Tina Turner Tells All Love, Loss & Choosing Life

Facing 80, The Singing SensationReveals Why Shes NotGiving Up Yet.

- Sarah Oliver

On her right wrist Tina Turner wears three Cartier love bangles that grab at the autumn sun in the garden of her Swiss château. They’re “glued on”, she says, and together they tell the story of her extraordinary life.

First there’s the gold one she bought when she made it big in her forties. Next there’s a platinum bangle, a gift from her then-boyfriend Erwin because he didn’t want her wearing a love token she’d had to buy for herself. The third, in rose gold, was his gift to her as they prepared to get married more than 25 years later.

Tina wore Armani for their wedding in 2013 and today she’s in it again, a diaphanous black and cream two-piece which ghosts across well-kept curves and doesn’t even try to hide a foxily dark lace bra. The smudgy grey eyeliner matches her nails, a deep storm-sky grey. Her hair, glossy, a little bit brown and a little bit blonde, is a wig, “an everyday one”. She has half a dozen, all identical. “I like looking the same, as if it’s my own hair. Not like Cher,” she laughs.

But it’s clear that, despite this nonchalant glamour – “Am I presentable here?” – Tina is in frail health, having suffered a stroke, cancer and kidney failure in the past five years. There is also her age. She celebrates her 80th birthday next year, a milestone unimaginable to the millions who remember her as she once was, all legs, fringe and shimmy.