70-year-old pins simply the best in the world

WHAT'S age got to do it with it? Not a lot if you're Tina Turner, it seems. Siren is in awe of the singer, who may be turning 70 next year but is back performing in skirts as short as ever. Fifty years of strutting her stuff on stage has clearly left her with a leggy legacy to be proud of.

Turner may be old enough to be Madonna's mother and Britney's grandma, but in the eight years since she officially sashayed out of the limelight, Turner appears to have kept in trim without having to resort to extreme diets or bikram yoga.

"I wouldn't want to diminish my credibility, so if I was ever going to do it, now is the time. I'm in shape – and once I saw some of the costumes I started getting excited," Turner says.

And she isn't the only one getting excited. More than 20,000 fans – including Tom Cruise and Oprah Winfrey – turned out for the first night of her comeback tour in Chicago at the weekend.

"I never wanted to be out here all my life, but my music doesn't sound dated. It's still standing strong. Like me," she adds.

With legs like that, Siren reckons, it looks like Turner's going to keep the younger generations of performers on their toes for some time yet.

Spit or swallow?

ONE of the most memorable moments of Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman's round-the-world biking trip was their dinner in a Mongolian ger, where the pair were served a bowl of testicle stew.

Bobbing around in the simmering broth like grotesque little ping-pong balls were the shiny, white, freshly castrated gonads of dozens of sheep, calves, goats and camels.

While bold McGregor swallowed his soup manfully, blanching Boorman's eyes bulged before he gagged pitifully and decided spitting was the only thing to do.

Siren still cannot think of the scene without being hit by nausea, so when an e-mail promoting "the world's first testicle cookbook" arrived, she was understandably appalled. The work of Serbian chef Ljubomir Erovic, the e-book contains 31 recipes including those for testicle pizza and testicles with bechamel sauce.

It's a kind of culinary masochism Siren really can't understand. However as the recipes all sounded distinctly foreign she was able to reassure herself that no sensible Scot (other than McGregor, who was clearly still suffering the effects of too much light-sabre exposure) would find such fare palatable. Then she spotted the recipe for battered testicles. Salt and sauce with yours, madam?

Muir at the museum

SIREN is looking forward to getting a serious fashion fix courtesy of an exhibition celebrating the work of designer Jean Muir, who emerged with the 1960s youthquake.

Visitors to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh next month will be able to see, close-up, elements of the designs, manufacturing and marketing that combined to make her such a key figure in the British fashion revolution of the 1960s and beyond.

Sketches, pattern pieces, fabric samples and finished garments and accessories will on be on show, illustrating why Muir's signature precision was such a favourite of glamorous celebrities from Lauren Bacall to Joanna Lumley. Fabulous.