Oh Fern! If this is the new face of middle age, bring back blue rinses and a comfy pair of slippers

Oh no, Fern. Not that. Please, anything but that. Not a pair of butterfly tattoos. Not on your stomach.

Not fluttering innocently across the rolling, ointment-pink lunarscape of your great Fern abdomen, pausing for a rest and perhaps a drink at lake belly button? Gazing at your navel with rapture, before taking a long-haul flight up to Hooters Hill. Oof. Let’s not go there.

Too late, readers! She really has gone and done it.

Some time around last Christmas, the 53-year-old television presenter addressed the impending matter of an encroaching midlife crisis by having two butterflies tattooed on her stomach. She really did. 

Tattoo far? A newly-inked Fern Britton as she appears in this month's Woman And Home magazine

'Tram-stamp': One of two butterflies on Fern's midriff

What happened next? Well, obviously she popped into Claire’s Accessories for some Hello Kitty earrings and a glittery hair clip, then gave the bus driver a bit of cheek on the way home.

Come on. Grow up, Fern! You’re not Kelly Osbourne. You are lovely, bubbly Fern Britton, not gruesome, sour  Fearne Cotton. You are a crystal glass  of fine red wine to her plastic beaker of flat Red Bull. You are just not the tattooing type.

Yet while many women of a certain age might think that getting a tattoo is an incredibly doltish and teenage thing to do, Old Ferny is incredibly pleased with her new ‘tramp stamps’.

For her, they are a symbol of her intention to enjoy what she calls ‘a disgraceful middle age’. Oh dear.  Good luck with that, Fern. Although I suspect it is something that can only end in tears.

In an interview with Woman And Home magazine published this month, the former daytime presenter showed off her new tattoos as proudly as a sheepdog that had just produced twin pups.

In the accompanying photographs, one butterfly peeps coyly out from beneath Fern’s crisp white shirt, like a shy insect hiding behind the curtain at the ugly bug ball.

We can’t see them both, but I like to imagine that Butterfly A and Butterfly B discreetly cover the entry and exit wounds left by Miss Britton’s infamous gastric band operation.

As we all know, Fern is not nearly as large as she once was.

Although it was embarrassing for her to have to admit that it was expensive surgery — not five minutes of skipping and the occasional packet of Ryvita Minis — that was responsible for her five-stone weight loss.

And I suspect that it is her declining weight rather than her advancing years that is really behind this giddy development.

Fern claims that she was initially inspired after reading that 64-year-old Felicity Kendal had a tattoo of a star on her foot and that the former Good Life actress was also planning some more.

Felicity, who also wears toe rings and still looks good in shorts, clearly has a lot to answer for.

A fuller-figured Fern in 2009 in the months following her infamous gastric band surgery, and right, on the set of her TV show 'Fern'

Yet these butterfly tattoos are only the opening salvo in Fern’s desire to be disgraceful.

The star, who made a somewhat disastrous appearance on the BBC’s Question Time panel recently, is determined to embrace new challenges and admits that turning 50 was the catalyst for taking charge of her life in a new way.

She said: ‘At this chapter of my life, I have the pleasure of being “self-ist”’ — to do what I need without feeling guilty.’

However, she has admitted that her husband, the television chef Phil Vickery, was still ‘iffy’ about the tatts.

On the other hand, her children — she has 17-year-old twin sons and a 14-year-old daughter from her first marriage, and ten-year-old daughter Winnie from her second with Vickery — all think they look ‘cool’.

Tend: Susan Sarandon is another older woman who had a tattoo

Do they really? I suspect they’re all glowing pink with radiation levels of embarrassment. For not only is Mummy tattooed, she shares too much about life with Daddy.

Fern gives too much to her public. Do we want to know that sometimes when she is working in her upstairs office at home and Phil is working in his downstairs office at home they email each other.

‘ “Do you fancy lunch?” And then we can go out together. Or go back to bed,’ reveals Fern. If I were a butterfly, I’d like to fly away now please.

Of course, this is Fern’s first ink, as they say in the business. And disgraceful or not, it is clearly what Americans call an attack of the ‘middle-aged crazy’; the female equivalent of a man buying a Harley Davidson motorbike or growing his hair long.

For Fern represents a growing trend for older women to throw caution to the wind, go utterly butterfly and get themselves tattooed — just for the hell of it. Just like film star Susan Sarandon.

In 2008, when she was 61, the star of Thelma & Louise suddenly appeared on the red carpet with two new tattoos; one on her wrist and one on her back.

They represented the initials of the three children she had with her long-term partner, Tim Robbins — and also a rather desperado stab at reclaiming her lost youth.

Was it a coincidence that the following summer, after 23 years together, Sarandon and Robbins split up?

Of course, once upon a time, women over 50 were expected to do the decent thing.

Namely, fade quietly into the background and make a nice cup of tea, there’s a good dear. To turn grey without a murmur of complaint or recourse to the Clairol bottle. To complain gently about chilblains, the price of Steradent and take quiet pride in potting our sweet peas.

Well, that has all changed. 70 is the new 50, 50 is the new 30 and if a 63-year-old Helen Mirren can look smoking hot in a red bikini on an Italian beach, then there is hope for all of us.

Interview: Fern in this month's Woman And Home Magazine

But really — is a tattoo the right way to go? I would argue that instead of being the inky epitome of middle-aged rebellion, tattoos are actually rather suburban.

Especially those rinky dinky little ones like Fern’s; those mimsy butterflies or honeybees or flowers that you can hide under a Per Una cardigan or a big pair of pants.

Surely all they do is illustrate a sickly girlishness rather than the imprint of a sophisticated older woman?

Tattoos have become so commonplace that even the Prime Minister’s wife has one. In fact, wholesome bore Jennifer Aniston has just  had one done — in memory  of her favourite pet dog, what  a sap! — surely the ultimate kiss of death to any cool or  edgy trend.

All I will say is this. Fern, if you want to grow old disgracefully, wear a ‘meat dress’ like Lady Gaga, run off to Ibiza with the housekeeping money, occasionally wear a handbag and shoes that — wait for it — do not match.

A pair of butterflies on your belly? I’m afraid that’s about as outrageous as an egg white omelette. You’ll have to do much better than that if you want to shock.