeting, ummissable in a bright red suit. But I suspect I would have noticed her anyway. She's slim and statuesque, with long legs and a small waist, and the high ridges of her cheekbones define her youthful looking face.

She orders a hot water but declines a biscuit, saying she's already had half a cooked breakfast, and as we sit down, she fixes me in her cool, composed gaze. As a humble reporter, it's hard not to feel a little intimidated by Ms Rippon, one of Britain's best-loved broadcasters and the original golden girl of news.

Angela is in the North-East to promote the region's first Menopause Day, the focus of which is a seminar at Newcastle's Gosforth Park Hotel. Aimed at educating women and giving them the confidence to face the menopause without fear, it features doctors, nurses and other menopause specialists. The event is organised by Novogen, the company behind the natural remedy Red Clover - an extract from the red clover which replaces oestrogen lost in the menopause. As she takes this herself, Angela is happy to be its advocate.

So what was her experience of going through the menopause?

"I went through it in my early 50s without any problems. I didn't suffer huge mood swings and I didn't go through the extreme physical reaction that some women have, although I occasionally had a hot flush. I think I'm fairly phlegmatic. I don't know that I looked at it as a positive or a negative. I think I've got a fairly positive attitude to most things anyway," she says.

Angela, 59, believes that while attitudes are improving, it's still difficult for women to discuss the menopause. "I think that, traditionally, we didn't talk about women's problems publicly. Fortunately in the 20th and 21st centuries, we've talked about such things more openly but women very often don't know where to go or who to turn to," she says.

I suggest that there's a stigma attached to the menopause but ever precise, Angela corrects me, saying she would use the term "embarrassment". "At the seminars, it's a kind of sisterhood. We have a good laugh about a lot of it. A woman will get up and say, 'This is a problem I've had' and two or three others will get up and say, 'I've had that too'," she says.

Angela's main aim is to encourage women to look on the loss of their fertility as liberating. "We say to women that the menopause is not something that's going to be a blight on your life or the end of your useful life as a woman. I always say that most of us live to 75 or 80. If you hit the menopause in your 50s, why let the 25, 30, or even 40 years you have left just pass you by?

"Look at the menopause as a very exciting phase of your life. Your children have probably grown up and gone and your partner may be looking at retirement. You suddenly have the freedom to do all sorts of things that you've never had the chance to do before," she says.

It is a philosophy that Angela certainly lives by. Having divorced Chris Dare, her husband of 22 years, in 1990, and being childless, she is even less encumbered than most.

A true career woman, she achieved fame by becoming the BBC's first female newsreader in 1975. The following year, she shed her straight-laced image by performing a high kicking dance routine on the Morecambe And Wise Christmas Show and she cemented her entertainment role as a Come Dancing presenter.

She has since appeared in programmes as diverse as the Antiques Roadshow and Top Gear, and in February, returned to her journalistic roots to front her own current affairs show on the ITV news channel, on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Angela says the demands of her various jobs make her stay healthy. "I work for The Holiday Programme - I have to be fit for that. I've just finished a skiing programme in Utah and on Thursday, I'm leaving for South Africa where I'm going to go scuba diving with Great White sharks. I'm going to Japan to do a film cycling around Osaka," she says impressively.

In a bid to inspire others she's written a book, self-descriptively titled Fabulous at Fifty and Beyond. She says that regular exercise plays a huge part in mitigating the effects of ageing. "I do about ten to 15 minutes' worth of yoga stretching every morning and I play tennis, swim and power walk as much as I can. Weight bearing exercise - things like running, cycling, playing tennis and walking - is good for your bones. One of the reasons women have hot flushes is because the natural thermostat of the body stops working. Exercise makes you hot - that means your body thermostat has to work. You release endorphins which make you feel good and if you have a hot flush and you're in a good mood, you're not going to worry about it too much," says Angela.

Having danced throughout her childhood, studying classical ballet until she was 17, she was brought up being active. Born in Plymouth, her late father, from Esh Winning, near Durham, walked for hours on Dartmoor right into old age, acting as a great role model for the presenter. "I think it's in the genes," she says.

Although a bout of food poisoning several years ago has left her lactose intolerant, meaning she can't drink milk or eat dairy products, she says this doesn't really affect her. "I have soya milk and soya yoghurts and everybody says dairy products aren't good for you anyway," she says dismissively. She's also barred from drinking red wine, but says mischievously that this doesn't rule out champagne or white wine.

Her love of dancing has endured - she is currently vice president of English National Ballet, a company with which she has a long association - and she has even made a video; a sort of beginners' guide to ballroom dancing, due for release next month.

So what did a purist like her make of the latest incarnation of Come Dancing, the celebrity-focused Strictly Come Dancing? "I thought it was great fun - a great programme idea. It was lovely that Natasha won," she says, alluding to her fellow BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinski.

"I thought Lesley (Garrett) was just terrific by the end and young Christopher (EastEnders' Christopher Parker) similarly. I thought that those two proved the point of the programme, which was that anyone can dance."

It's a fair bet that there'll be dancing involved in Angela's 60th birthday celebrations, in four weeks. Far from shying away from the milestone, she's throwing a big party. "I'm actually flying back from Katmandu, so I'm having the party the next day," she says, suddenly sounding very showbiz.

Yet she's refreshingly honest about ageing, accepting that there are some things she can't control.

"Obviously as you get older things wear out and drop off. I've got cellulite like everyone else and look at my tummy sometimes and think, 'I wish it was a bit flatter'. But one of the pleasures of getting older is being comfortable with yourself and I'm comfortable with myself," says Angela.