Last updated 11:34, Monday, 28 April 2008

She was once the focus of affection for every red-blooded young farmer in Cumbria.

Changing face of Anna Ford: Now the Cumbrian is happily retired

And as she approaches 65, Cumbrian newsreader Anna Ford can still turn a few heads – even though her glossy hair is not the deep brown it once was.

“Going grey is liberation,” Anna tells Saga magazine, a popular read for those who are past the first flush of youth.

“I stopped dyeing my hair when I left the BBC.

“It saves a lot of money, and all those hours sitting under the dryer with bits of silver paper on my head.”

Anna, whose father John was a priest, lived at Wigton’s vicarage and attended St Ursula’s Primary School and Wigton Grammar School.

When her father became priest at St Martin’s in Brampton, Anna went to the town’s White House Grammar School, now part of William Howard.

Anna tells Saga that she still misses married life 20 years after the death of her husband, cartoonist Mark Boxer, who died of a brain tumour.

But Anna says there is a positive side to independence, and retirement, as she plans to explore some of Britain’s loveliest corners.

These days she can travel without attracting a horde of youthful admirers in her wake. This was not always the case, particularly in Cumbria.

Anna’s popularity was emphasised on one occasion when rumour spread that she was planning to spend a few days away on a Cumbrian farm.

The late lamented Cumbrian author Alan Hankinson knew Anna well from their time together at ITN.

The story about her trip to Cumbria spread like wildfire and Hankinson’s phone was red hot with calls from young lads with four-wheel-drive vehicles offering to pick her up from Carlisle Station and give her a lift to Bassenthwaite.

“She was a much sought-after lady and I had to spend all day fighting them off,” Hankinson once recalled in a conversation with Reiver.