fruit, honey and yoghurt. As you get older, you have to rely on people. Frances, my housekeeper Joan Bakewell and friend, turns up at 10.30am. She has been with me for 20 years The broadcaster and Labour peer on still and sorts me out. I work from a doing Pilates, aged 85, and afternoon naps laptop, but I’m not techie, so I have a man called the MacDoctor who is a delight — if something goes wrong, I scream down the phone ame Joan Bakewell has been earl grey — decaffeinated because and he comes round and saves me. Da leading broadcaster, I have a lot of adrenaline of my Two mornings a week I go to the journalist and writer since the own. I’ve not had caffeine for at same Pilates class in Belsize Park 1960s, when the comedian Frank least 10 years, so if I ever have it I have been doing for 25 years. Muir dubbed her “the thinking these days without knowing I’m Quite often for lunch I fry up man’s crumpet”. She was made a as high as a kite. I never listen to some leftovers — I was a war life peer in 2011, and presents the Today programme after the child, so I hate to throw anything Portrait Artist of the Year on TV. news because that’s too much away. I’ve been having an She has been married twice and testosterone for me at that time afternoon nap since 1959. I have famously had an eight-year affair of the morning. a meditative technique that helps with Harold Pinter, which I’ve recently downsized into a me neutralise my brain. I come inspired his play Betrayal, now former artist’s studio after living out bouncing and refreshed, and back on in the West End. She in the same big house for 55 years. will keep working happily long lives alone in Primrose Hill, Moving was a great trauma, but it into the evening when everyone north London, and has two adult is important to make the move at else is flagging. children, Harriet and Matthew, my age, before it’s too late. In 1963, I spend some afternoons at the and six grandchildren. when my first husband, Michael, House of Lords. I drive there in and I moved to Primrose Hill, the my red Mini Cooper, which is an My day begins with area was really unfashionable. The extension of home. I chose my a rigid routine that house cost £12,000, which was a title Baroness Bakewell of gradually gets more lot of money then and we needed Stockport because I felt that it was ragged as the day goes on. The a mortgage, but I will not say what important to go back to my roots. alarm goes off at 6.50am, which I sold it for … My younger sister, Susan, and I gives me time to fetch a cup of tea For years, breakfast was were brought up on the outskirts and come back to bed to listen to marmalade on toast, but recently of Stockport. The development the Radio 4 news at 7am. I have I started having granola with fresh was unfinished for years because of the war, so within a matter of yards of our house we could be in A Life in the Day the in Life A fields and the countryside. It was a wonderful place to grow up. I had a complicated relationship with my mother, Rose. She was highly intelligent, but she married young and felt completely unfulfilled in her life. She was depressed, though no one described it as that. I just thought she was being difficult. She died WORDS OF from leukaemia when I was 28. WISDOM At about 4pm I need a sugar rush, so I have a cup of tea and a BEST ADVICE scone with cream and jam, or I WAS GIVEN some chocolate cake. Work usually My mother used to finishes at 6.30pm. Often I go out tell me: “Life’s unfair, to dinner with friends. I will have get used to it” a glass of white wine, but don’t drink much these days. One of my ADVICE I’d give great indulgences is using taxis. Know your inner I’m a news junkie, so my day self and be true to ends with watching the headlines, your spirit and then I’m in bed by 11.15pm. I used to like a small brandy as a WHAT I WISH nightcap, but I have stopped that I’d knoWN because, like most old More about science. people, I do not want I studied humanities to get up in the night n at school, so I am Interview by Rob McGibbon scientifically ignorant, Portrait Artist of the Year is on which is a regret Sky Arts on Tuesday at 8pm 66 • The Sunday Times Magazine.