The secrets of a long life revealed

Isolde McCullagh is celebrating her 91st birthday by publishing the second part of her autobiography

IF YOU ever feel that your get-up-and-go has got up and gone, then Isolde McCullagh will get you on the right path again.The great grandmother will celebrate her 91st birthday next month and tomorrow she is launching her second book.

Along the way she has battled cancer twice, been an Irish swimming champion, taught fitness for 70 years, ran a few businesses and raised more than €20,000 for charity.

She published her autobiography, Isolde's Way, three years ago but couldn't squeeze her life into just one book. She says her second offering, Never Too Late, was written because people kept asking, "How have you lasted so long?"

She also saw it as an opportunity to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland.

When The Irish Timesspoke to her on Friday, she had just returned from an exercise class and was busy planning her book launch. Keeping fit has been a key part of her life since she joined the League of Health at the age of 18. The league was introduced to Ireland in 1934 to provide affordable exercise classes for women and to teach them about good posture.

Originally known as the Women’s League of Health and Beauty, it was set up in London by Dubliner Mary Bagot- Stack. It has since become known as the Fitness League and has more than 30 centres in counties Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Wexford.

McCullagh trained in London and Dublin and taught exercise for seven decades. She introduced Extend, a programme of exercises for older people and the less able in 1984, and she still attends those classes.

She says she is a firm believer in the maxim that your genes determine only 30 per cent of your future. The other 70 per cent is what you make of it.

“A cheerful outlook on life is terribly important,” she says. “Nobody will have anything to do with you if you are always moaning. Who likes a moaner?”

Any other tips for a long and happy life? “Facial exercises,” she says. “Do facial exercises regularly and you won’t get wrinkles, or as many wrinkles as you would normally get. I do them all the time and people tell me I don’t look my age at all.”

McCullagh has had her fair share of setbacks along the way. The mother of three suffered the loss of her husband, and her only son died four years ago. More than 20 years ago, she was diagnosed with third stage ovarian cancer.

She remembers lying in her hospital bed, asking two doctors if there was any hope for her. “One looked up at the ceiling and one looked out the window, and no one said anything.”

But she defied the medics and beat the cancer. About two years later, she discovered she had cancer of the omentum (fatty tissue in the abdomen).

She overcame this, too, and also battled with arthritis, broken bones and other minor ailments along the way.

In an interview with RTÉ’s Marian Finucane six years ago, she agreed that she was a “a stiff-upper-lip, stoic” kind of person and said she may have inherited that from her mother.

She is still well enough to go everywhere, and is planning a Christmas visit to her daughter in New Caledonia.

“I have no idea how long I’ll live but as long as I don’t lose my marbles, I don’t mind,” she says.

Never Too Late(€10) can be bought at the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland website, cfireland.ie, tel: 01-4962433