YOU wonder if Lulu has the portrait of Dorian Gray lurking somewhere in her attic. After all, she is a modern miracle – looking more glamorous and smooth-skinned each year, with a mane of hair you’d expect to see on a woman half her age.

Lulu has been in the limelight since her teens. She made her first public appearance at the age of four and by 14 had joined a band. A year later, her version of the Isley Brothers Shout was in the top ten. Since then she’s won the Eurovision, fronted her own TV shows, starred in film and TV, been a radio DJ and toured with Take That.

She famously married Bee Gee Maurice Gibb and after her divorce had an affair with David Bowie. Her marriage to hairdresser John Frieda brought her into motherhood, with the arrival of her son Jordan.

Now 62, she’s as busy as ever, with a spate of festival gigs lined up over summer and a BBC2 documentary about her life in the making.

“I love new projects and challenges,” she says, her voice quite loud, high and displaying a mid-Atlantic drawl. “I love to have a goal.”

She keeps in shape by using a cross trainer and attending a Pilates studio with an instructor who works with the Ballet Rambert.

“I have to do something to build up my stamina,” she says. “At my age, it’s all about maintenance.”

Lulu quickly brings the conversation around to her appearance; but this wouldn’t always have been the case in an interview. She spent years feeling aggrieved by journalists focusing on her looks rather than her music – then had a change of heart and decided to share her secrets with womankind.

The result was the launch of her anti-ageing ranges for skin and hair: Time Bomb and Operation: Glam.

Although relatively new to market, the products were years in the making. Lulu was very much hands-on in the process – indeed the products are based on her own formulations that she developed over the years to keep the signs of ageing at bay.

“This business is all about youth,” she says. “All the focus is on youth. Whether you like it or not, you have to give attention to your appearance.

“I had acne as a teenage,” she says, her accent beginning to fracture into shards of Glaswegian. “One spot on your face when you have to go on TV all the time is a tragedy.”

As she turned 40, Lulu actively pursued ways to keep her skin looking youthful, garnering tips from the likes of make-up artists, facialists and hairdressers that she met as she travelled the world.

“I once read an article about borage oil in a health magazine, on how it was good for the skin. I wanted to get some, but it wasn’t on the market, so I went into a health food shop and bought capsules of it. I pierced them and put the oil on my face. I noticed a difference. Now scientific tests have proved its benefits.”

Lulu describes herself as the “guinea pig” for all her products and says it is satisfying to meet women who use them and report success.

No doubt she is hoping for such encounters when she rolls into Fenwick in York on Wednesday.

She will be at the Coppergate store from 12-2pm to launch her Time Bomb range in Fenwick and meet fans and customers as well as talk about her skin and hair-care products and answer beauty questions. She will happily sign autographs too.