Oh to be Virginia Wade. An apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan where she spends most of her time, an estate cum organic farm in Kent with staff to tend the carrots, a holiday home in Barbados in which to spend Christmas surrounded by friends. She makes a living as a corporate tennis coach and TV presenter. "I'm good at schmoozing," the tennis queen reasons. Kathryn Holmquist reports.
And at 50-something, she looks fit, lovely, stylish (a size eight at most) and utterly happy in her skin. The menopause? "What's a few hot flushes?" asks Wade. It didn't bother her, she didn't need HRT and she feels even more fit since going through that particular mid-life passage.
She has a few problems with arthritis in her knee and with the middle toe on her right foot, so she has to be careful to wear the right shoes. On the day we meet, in Dublin's Westin Hotel, she's sporting a pair of sophisticated black leather ankle boots with a two-inch heel. Whenever her knee bothers her, she wears a "Pain Ease Patch" for a few days. This is actually two patches with electrodes that emit a microcurrent through the joint.
So her knee bothers her. What about the famous "tennis elbow"? She is a tennis legend, after all. "I don't have any problems with my elbow," she says. Oh, that's interesting. Because on the package for the Pain Ease Patch, which she is here to publicise, there's a picture of her wearing the patches on her elbow.
"That's just for demonstration purposes," she says. And the quote in the press release? "The Pain Ease Patch is used regularly by Virginia Wade OBE, who relies on it to tackle her tennis elbow and help her continue playing competitive tennis. "There's nothing more frustrating for a sports person than to be kept out of their game by aches and pains," says Virginia. "I find that anti-inflammatory drugs work to a certain extent but not permanently and I don't like to take too many, so it was a real relief to discover a drug-free solution." Some misunderstanding then, because Virginia uses the patch on her knee, rather than her elbow. But she swears it works.
On to other things: Virginia is great fun on subjects like tennis clothes. In her day, they were "haute couture" (a phrase that trips off her tongue with impeccable French diction) and had to be dry-cleaned. Those sequins and pure cotton tailoring couldn't be trusted to the washing machine. In recent years, tennis clothes have got just a bit "trashy", in her view. Tennis players have been wearing the same mass-produced gear on the court as the spectators in the stands.
Serena Williams made a mistake with that black catsuit, Virginia reckons. "The players today always seem to be wearing their outfits one size too small. I always think that the fit is important," she confides, skimming her body with her hands.
But they have to look sexy in those calendars. And some look better in calendars than they do on the courts. Did somebody mention Anna Kournikova? "I hear she played quite well in Dublin," says Virginia, who hasn't a bad word to say about any of her younger colleagues.