Susannah Constantine: ‘I've had my first tweakment at 63'

Telegraph

2 days ago

The writer and former television presenter Susannah Constantine is sitting at a table in the garden of her home in West Sussex, her hair scraped back into a bun. She's got sunglasses on – the chunky type, covering half her face – but takes them off for the purposes of our conversation. 'I'm wearing absolutely no make-up,' she tells me, eyes widening whilst stretching her skin left and right, to give me a closer look. 'Not bad, eh?'
As a self-confessed 'beauty treatment virgin', we are here to discuss the first 'proper' tweakment she's had. No, it's not Botox, which she did try 'a long, long time ago' – 17 years to be exact – on the advice of her long-time friend Trinny Woodall, but 'I'm needle-phobic and absolutely hated it,' she admits. In the past six months she has had three sessions of the Harmony Bio-Boost, a no-downtime, non-invasive laser treatment that boosts the skin's own ability to produce more collagen (one treatment starts at £350).
Indeed her skin, without a scratch of make-up on, looks undeniably bright and healthy. Certainly not line-free, because that's not the point of these sorts of laser treatments, but she tells me how it revived her post-menopausal skin. 'There were a lot of things that coincided around the menopause, for me. When I stopped drinking and started my journey of recovery from alcoholism, I hit rock bottom.'
Constantine revealed in an interview in 2020 that she was a 'highly functioning' alcoholic and had been in recovery, at that point, for seven years. 'The first thing I dealt with was my weight: even though I've always exercised, I started to eat more cleanly and upped my exercise even more.' She appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018, partnering with Anton Du Beke, and in the same year completed a challenging Tough Mudder-style obstacle course – which required 10 weeks of training – for BBC Two's Sport Relief.
'Because I'm someone who has always had good skin, I had never really considered doing something about my face. They say that alcohol dehydrates your skin, but I think it made my face so bloated that it kept my skin buoyant.' It wasn't until she turned 55 that Constantine saw how her skin looked post-alcoholism. 'I was never going to go down an invasive route, but by the time I reached 60 I thought, 'Why am I being a snob about this? Why am I looking at others who do treatments with a slight disdain?' It was ridiculous.'
Since having the course of lasers, Constantine has noticed the look of spider veins around her nose improving and the 'speckled egg' pigmentation on her chin disappearing. She feels like her skin has 'much more of a glow', but admits 'it's very hard to look at myself objectively. To be honest, I don't really look in the mirror very much, but it was more the reaction from my friends and family. I fish for compliments! My daughter Esme has a lovely new boyfriend and she said, 'How old do you think mum is?' He said 55. I was over the moon with that.' (Constantine and her Danish businessman husband Sten Bertelsen, who have been married since 1995, have three children: Joe, 26, Esme, 23, and Cece, 21.)
'As a 63-year-old woman I'll take the compliments from wherever they come,' she says, adding that her daughters now call her a 'gilf'. 'It's like a milf but a granny version,' she laughs. 'Little s----!'
Are there any beauty lessons she passes onto her daughters? 'Less is more, definitely. My youngest daughter had her 21st birthday party last week and I got this wonderful make-up artist friend who came down to do their make-up and mine, and they were so polite, saying how lovely it was. As soon as it was done they went up to their bedroom and wiped it all off.'
Does she think younger generations struggle with how they see themselves through social media? 'I do,' she nods. 'They have all these filters on their phone and then they look in the mirror and think, 'Why don't I look like that?' It's such a shame; they don't appreciate how beautiful they are.'
In the early 2000s, Constantine and Woodall hosted five series of the BBC's wildly popular What Not To Wear, a show giving unashamedly direct fashion advice to guests-slash-victims. (The double-act's daughters – Constantine's eldest daughter Esme and Woodall's 21-year-old daughter, Lyla – graced the cover of last December's Tatler; in the interview they said they think the show would be 'cancelled' if it was made now. 'You can't really speak to people like that any more, and say things like, 'You're so ugly'.')
Although Constantine has always been 'reasonably good' at cleansing her skin from a young age, she was the 'opposite' of beauty-obsessed Woodall (who is now, somewhat unsurprisingly, running her own award-winning beauty range, Trinny London). 'On set for What Not To Wear, Trin would be there with her lotions and potions for a half-hour routine, and I'd be there with a flannel. She would be so frustrated at how basic I was! I would take my make-up off and grab any old moisturiser.'
She's realistic about the results you can get from a cream or serum, though. 'Nowadays, I would rather invest my money in a treatment than an expensive pot of cream that does f--- all. A lot of the beauty marketing makes me very cross. We're all looking for the magic solution, and the magic solution does not exist in a bottle or a pot. A lot of these brands are preying on women's insecurities.'
Besides creams, what does she think about the sudden surge in popularity for full-blown face lifts? 'I think it's a personal choice,' she says, as we get onto the topic of Kris Jenner, who, at 69, hit the headlines last month unveiling her latest face lift (rumoured to be her fifth). 'I think Kris Jenner looks amazing but it doesn't matter how young you look if you're tired inside. At the age of 63 we've all got a dry vagina, so having a face lift isn't going to make the tiniest bit of difference,' she shrugs. 'If you've suddenly got a really young face but the rest of your body is left behind, it's kind of fraudulent. You're portraying a lie.'
Constantine is disciplined with her fitness and wellness routine now: she goes cold-water swimming three times a week and runs three to four times a week. 'I run 20-25 miles a week, and I love that I can just run out of my door and it's free – I'm a bit of an Ebenezer when it comes to that kind of thing. I have a barrel of cold water under a tree in my garden and I go in there most mornings, which, more than anything, makes me feel smug.'
She adds: 'I'm lucky to still be healthy and well at 63, and wake up feeling good. I don't want to look 20 years younger: I'm very happy to look 10 years younger, and I would never think of doing a really painful, very expensive procedure.' The Harmony Bio-Boost is non-invasive, which was a big selling point for her. 'I loved how quick it was, too. I wanted something that was going to have maximum impact in the shortest amount of time.' She describes the treatment as feeling like 'an elastic band' hitting your face, but 'it's absolutely fine, with no discomfort.'
As for supplements, she takes the probiotic Symprove every day ('my whole family takes it') and supplements by The Naked Pharmacy. 'I also use an LED face mask by Current Body when I remember. I just like now that my face reflects how much I am taking care of my inside.'
Perhaps the most striking marker of how much better she feels about her face is that Constantine now feels she looks younger than her husband, who is three years her junior. 'He is possibly one of the most handsome men to have ever walked this Earth – I mean, he walks around in clothes with holes in and looks like the most unbelievably beautiful scarecrow – but I've always felt those three years' difference,' she laughs. 'And for the first time in my life, I know I look younger than him. And that makes me feel beyond happy.'
She tells me he is 'secretly quite vain.' Would he ever book in for a laser tweakment? 'I think he would – and why the hell not?'
Much like her skincare routine, she is low maintenance with her beauty routine, too. 'I haven't washed my hair for 10 days and get highlights every three months at a little hairdresser in our village. If there's one thing I won't do, it's go grey. I used to wear some concealer to cover my pigmentation but I don't even need to do that now. My beauty routine was barely there and now it's even less. That is heaven to me.'