Dame Sheila Hancock says 'I don't look in the mirror' as she reflects on feeling ageless at 92

In a heartwarming and hilarious new interview, 92-year-old Dame Sheila Hancock has opened up about her refreshing relationship with ageing, her love of exercise, and what she plans to do with her future.

Dame Shelia Hancock might have celebrated her 92nd birthday in February, but she certainly doesn't feel it.

Appearing on Katherine Ryan's What's My Age Again? podcast, Shelia revealed, "Strangely enough, reaching 90 was extraordinary because right up until then, I honestly had never thought I was old. I really hadn't.

"I did a film where I climbed a mountain when I was 85 and I didn't think anything of it," she added. "I went to the gym and did a bit of extra work, but I've never thought of it."

But while she doesn't feel old, she said that others have started treating her differently because of her age. She said, "When I was 90, everybody started saying, 'do you still drive? Let me help you up.' They suddenly start treating you as old and you find you're acting old if you're not careful."

The change in other people's attitudes towards her does have its perks, though, Shelia explained. "It's quite useful because it means that you can, for instance if you're bored or if I have had enough of this interview, I can actually say, 'well, I'm very bored with this, I'm leaving,' and everybody will say, 'oh, poor old thing. She's gone a bit senile'," she said with a laugh. "It's a wonderful excuse for bad behaviour."

Elsewhere in the interview, she shared, "I'm starting at the gym again. I've not been going to the gym and my legs are getting a bit feeble so I need to do some of those pushy exercises."

Her weakening legs are just one thing that Shelia is noticing as she gets older. While she said that she thinks her "skin is okay really, for my age," she doesn't like to look in the mirror too much as it reminds her that she is getting older.

"I don't look in the mirror very much, I don't know what I look like. On the few ocassions I do look in, I'm not madly keen on it," she said. "I caught myself in the mirror, but I was bent over. I was literally bent over. It was the end of the day, I was tired, my back was aching and I looked old."

But, if she's not faced with her reflection, Shelia doesn't feel her age at all. "At the moment, I feel young," she explained. "Talking to you, I feel no age. Sometimes, when I'm a bit cranky and when my legs are not working as I would like [them] to, then I feel about 80. But I never feel what's expected of me [at 92]."

Perhaps one of the reasons for Shelia's ageless feeling is that, while her chronological age is 92, the What's My Age Again? team revealed that Shelia's biological age is just 72.

It's a fact that Shelia was "surprised" by and said was particularly poignant as she's recently been thinking about how many years she might "have left."

When she looks ahead to the rest of her life, she said she's working on "gathering experiences.".

She said, "I think it's quite a difficult thing to do to say 'I'm going to treat myself, I deserve a little bit of a treat.' And I think, that's what I'm going to work on for a bit, for myself. I'm going to say, 'No, I can't do that job, I'm going to go and sit in the sun.'"