"I regret it - and I think women do a disservice to other women by tricking them."

She's right - it does. Along with pretending your boobs are real, or that you've never had Botox and don't need to watch what you eat.

Making out you're something that you're not, to make yourself feel superior to other women, well, it stinks.

In Kate's case, we're only talking a year.

And she blames the media for it (of course): "I'm ashamed to admit this, but in recent years I have allowed the media to become a little, well, economical with the truth about my age," she said.

Years ago, a journalist got her age wrong and she simply let the mistake lie ... and it became a fact.

But she lived to regret her act of vanity. When her 40th birthday came around, she couldn't share the occasion with friends because she had backed herself into a corner.

It 's hardly news that women in the public eye knock a few years off their age.

So many of them do it, it's become the norm - and virtually impossible to work out who's fibbing, and by how much.

Because their livelihoods are linked to how they look, they feel pressure to dispense with a few of the miles on the clock. They don't want their public - or more importantly, their next potential booking - to think they're getting a bit past it.

Fact is, they're probably not. They are just as talented as ever they were. And probably they still look just as great.

But the age thing, it's all about perception. No matter how youthful, fit, energetic and mentally alert you are, our ageist society still labels us.

'At the grand old age of 47, I admit I've lied about my age twice'

When you get into your 40s you're officially middle-aged.

In your sixties, you're described as a pensioner if a story about you appears in a local newspaper and suddenly you sound feeble and helpless, when you're not at all.

According to a survey by Help The Aged, nearly a quarter of 55 to 65-year-olds said they have been made to feel too old to take part in an activity.

It's not on. But most of us grin and bear it until we become an age that we want to boast about because we look and act years younger than it.

The weird thing about Kate Garraway, though, is that she felt compelled to lie to her best friends.

She only told them the truth when one of them gave her an "early" 40th birthday present - it was actually a year too late.

I can't ever imagine lying to mine about something so shallow.

Friends fib to each other when the truth might hurt too much. Or when we've done something really stupid over a bloke and don't want to admit it. But how unpleasant to con them into thinking you're a year younger because that makes you feel better?

At the grand old age of 47, I admit I've lied about my age twice.

The first time was to a much younger boyfriend and I felt too embarrassed to tell him the truth.

The second was on a dating website, where I now believe about 70 per cent of people lie about their age, too.

I'd been totally truthful at first, but for some reason, 44-year-old women only attract men over 55.

Now there I go, assuming that all men over 55 will be unattractive, wrinkly old fogeys. But then, I was obviously being pre-judged as a raddled old maid by men the same age.

And they were busily chasing women they thought were ten years younger, but were probably lying, too.

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