You've got to hand it to Madonna

I was so excited to hear those words in the coffee shop round the corner from my office last week that I nearly dropped my blueberry muffin.

It wasn’t the speedy service or the extraordinary frothiness of the cappuccino that impressed me, no, it was the fact I’d been referred to a ‘the girl’.

In fact I was so thrilled that as soon as I got back to my desk I emailed a friend and posted a pithy comment on Twitter.

‘Am clearly experiencing youth surge,’ I wrote. ‘Just been referred to as ‘girl’ by barista in Prêt!’ Obviously this opened the flood gates to a tsunami of unflattering comments. “Did he have his guide dog with him?” asked one particularly cruel ’follower’, while my friend immediately returned my smug volley with a sharp, but deadly email backhander. “Probably couldn’t see you over the counter.”

My youth surge ebbed slowly away, but I consoled myself by looking at pictures of Madonna doing the red carpet at the London premiere of her film W.E. last week. Admittedly she looks pretty darn good for 53, but even the ultimate material girl can’t turn back time.

(I’m probably mashing up my musical references there. I think those last four words were the title of a Cher song - another woman who has defied the ageing process armed with nothing more than a long black wig, a wardrobe full of heavy Lycra content, cut-away lacy dresses and Hollywood’s finest plastic surgeons on speed dial.) Back to Madonna: I couldn’t help noticing that her Madgesty, though lithe of figure and fair of face, had taken to accessorising her outfit with a pair of red leather driving gloves, and what’s more she had a frankly peculiar devore cloak slung casually around her shoulders.

The fabric looked uncannily like a ruched lampshade my nan used to have in her bedroom - although I don’t think that was ‘the look’ Madonna was going for.

If I was feeling charitable, I could say that it’s quite chilly in London on a January night, so the gloves and cloak were probably practical. On the other hand, writing as someone who was traumatised back in the 1990s by a review copy of Sex - a pictorial tome that proved Madonna certainly didn’t feel the cold - I’m inclined to the uncharitable view that she’s got wrinkly hands and upper arms and shoulders that even a macrobiotic diet, industrial strength workout sessions and a spring-loaded red Kabala bracelet can’t disguise.

Not that it matters much. She looked great at the premiere (apart from the lampshade), and on Graham Norton’s show last week she looked eerily youthful under the full beam of the studio lights.

Indeed, Madonna practically glowed in the mega-watt intensity of Graham’s crush. Then again, it’s not often that you get the first tier of pop royalty to agree to sit on a prime-time sofa (unless they have something really difficult to sell), so fair play to him. No wonder he seemed unusually deferential.

While I scanned Madonna’s plump cheeks for any signs of wrinkles (none), scrutinised her neck for tell-tale turkey wattlage (none) and admired the bouncing brilliance of her abundant golden hair, I must admit to a pang of envy. I mean, this woman is five years older than me for goodness sake!

How (apart from having a bank balance bigger that Britain’s GDP, an army of servants and access to the finest and most discrete aesthetic professionals money can buy) does she do it?

Then I saw them and punched the air. ‘Yes!’ I thought, ‘There is a God’ (Graham was probably thinking much the same thing, but for different reasons). Once again Madonna was wearing a gloves - admittedly diamante-encrusted ones with a giant Chanel logo - but what the heck?

You can do all you can to hold back time, but it always weighs heavy in your hands. It’s definitely where the ageing process shows - and there’s not much you can do about it, except wear a pair of Chanel gloves at all times, obviously.

My own hands are pretty sad specimens. They’ve never been pretty at all, to be honest. My husband once memorably remarked that they reminded him of the sequence in the seminal 1920s silent film, Nosferatu, where the ghastly shadow of the etiolated, spindly fingers of actor Max Shreck creeping across the wall towards his sleeping victim set a new benchmark for the importance of regular manicures. And it’s not just the general Hammer-horror aspect of my hands that’s disturbing, it’s the fact that my skin looks a bit like an alligator handbag - especially in the winter. No amount of expensive emollient cream or on-trend nail colour can disguise the fact that I have the hands of Rider Haggard’s She - after that second unfortunate visit to the flame of youth.

(Actually, I tried a really expensive Chanel varnish called ‘Peridot’ this Christmas and one of my friends asked if I was suffering from whitlows.) When I had a manicure last year, the lovely therapist inadvertently put her foot in it when she casually remarked, while massaging my walnut-sized knuckles, that it was ‘odd really, because your hands look quite old, but you aren’t really that…’ She managed to stop herself before blundering into an even more insulting cul de sac of uncomplimentary therapy.

The truth about my old lady hands was brought home to me this Christmas when my husband presented me with a pair of exquisite Italian leather gloves in the most beautiful shade of lavender.

“They’re so soft, you could almost wear them all the time and forget you’d got them on,” he beamed. (Was that hope in his expression?) I consoled myself with the thought that at long last Madonna and I had something in common.