Rosemary McLeod: In erotic history

Financial markets may rise and fall and Afghanistan defeat all comers, but Jane Fonda is eternal. I wonder, is it the teeth?

Her high point was being Barbarella in a tight jumpsuit, long ago. No scrambling out of awkward clothes, no leaping into crumpled unmade beds, no awkward slobbery smooches, no fumbling: sex in that film was perfected. You took exaltation transference pills and pressed your palms together with someone. Easy.

Jane, aka Barbarella, got placed in an Excessive Machine and assured that she'd die of pleasure, but instead burned the machine out. And so she entered erotic history, a territory which she has been reluctant to abandon as the decades pass. Oh how I wish she would.

I'm not sure anyone wants to know about the sex life of old people, but Jane insists you can carry it on indefinitely, with remarkable results: "I see people who aren't traditionally beautiful but if they're having good sex, you can tell." How does she know that chocolate isn't doing the trick?

Age has been unkind. She has been stretched and pegged by plastic surgery into a parody of youthfulness, a cross between Zsa Zsa Gabor at 80 and Joan Rivers at 100. But be that as it may, she's in a relationship with a lad of 69. For him the book is good advertising.

The book - I pray there won't be a DVD - marks a natural progression from Jane's exercise tapes, adherence to which, she still persuades women, are the pathway to the ideal body. But she has also admitted to bulimia, that lesser-known stimulant, which kind of cancels out that sales pitch.

I've seen her boast on a talk-show that she's never had plastic surgery, and I'd like to be a believer. There must be another reason why her cheeks have migrated to meet her ears, her eyes have developed an Asiatic slant, and the corners of her mouth are now stuck in a permanent grin so wide that it'll soon meet at the back of her head.

"I had a deep psychological need to be a boy," she has said, so nobody should be surprised that she now admits her boasted septuagenarian sex life - in spite of spinal surgery, a knee replacement, and a hip implant - has been due to taking testosterone.

At this point we know as much as we ever needed to about Jane, but I'm sure she'll keep up the flow of revelations.

Me, I'm waiting for her treatise on incontinence, an inevitable future topic so long as her ageing readership can still remember who she is.

Yet there are pleasures in life, to which she does not allude. Last weekend, for example, I made marmalade. I do this a couple of times a year, to tumultuous cheers from myself.

First I took luscious citrus fruits which I had sniffed for ripeness, washed them lasciviously under warm running water, and sliced them in a rather abandoned manner in my food processor. I pouted like Nigella as I emptied the resulting mixture into a large, white porcelain mixing bowl and stirred it gently before covering it with a soft blanket of water, and leaving it overnight.

I thought of little else until the next day, when our relationship would be consummated by the application of heat, and the addition of sugar.

Now came the mysterious part, which is never the same from one batch - as I put it - to another. How long must it boil before reaching the peak of reduction? When would it - as we poutingly put it - gel?

The build-up was slow and stealthy, the mixture bubbled, and samples on saucers entered the freezer to be tested. Finally it happened. The surface wrinkled, a finger pushed through the waiting sample left a gap that no longer slid together, and I could fill the waiting jars, still channelling Nigella.

I could have channelled Jane, but I doubt she has ever done anything quite as useful.