Just one look in the mirror every morning tells Linda Nolan she did the right thing.
Gone are the lines of sadness and grief that 10 years of mourning her lost husband added to her face.
Gone is the weary and haunted look of a woman who fought and beat breast cancer only to see her sister taken by it.
Linda’s decision to have a £6,000 facelift has changed her life at 57.
And today, facing the world with her new look for the first time, she admits she feels like a new woman – and one finally ready to find love again.
She’s even laughs that she now looks younger than her Celebrity Big Brother-winning sister Coleen, 51.
“I’m really happy with the results. It’s exactly what I wanted,” smiles Linda, who chose a lower facelift and extreme skin peel on the advice of her surgeon.
“It’s amazing to wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and feel better about yourself. And when I meet people I haven’t seen for a while, they’re amazed. In fact their reaction has been the best thing about this.
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“I looked so tired before. I would look in the mirror and see everything I’d gone through in the past 10 years on my face. The facelift has enhanced my life. The sadness has gone.”
Linda has suffered enough tragedy. She lost husband Brian at 60 to skin cancer in 2007 and 52-year-old Bernie to breast cancer in 2013, having battled it herself in 2006.
At her lowest, she contemplated suicide. And her sadness only deepened every time it was reflected in the mirror.
But now, four weeks after surgery at London’s Harley Street Skin Clinic, all she can see is positivity shining back. Linda was awake through her op, having a local rather than general anaesthetic for the lower facelift.
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“I was given a relaxant that made me feel great. I recall the surgeon saying, ‘she says her nose is itchy, can someone scratch it?’ But I don’t remember much at all. I felt no pain.”
She jokes that the facelift and chemical skin peel left her looking like an “orange Malteser” at first.
“But in a few days the swelling had gone. I noticed the changes in my top lip – I no longer had very deep lines from smoking – and my jawline, because my jowls had gone,” she says.
“Day by day my skin felt better. And, the sadness in my face had gone.” The star has spent two weeks recuperating at sister Denise’s home in Blackpool. She wore support bandages around her face the first five days. “It was like wearing a balaclava,” she jokes. “But I was so pampered. Denise cooked for me and people popped in. It didn’t take long for
my face to recover and I’ve had an amazing response already. Two friends came round and when I opened the door they both screamed.
“They were shocked at how well I looked. And my great niece Sienna, Maureen’s granddaughter, said: ‘You look beautiful Auntie Linda’. That works for me.”
One person who hasn’t seen Linda’s facelift yet is Coleen, who won Celebrity Big Brother on Friday.
“I screamed the house down as Coleen won,” smiles Linda. “She would never in a million years have believed she could have won. She looked so shocked.” But Linda laughs that Coleen is about to have a bigger surprise when she sees her sister’s face.
Linda reveals: “I spoke to her afterwards and she asked me what I’d been up to. I felt so guilty because I didn’t say I was speaking to her with a new face!
“I know she’ll go mad as she’s so anti-surgery. But she’ll only find out when she sees this paper!”
Linda reckons she could now challenge Coleen for youthful looks. She laughs: “I think I look younger than her now so maybe she’ll be asking for the clinic’s number! I looked years older than my age with all the grief. I was aged well beyond my years. People say I know look 20 years younger after my facelift.
“But Coleen will kill me for it!”
And Linda is hoping her facelift may also lift her love life. Just before Christmas she had her first smooch after losing Brian with an old friend who lives overseas. She says it’s given her confidence of finding companionship.
“He texted me and said: ‘We’ll have to try the new lips when I come back over’,” she says.
“He was the right person at the right time. He helped me get over that first hurdle of having a kiss. I’m still scared to death of dating but Brian told me he didn’t want me to be on my own.”
Linda still carries a mini urn of her manager husband’s ashes everywhere. “That sadness will always be inside me but I’m dealing with it now,” she says. “I miss Brian and Bernie but that desperate feeling of loneliness is gone.
“It’s as if something has clicked inside of me. Brian was fabulous for supporting me. He’d be looking at my new face now going, ‘You’re not bad for an old bird’.” But her search for companionship which she says will “not necessarily be a sexual thing” will have to compete with work. She starts a major UK tour with musical Our House in the summer.
Linda admits: “It’s a shame, but looks do matter in showbiz. So the facelift has give me a real a boost to my confidence at work.” But that’s it as far as surgery goes. “It was a big decision to get this done and I’m delighted with it,” she says.
“For the next 20 years I’ll always look a bit younger than I am. I’ll be nearly 80 by then and I think when you’re 80 you’re entitled to look the way you want to look.”
- Linda had her treatment at http://harleystreetskinclinic.com