France's glamorous grannies battle time

Many aspire to beat the body clock - but the elixir of youth is not available on tap

The French have been busy pursuing the elixir of youth - it is no longer enough to be fashionable in France these days, you have got to be young.

James Coomarasamy - a fashionable thirty-something, yet to reach middle age - has been finding out about the latest craze in France.

If they ever decide to hold a glamorous granny contest in the part of Paris where I live, the standard of entrants will be pretty high.

Most of the 70-something women you see walking down the streets tend to look and dress like half-their-age-somethings.

Well coiffured, of course and with a suitably youthful canine bouncing along by their side - these are the ladies of the 17th arrondisment - as far removed from your cuddly grandmother as a glass of vintage Medoc is from a half pint of pale ale.

Some resort to 'aesthetic surgery'

But they have worked on it. Not necessarily by plastic surgery - or aesthetic surgery, as it is known in French.

But by means that do not come cheap, such as thalassotherapy holidays - the sun and seaweed therapy beloved of France's more mature traveller.

Why? Well there are reasons beyond simple vanity, although that plays an undeniable role.

Youth is clearly important in a country where the head of state recently called for the presidential term to be reduced, partly because he feared an older man would not be elected.

Admired and rewarded

In France, if you preserve your looks and attitude, you are admired and rewarded. You can have a much longer shelf life.

Take the entertainer whom foreigners would call the ageing rocker Johnny Halliday - in France, he is an ageless national institution.

Mature, experienced - these were just some of the youthphemisms associated with him when he performed his all-singing, all dancing stage show in front of three-quarters-of-a-million people last year.

His Eiffel Tower concert may have been a celebration of 40 years in show business, but Johnny is not ready to start crooning from his rocking chair just yet.

He knows that as long as he can still wriggle his hips in that Elvis-like way he first did those decades ago the people will love him.

Money and time

Of course - neither 17th arrondissement woman nor Johnny Halliday are your average French person, and it would be foolish to pretend that water from the fountain of youth is available on tap for everyone.

Halliday is an ageless national institution

It is only those from a certain class, and with certain metropolitan lifestyles, who have the money and the time to beat the body clock - even if many people in France do share their aspirations.

At least that was true - until recently.

For in the past few months, the biggest medical come consumer story here has been the arrival in France of an elixir of youth - available for all, over the counter.

It is the commercial version of a hormone called DHEA, - produced by the body in ever decreasing quantities from the age of 30, and believed to have anti-ageing properties.

Mystery pill

Although its significance was discovered by - who else? - a Frenchman, professor Etienne Emile Beaulieu - the artificial version of DHEA has previously been available only in the US and in one European country, Luxembourg.

I do not count Russia, which had - at least in Soviet times - a youth pill of its own.

The mysterious, Kremlin Pill, which resembled a sort of overgrown fuse, was supposed to keep Kremlin leaders in the first - well, at least, the last - flush of youth.

With a marketing ploy like that, it was doomed to failure.

National hysteria

In France, though, the arrival of the DHEA pills was greeted by the nation with something resembling hysteria.

It was one of the main cultural events of the year, provoking the sort of anticipation you would normally get at Britain's January Sales.

Kochner called for a scientific study

Eager shoppers may not have camped out all night to get the first batches of the drug, but when it finally arrived there were queues of people quickly forming outside chemist shops - eager for a chance to experience the elixir of youth.

Newspapers articles soon appeared about people who had used the miracle cure - each felt fitter, healthier - their skin more moist and supple.

This, they seemed sure was not just a case of their body clocks being stopped, but of their hands being pushed in the other direction and made to run backwards.

Carcinogenic

Surely, it was all too good to be true?

Well, perhaps. With studies in the US suggesting there could be a link between taking the hormone over a lengthy period and certain types of cancer, France's Health Minister decided to do the mature thing.

Bernard Kouchner is used to tough diplomatic assignments, as the UN's former Head of Commission in Kosovo, but when he decided it was time to take a grown-up look at the youth pill he must have known he was facing quite a challenge.

Would this popular founder of the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, go down in history as the man who dashed French hopes of finding eternal youth?

Workable compromise

What he did was call on the government's scientific watchdog to look into the matter.

It produced a rather inconclusive report which said that while there was no proof the hormone had dangerous side effects, it must be considered as a medicine, and treated with caution.

It called into doubt whether there was any scientific proof of its vaunted miraculous qualities.

As a result, Mr Kouchner hopes he has found a workable compromise - he has not banned the pill, but he has made it available only on prescription.

I pity the poor French doctors - besieged by an army of newly-invigorated pensioners, desperate for their fix of youth.

At least one physician, who refused to prescribe DHEA since the ruling, is being taken to court by an elderly patient - charged with failing to assist a person in danger.