Joan Gallagher: fit as a fiddle

Simon Cowell might not have been impressed with her talents, but for most people 77-year-old Joan Gallagher is a true inspiration.

Because Joan is no ordinary pensioner – she poledances, goes to the gym three times a week, enjoys yoga and pilates and completed last Sunday's London Marathon in a respectable six hours 40 minutes.

But those things are mere trifles compared to her real skills in life, the skills with which she recently attempted to wow Cowell and co with on ITV1's Britain's Got Talent.

Her real talents are for lying on a bed of nails while someone strolls over her back, and smashing a block of concrete on her neighbour Jim's back.

"It hurts in terms of bruises," she explained. "But there is a knack to it. You just concentrate on what you're doing, and they concentrate on what they're doing, and there isn't any real pain afterwards."

Joan, of Cocketts Drive, Wisbech, has always been an energetic woman, running about after five children, but it wasn't until she was in her 40s that she took up her unusual hobbies.

She said: "My husband had been in the Ulster Rifles, and while travelling the world with them he had seen people doing Kung Fu in the fields of Japan, and from then on had an interest in martial arts.

"We married and it wasn't until later that he said that he wanted to give it a go, and so I said OK. He recruited a couple of young girls to help him with his act, which was fine, until they got boyfriends who disapproved, and so they stopped.

"It was then that my husband asked me if I fancied giving it a go, and I didn't want to let the side down and so I agreed, and it carried on from there."

Joan was abandoned by her mother when she was nine-months-old, and fostered by a very strict Victorian-type woman who dominated her life and had very definite expectations of how Jean should behave.

It wasn't until later on in her life that she felt she could strike out and be who she wanted to be.

"When I was younger I got on with older people, and now I'm older I get on with younger people better," she said. "I don't think of myself as old. I like doing things, meeting people and enjoying my life.

"That thing (she points at the TV) doesn't come on until the evening. I've got better things to be doing with my time."

Joan's hubby passed away five years ago, after she'd been caring for him for some time. When he died she gave herself three years and then decided to get out there and make the most of life.

She took up yoga, realised just how fit she was, and has taken part in three London Marathons since. She asked her neighbour Jim if he fancied taking up her old nail bed hobby and he said "why not?", which is how their turn on Britain's Got Talent a couple of weeks ago came about.

"I never want to give up doing things," she said. "I enjoy my life, I like meeting people, and I like raising money for the charity I support, Independent Age. "And I would like to write a book about my life.

"Who knows, people might be interested!"