Janet Street-Porter, 78: ‘I have resting iconic-pensioner face’

If I look in the mirror, I see my mother. It’s a source of great irritation. She was a complicated woman who worked as a dinner lady. I don’t look like her when I’m smiling, but if I catch a glimpse of myself ruminating, I’m the image of her.

When my dad issued orders, we all complied. I don’t remember ours being a particularly happy or affectionate home.

I always knew I’d be successful – from early on, I was a strongwilled self-improver and ruthlessly ambitious. I was the school swot, keeping diaries and lists of all the books I’d read, writing critiques of exhibitions and bands. I joined the Young Conservatives and the Young Socialists.

People come up to me in the street and tell me to cheer up when there’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t like the expression “resting bitch face” – I have resting iconic-pensioner face.

Of course I’m not a natural redhead. In my early baby pictures, I’m blonde, then it quickly faded to dreary beige.

I’ve definitely attracted weirdos. I got sent some rubber underwear with a note that said: ‘Will you wear this then send it back to me?’ Another man wanted me to go back to his flat and pee on him. I declined. During my Groucho years, I got chatted up by a really famous actor who asked me out for dinner that Saturday night. He turned up at my house, then pulled a length of rope from a carrier bag. I won’t tell you what he had in mind.

Getting a CBE was an honour, but I don’t think I’ve used it to my advantage. I’m very good at grovelling – if I want to book a table in a restaurant, I just ring up and say: Janet Street-Porter, please please please.

I like a good, spirited row on Loose Women. They make me do surreal things, like dress as a giant hot dog or as Pamela Anderson in Baywatch; once I was put into a child-size Mamma Mia! costume. The worst was when they gave me a plate of overcooked Brussels sprouts, which I threw sideways without thinking. It hit a woman in the front row in the face. I was very apologetic.

My hip replacement was a total humiliation: I thought I was going to wee on the floor. When I came around, I was starving, and demolished a huge shepherd’s pie, unaware I had a tube up my nose.

When did I last speak to Elton John? It might have been last Saturday.

Worse things have happened to me than the Spitting Image puppet. When I started working in television in 1975, a television critic on the evening news said that I sounded like a dying goat eating spaghetti. That was upsetting. That stuff doesn’t bother me now, and I’m not worried by how I will be remembered. I’ll be dead for fuck’s sake.

The danger as you get older is sticking to the familiar and what’s comfortable. Avoid doing that at all costs.

Janet Street-Porter’s new show, Off The Leash, tours from 11 September