The television presenter, writer and Childline president is also determined to encourage others to do the same, urging the older generation to live life to the full, re-invent their appearance, take up new challenges, battle against ageism and have fun.

So far she's resisted plastic surgery, but admits an injection of Botox can be a temporary stop gap and wholly rejects outdated stereotypes of the bus pass population.

"A recent survey of 1,000 over-60s revealed that comfy slippers and snoozing by the fireside came nowhere in their plans. They were determined to take up parachute jumping and hang-gliding, to see the Northern Lights and swim with the dolphins, to go to the opera, grow a beard and have more sex," she says.

In her latest book, If Not Now, When?, she uses her own experiences to encourage the contemporary baby boomer to look positively at getting older. Despite the uplifting message, Rantzen admits that dealing with the loss of loved ones is the hardest part of growing old and that she hasn't been able to move on since the death of her husband, documentary maker Desmond Wilcox, eight years ago.

She still lives in the large family home in London's Hampstead they shared and also the cottage they bought together in the New Forest in Hampshire, although at one point when she realised it was costing her £30,000 a year she was a stone's throw from renting it out.

When the deal with the would-be tenants fell through, she just felt an overwhelming sense of relief and happiness that the cottage was still hers.

"I'm hopeless at moving on," she says. "I greatly admire people who move house. I haven't been able to do that. It has too many good memories. I work in my late husband's office and the noticeboard is exactly as he left it.

"There are one or two additions from me, but the photographs and the Valentine's cards I sent him are all still up there. They make me feel surrounded by him."

The couple were married for 30 years and had three children, who have now grown up and flown the nest, another emotional landmark for Rantzen. Her children tell her she is a typical Jewish mother.

"I have a little sign up in my house: 'Mirror mirror on the wall, I am my mother after all'."

Work keeps her extremely busy, but loneliness is a problem, she admits. She still can't stand coming home to an empty house and still over-caters for the family which is no longer there.

"I hate it. I have been known to go to bed at half past eight in the evening. We've always done family supper at 7pm and sat around the table and talked to each other about our day. Maybe a lodger is the answer.

"I went through a period where it was too painful to go to the cottage because Desi designed every inch. I saw him wandering in his dressing gown up and down the flowerbeds. It was awful. For a year I couldn't go there."

Since his death, she hasn't been romantically attached, although she has made an effort to meet new people. "I've met so many people aged 50-plus who have revolutionised their lives, found new partners, got into smart, boutique-style flats. Good for them. But just at the moment, I can't seem to shed my skin.

"I went out with a very attractive man and he was talking about single people who had been bereaved and had found new partners.

"I said, 'So what am I doing wrong?' He said: 'Well, I don't think you're comparing individuals with Desmond, but you are comparing relationships with the one you had.' There's a real truth there."

"There's no romance at the moment, but you never know, around the next corner... We baby boomers are optimistic."

She talks in the book about Sir Paul McCartney and his disastrous marriage to Heather Mills, with whom Esther worked for six years on a Sunday morning TV show.

"Like so many of her ex-friends, ex-colleagues and ex-lovers, I admired and despaired of her in equal measure."

Off screen, Mills's anger was never far away and when she made mistakes she blamed others for them, Rantzen recalls, and describes how Mills adjusted her persona to fit McCartney's needs. "Suddenly she was vegetarian, although we had filmed her eating chicken curry a few weeks previously. Now she refused, on grounds of animal cruelty, to report a film about a young people's charity fishing event on a lake, so I interviewed them instead."

But Rantzen stresses that not all middle-aged love affairs end in disaster and has met many older couples who have been happy.

"As the stress and responsibilities of family life become simpler, and they often have more time for each other, husband and wife often develop a new, even deeper partnership. They recognise how similar they have become, and familiarity breeds content, is what I say – to paraphrase a well-known saying."

If relationships don't go the way you planned, don't worry about it, she stresses. "If you ask me what prevailing virtue baby boomers accrue, one is common sense and the other is a sense of humour. Use a bit of common sense and if things go wrong, revive your sense of humour. Just pour yourself a glass of wine and roar with laughter."

If Not Now, When? Living The Baby Boomer Adventure, by Esther Rantzen, is published by Headline, priced £16.99. To order a copy from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepost bookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.